It was the only word Alexander could use to accurately describe what was happening around him. The head cook screamed orders at the sub-cooks. These were also shouting, while they watched over their assigned station and the ‘normal’ cooks working at them.
Waiters were joining the fray, shuffling from one end of he room to another to distribute orders. Fifty cooks were working diligently in this kitchen. Dirty cooking utensils were put down any place not occupied yet. The apprentices then had to quickly remove them and bring them to the washing station, where 3 of the kitchen staff scrubbed one plate after another, cleaned pots and pans swiped glasses and cutlery to make them shine.
Hacking at meat, slicing vegetables, using blazing fire to cook, the noise in the kitchen was deafening.
Nonetheless the dining part of the restaurant never so much as heard anything of the chaotic noise in the kitchen. Having a few musicians in the dining area playing soothing music, extravagantly adorned it with chandeliers, a smooth and shiny parquet floor, bright magical light illuminating the place and having employed professionally trained waiters clearly reflected its status of the best restaurant in the Rosenheim kingdom.
Not to mention the cooks skills, especially the head cook, who was one of the few advanced level cooks in the entire continent. Naturally he was a NPC, since still all high-level positions are taken by NPC’s.
While the friends of Alexander were already in their mid-forties, here he was still stuck inside the city in a kitchen.
When the head cook of this restaurant had hired him, Alexander would never have imagined how hard life in the kitchen of a professional, highly established restaurant was.
Currently he had adapted to this hectic life of being a cook, but it wasn’t easy and actually took him almost the entire month to achieve.
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Recap:
Waiting in front of the restaurant, since the sun had come up Alexander was feeling ready for any kind of challenge. Six other people came to also wait with him. After talking to them for a bit, he realized that they were all players, who also wanted to be hired. Alexander hoped that it wouldn’t be some kind of competition, since he had never in his life cooked for real before.
He could make himself a sandwich, cook noodles and manage to make a homemade pizza. He never had to cook in real life but had decided to definitely learn it in the game, since he would soon need to cook his own meals, when he moves out of his childhood home to live on his own.
Finally other people, who probably were part of the kitchen staff, came and the head cook soon opened the doors of the restaurant.
Following him inside, Alexander and the five other players that wanted to be hired looked at the huge establishment in awe. Probably a thousand people could come and eat here at once.
Hearing stools scraping across the floor Alexander turned around and saw that the countless kitchen staffs had already changed their clothing and while the cooks went towards doors located directly opposite the entrance to what led to the kitchens, waiters had started to clean the tables and the floor, to completely remove any dirt and dust. They also arranged the countless tables and stools to stand in a symmetrical order to each other.
Not knowing what they were supposed to do, Alexander and the other five stayed standing at the entrance of the restaurant. A few moments passed in awkward silence until the head cook had reappeared from inside the kitchen. Meanwhile two other players, who were a bit late came and joined us inside.
The head cook took a long look at us and then turned to face the two, who were running late, asking them:
“What are you still doing here? Being a cook of this restaurant requires a certain standard and we won’t hire anyone too lax to come in time!”
The two players in question looked at him in disbelief and stood still. The head cook’s expression had turned into a frown and he simply stood up, picked the two players, who were probably still in their first month of in-game time, up at their neck and threw them outside the doors, which he closed after them.
Us remaining players were now too aware of the fact that this will probably not be as easy as we had thought.
“We need a few cooking apprentices in the kitchen for the whole month. You will be paid once a week and for persisting until the end of the month you will receive a reward of three gold coins. So let’s start working!”
The apprenticeship at ‘Palais raffiné’
Having been hired to start out as an apprentice cook at the highly established restaurant ‘Palais raffiné’, you will have to endure one month of the hard life of being part of a professional kitchen staff.
Difficulty Level: F
Quest rewards: Cooking skill.
15 silver per week and an additional 3 gold after one month.
During the one month in the restaurant the experience gain of the cooking skill will be increased by 10%.
You have learned the skill Cooking
For the first days my job consisted of scrubbing dishes, running around to clear the cooking stations of dirty cooking utensils. It is amazing how many thousands of plates, pots, pans, cutlery and other utensils had to be cleaned every day in such a huge restaurant.
For having worked so diligently Alexander was promoted at the third day to the peeling area of the kitchen.
For the next four days he had to peel thousands of potatoes, carrots, onions, apples, oranges and other fruits, generally everything imaginable that could be peeled. Even though the job was very monotone, Alexander had to constantly concentrate or else he would have messed up.
Thankfully he was able to peel properly after only a few tries and after four days of peeling he thought of himself as being a master-grade peeler, which wasn’t really something one could boast about to others.
After the first week, Alexander was again promoted even though it didn’t come to a relief to him, since it was always accompanied by having to work more. Two of the five players that started working with him had been fired for being to slow, not working hard enough or maybe simply, because the head cook didn’t like them. Two others had been promoted along with him and other players had taken up their previous positions. Lastly the fifth player apparently was a restaurant cook in real life, which was noticed by the head cook, who had soon promoted him to one of the regular cooks.
Now having being promoted once more he started to do different kinds of cooking preparations.
He now had to wash fruits and vegetables by holding them under slightly warm running water. He also had to scrub root vegetables, such as potatoes, with a soft brush to remove any dirt, since not everything was peeled due to different meals needing either peeled or unpeeled ingredients.
Alexander also had to grate and shred by using an old-fashioned grater-shredder on top of a plate. The smaller holes of the grater-shredder were used for grating to make tiny particles of citrus zest or hard cheese for example. The larger oval shaped holes on the other hand were used for shredding to make short and fine or long and coarse pieces of soft cheese for example.
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He now also had to prepare different types of egg dishes. He had to hard-boil, soft-boil, fry them or make scrambled eggs. He also needed to crack them, and then pour them into a mixing bowl with flour, sugar and a few other ingredients to create dough for bread or noodles.
He also had to prepare and chop salad, mushrooms, fruits, vegetables and other things into various different sizes. He had to cut, bruise, crumble, cube, dice, flake, grind, julienne, mash, mince, shred, chop coarsely or chop finely.
He also learned various different seasoning techniques.
In his third week he was finally assigned to a certain cooking station to help out there. He didn’t have to help all that needed help anymore, constantly having to be alert if someone called for him over all the shouting.
He was assigned to the dessert section of the kitchen, where only 5 cooks worked at. It was the most interesting part of his entire time working as part of the kitchen staff. He was finally recognized by the others to be also called a cook and not an apprentice anymore.
He learned how to make ice cream, cake, cookies, caramel, crème brulee and various other kinds of desserts. He learned how to make simple dishes look extravagant and special. Working at the dessert station for the rest of his stay, he noticed that making desserts was what he was best in.
During his month in the kitchen he was very grateful to the other cooks, who had given him friendly advice and showed him step by step how to do certain things. If they hadn’t been so helpful and if the atmosphere inside the kitchen wasn’t always filled wit constant chatter and laughter he probably wouldn’t have managed to persist through all that work and stress.
To show how hard the work truly was, one has to know that Alexander had always logged out after each work day for the beginning two weeks, since he was to mentally tired to do anything else like train his knife mastery further. Even after those two weeks he wasn’t willing to work much more so during that time he went to the city library to read about different places on the Versailles continent.
By reading the entire night every night for two weeks he managed to increase his wisdom by 6 and his intellect by 4 points. He also created a new stat.
New stat: Concentration
Concentration
You are able to concentrate heavily on a task thus increasing its efficiency. You are prohibited from distributing stat bonus points to this stat.
The incredible thing about this stat was that it gained stat points quite easily. After every couple of hours of reading non-stop it would increase or even after especially hard parts in preparing desserts, where one can absolutely not lose focus or else the taste or appearance would be much worse.
But Alexander didn’t know if the stat really was useful, since one would naturally increase one’s efficiency if concentrating hard on a task. A person not paying attention to what he is doing, won’t be able to achieve something one of equal ability can do while being immersed in his task.
Since Alexander gave it his best at most things he did and he wouldn’t be able to distribute stat points to the stat anyway, which he wouldn’t have done even if he was able to do it, he decided to ignore the stat for the time being.
Various other stats had increased a substantial amount during his time in the kitchen. Especially his agility and stamina, since he prepared food for thousands of people every day while constantly being pressured to create high quality food in a limited time frame.
By also having used many high quality ingredients due to the restaurant being the finest there was in the entire Rosenheim kingdom, being visited by nobles and other wealthy people every day, Alexander managed to raise his cooking skill to beginner level 8: 79% and earned three gold and sixty silver coins, while at the same time receiving free food as a bonus.
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Back to the present time:
Quest complete!
The apprenticeship at ‘Palais raffiné’
For having managed to endure one month of the self-proclaimed hell’s kitchen you have received a generous payment and your relationship to your fellow cooks has improved.
Quest rewards: Relationship to cooks of ‘Palais raffiné’ has changed to: friends
Increase of discount at grocery markets by 0.5%.
Discount at ‘Palais raffiné’ by 10% for your own meal.
Fame +4
You have leveled up!
Alexander had finally gained enough experience, having completed three easy quests until now. The blacksmith’s, the archer’s and now the cook’s quest. He decided to invest three points into his strength stat and two into Agility.
His status window looked impressive for only being level two.
Status WindowCharacter nameSomeoneAlignmentNeutralLevel2ProfessionNoneTitleNoneFame11Health1610Mana3260Strength70 (+20)Agility104 (-10)Stamina79Fighting Spirit15Sustenance26Wisdom43Intellect64Concentration17Luck-1Leadership0Attack27 (+18) - 27 (+22)Defense4Magic ResistanceFire25%Water25%Earth25%Black Magic25%
By having earned money, he could now finally buy equipment to leave the city.
While whistling merrily Alexander quickly left the restaurant behind him to search for a merchant, only to once again get lost.