Home District

Fame
 Income
 Required Fame
 Chef Total Stats
 Recipe Research Level
 Ingredients Quality
* **Ingredient** : *none*
* **Other** : *none*

## Story

I woke up to the sound of my stomach rumbling. It was still dark outside but I could still see my room outlined in a faint white glow. Odd - there is a small ball of light flitting around me. Perhaps it was a firefly? They don't glow that color though... I tried saying hello but she seemed to ignore me. She? Why did I think this light had a gender at all? I watched it for a minute until it seemed to lose interest in me and fly away. I shook mu gead. This was a very confusing way to start my day, but I didn't have time to think about it. I had much more pressing issues - my stomach!

My apartment was small and didn't have electricity, much like everywhere else in my district. I lived in the smallest and poorest district in the whole empire. I guess smallest isn't the most accurate term. Area wise, we were quite large. There just weren't any [[buildings] or people here. We only had 5 apartment buildings for people to live in and we shaed them with 19 other people. Even with only 100 people living here, there were not enough jobs to go around. Most people were unemployed and even those with jobs made just over three dollars a day. Our area did'nt even have an official name. In mu head, I always named it the home district.

I walked out of my bedroom into the only other room in my house - the kitchen. I had to eat something fast. I always loved cooking, though I was never very good at it. The food I had in my house were some eggs so I decided to make on of my favorite recipes, eggs sunny side up. I got out a frying pan and put it on the stove. I only had a little bit of cooking oil left so I used it all. I cracked open the eggs and dropped them in the pan with a little bit of salt and pepper for flavor. As U was putting my eggs on a plate and getting ready to eat them I noticed the ball of light had returned.

I eargerly devoured the eggs and while they eased my hunger I could tell they weren't good. The texture was off, they were overdone, and didn't have enough seasoning. I don't know why I was able to tell these things, before food always just sort of tasted like food. Even though I wasn't hungry anymore I was still not satisfied.

For the first time I was not content with just eating my food, I had an intense desire to make it better. I wanted to fix the problems and find even more ways to make the dish perfect. At tha tmoment I decided I would do whatever it took to make my cooking better. As I came to this conclusion, the ball of light flared twice. Suddenly it felt like my mind had expanded. I was able to focus just a part of my mind on thinking about improving my basic skills. I started thinking about all the food I had ever eaten and how they tasted. I began to imagine new ways to combine those tastes.

This was quickly becoming too much for me to process so I decided to take a walk. I left my apartment and looked aroung the home district. There was not a lot to see - just to five apartment buildings and a few random job offices. And of course there was the restaurant. Every area of the whole empire had a single restaurant in the middle of them. It was almost as if the districts were built around them.

I felt I had improved my sense of taste from thinking about it, and changed that area of my mind to think about how to present my food so it would look good. I continued my walk aimlessly. There were not a lot of people but the ones I did see were eating their own meals. Interestingly, no two people were eating the same dish. Possibly they just had different tastes, or maybe the people here were just too poor and had to eat whatever they had on hand.

I came up to the restaurant. I had planned to take a long walk around my home, but I had quickly run out of things to explore. As I said, there really were not a lot of things to look at in the home district. Even though I had just eaten, I decided to buy some food from the restaurant while I was here. You can never have enough food. I stood around for a while waiting for someone to take my order or at least bring me to a table but no one came. After a while I decided to go and find someone to figure out what was going on. I walked to the back of the restaurant and found there was only one man working in the kitchen. When I got his attention he smiled, introduced himself as John Doe, and asked if I wanted to order anything. I asked why there were no waiters or anyone else to help him and he just laughed and said they weren't necessary.

Whatever I thought. I told the man that I would loke something to eat and asked what they had. He looked at me quizzically and said that they only served apple juice there. I was confused. Why would they only serve one dish and why was it a drink instead of an entree? On well, I was kind of thirsty after my walk around the home district so I paid some money for a glass of apple juice. It tasted bad and I almost spat it out. The chef was a little bit upset at that and asked it wasn't good enough for me.

I told him this is crazy and he needed to serve more things or at the vary least make better apple juice. At that, he seemed equal parts upset and flabbergasted. He angrily told me that no restaurant in the entire empire serves more than one dish and that his apple juice was just fine and he doubted I could do much better.

With the new ability I had to learn things just from thinking about them, I was almost sure he was wrong and I told him so. He was very surprised at this and told me that we could have a cooking battle right ehre and now to determine who the better chef was. He was so confident that he told me if I won I could take over this restaurant and show him how it was done. He said this last bit sarcastically.

I quickly agreed and before I knew it we had found three people willing to be judges in our contest. Were were ready to begin. I had to decide what dish I would make for the judges. I thought back through what I had seen and remembered the people eating different types of food. I realized that there was no one type of dish that people preferred in this area and I would be free to make whatever I wanted for this cooking battle. The other thing I remembered is how poor everyone was so I decided that the people here would prefer a cheap and simple dish. My eggs sunny side up was the perfect choice.

We both had to prepare as many dishes as we could within a short amount of time. I decided to spend the first part preparing my ingredients in batches so I could make enough food to feed all the judges more efficiently. It might sound like there was not a lot to do with my egg recipe but I made sure to lay eveything out carefully so each serving would have the exact right amount. After I had prepared about 15 servings I started to cook them. Unlike in my aparment the restaurant had a very large kitchen and enough stove space to accommodate all my needs.

Even though I was cofident that my cooking abilities had improved since I had woken up this morning I was still very nervous. Winning this battle and taking over this restaurant was an important first step in my newly found quest to be the greatest chef I could be. I nticed that John Doe was following similar steps but he had left a set ofprepared ingredients for his apple juice very close to where I was working. While my eggs where cooking in the frying pan, I quickly added some random ingredients to one of the ingredients sets. I was hoping he would serve a really bad dish to the judges, but John always tasted his dishes before presenting them and I saw him grimace and throw that plate out. Still, that's less food he would be able to give the judges at the end so I still had an advantage.

I felt a little bit bad about sabotaging hum until I realized he was doing the same thing to me. Luckily I noticed and I quickly grabbed the dish he tried to sabotage out of his way. When I was sure he was back working on his own things and not able to bother me, I focused on presenting my dishes and making sure they looked nice for the judges. Luckily, I had been thinking very hard about this subject earlier today and I did a pretty job of arranging everything.

In the end it didn't even matter. The timer ened and the judges tasted both of our dishes. After some quick consideration they unanimously decided my egg was better than his apple juice dish. John Doe was stunned. I breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, the ball of light appeared and settled on my shoulder. I finally had my first restaurant. had a lot of things to do - changes I wanted to make to the food better and the restaurant more profitable. I knew I had a long jouney ahead of me, but I had made the first step and I was eager to see what came next.