Seven Mice in Torwosis [22 Hivvem 4385, Torwosis, Yistreia]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

There is a special look of panic that crosses a headwaiter’s face when he first sees that a Zi Ri is flying unannounced into his restaurant, intent on dining or other unimaginable acts of ancient, archaic wizardry. I haven’t inspired that panic all that often lately. In Eigrach, we mostly made reservations in advance. Barency is used to Zi Ri; several of us live there. The Chef of Great, regarded by one out of five tourbooks as the Best Up-and-Coming Restaurant in Torwosis, only opened two years ago, and there are no Zi Ri living in Torwosis, so I was probably their first Zi Ri customer ever.

This panic is thoroughly understandable. Everything about us is troublesome. We cannot sit in the chairs that the populous species use. Sometimes we can sit on the backs of chairs, or on the tops of couches — but that looks improvised and haphazard, which is not the atmosphere that a fine restaurant wishes to convey. Sometimes we must sit on the table, which is an extra trouble: not only does the restaurant look utterly unprepared, it takes up extra space on the table and imperils the meals of other diners. Or we can just levitate, which makes the restaurant look even worse (a diner who must expend zir own magic for zir comfort at table!) and emphasizes to everyone just what sort of person is being ill-served.

Dually, we do not eat very much, as we are small people. Generally I try to be polite and order a full-sized meal anyhow, thus paying as large a bill as anyone else. Still, one may understand that a typical waiter does not know this, and expects to undergo substantial trouble for a very small tab.

Anyhow, a considerably flustered waiter sat me on the corner of a table, with Arfaen on one side and Phaniet on the other.

I proclaimed, “Ah, Yistreia! How could one truly enjoy mice, if it were not for your adventures in cuisine! O waiter, do you have mice today?”

The waiter wagged her tail. “Indeed we do, O Zi Ri, for service to those who wish to eat the traditional food of our region. But we are a very cosmopolitan restaurant, a panoply of delicacies of many nations. Allow me to recommend the Aradrueian goulash, the honeyed beetles in the style of Daukrhame, the awe-inspiring blue curry in the manner of distant, ruined Dossimar!”

Phaniet laughed. “Well, we have recently been in Lenkasia on Aradrueia; we are from Vheshrame next to Daukrhame, and we are the ones who ruined Dossimar.” Somehow, this failed to unfluster the waiter in the slightest. Phaniet and I may have been working at cross-purposes on this point.

I noted, “Not that we tasted any of the cuisine of Dossimar when we were there!”

Arfaen giggled. “Ill-mannered pirates they were! What sort of a lout tries to rape a woman without offering her so much as a single taste of the local delicacies?”

It was at about this point that I realized how much of an adventurer Arfaen has become. I suppose it is inevitable, and perhaps not too terrible. The waiter, however, was even less put at ease by Arfaen’s jest.

After a certain amount of discussion, I ordered a Sequence of Seven Various Mice, with the proviso that Phaniet would eat half of each one. Arfaen ordered Something With Fish, and Phaniet ordered a Grand Cassoulet of Arhoolie and Peppers upon Spicy Sausage. The waiter all but bolted for the kitchen with our orders.

Mouse 1

The first mouse was butterflied, skewered, sprinkled with coarse salt, grilled, stuffed with spinach, and served on a sauce of a light yogurt cream, sprinkled with purple flowers. It was every bit as good as it sounds.

Phaniet said, “Very basic — one really could get something like that anywhere, I think.”

I disputed, “The yogurt in the cream sauce is particularly particular!”

Phaniet wagged her tail. “Perhaps only a quarter of anywhere. It is certainly finely grilled.”

Mouse 2

The second mouse was butterflied, skewered, sprinkled with mustard-dust, and served raw with a chiffonade of arhoolie leaves. “O honored guests,” said the waiter, “Please be careful and take lightly of the arhoolie leaves! They are potent and pungent and powerful! A single bite of them and it will feel as if the top of your head were being prised off by a nycathath, and your brain sprinkled generously with ground quachammog peppers! If this occurs, please do not destroy the restaurant!”

“I thank you considerably for the warning,” I said. I have been eating arhoolie leaves for well over a century. (Actually, they are every bit as bad as she says, and they do not get better with practice.)

Mouse 3

The third mouse was butterflied, skewered, sprinkled with green herbs, grilled over a camphor flame at the table, and doused with melted cheese. Further commentary is unavailable, as, due to the melted cheese, it has to be eaten very quickly. It certainly slid down quite fast.

Mouse 4

The fourth mouse was butterflied, skewered, marinated in sweet brandy, dipped in cumin salt, grilled over a source of radient heat, and wrapped in the leaves of bitter woodmock and hyssop.

Phaniet said, “Oh, that is delicious!”

“It is. Still, may I give either of you the forequarters of my mouse? I am getting rather full,” I said.

Arfaen eliminated the quarter-mouse with a simple yet elegant stab of the skewer.

Mouse 5

The fifth mouse was butterflied, marinated in pepper sauce, wrapped in arhoolie leaves, heavily buttered, dipped in a thick egg batter, and deep-fried, and served with a potent tamarind pepper sauce.

“Oh, dearie. Maybe I’ll have just the head, if that’s OK with you, Phaniet?”

Mouse 6

The sixth mouse was butterflied, marinated in vinegar, skewered on cinnamon sticks, and simmered for hours in a light mushroom broth.

“That’s pleasantly light after that egg-battered mouse!” I managed to engulf nearly a third of it. It was fortunate that I was not levitating or perched on the back of a chair, for I was nearly spherical with mouse by then.

Mouse 7

The seventh mouse was butterflied, skewered, battered, deep-fried, chopped into little bits, and served in a thick honey sauce.

I ate one little bit and fell into a stark coma, in which dreams of skewered mice tormented me with dramatic recitals of the menus of all the restaurants I had ever eaten at. (Or, at least, pushed the plate over to Phaniet and Arfaen, and acted generally drowsy and overfed for the rest of the meal.)

Comments

[rowyn]

"Ill-mannered pirates they were! What sort of a lout tries to rape a woman without offering her so much as a single taste of the local delicacies?"

In my culture, many rapists do buy their victims meals beforehand!

... I do not believe this improves the experience much. D:

For a happy bit of my culture, however, restaurants will package that portion of a meal which is too much for a customer to consume at the table "to go", to be taken home where it may be conveniently preserved for a few days, then re-heated and eaten when the customer is no longer over-full.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

One may, in extremis, take home leftovers from a restaurant. This rarely helps the flavor or presentation of the food.

[rowyn]

I like leftovers, myself, but I am not the connessieur that you are!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

The pirate situation could have easily included a meal during the negotiations! Perhaps if they feared the adventurers enough to want to poison them before attacking.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I can't resist:

YOU ATE MEESES TO PIECES!!!!

On a more serious note, were they mice served whole, or did they remove all of the offal when butterflying them?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

What sort of a high-class restaurant leaves the entrails in mice, in your world?

[rowyn]

It is extraordinarily rare for high class or even low class restaurants to do that! In fact, I am not aware of any that serve mice at all.

It's also rare for restaurants to serve the head or feet of an animal.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Offal has a long and illustrious history in our cuisine:

Offal

Many of what are considered our most fancy delicacies are made from offal: caviar, foie gras, sweetbreads, calves liver. In less fancy cuisine you se things like tripe, chicken hearts and gizzards, giblets, the infamous haggis, etc. It's also extremely common in Asian cuisine. Indeed, there's a form of restaurant in Japan call Horumon (literally "things thrown away") that serves nothing but offal:

Horumon-yaki in Hiroshima: Horumon Yakiniku Buchi, Horumonyaki Shokudo Kinoshita

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well, mouse *was* in style in one of the predecessors to my culture many centuries ago. I think it is still popular in the some parts of our world. I'm going to go try and scrounge up the recipe, or at least a description.

*Checks*

It was stuffed with minced dormouse, and had pepper, pine kernels, poppyseed, honey, broth, and was served with hot sausages, with a bed of plum and pomegranate.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

I'm quite partial to vole offal, myself.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

Here we feed mice to our pet monsters. I wonder what Vae would think of it!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I know for a fact that Vae likes well-cooked mice too.

I don't know many non-Herethroy who don't like them, actually.

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

My pet monsters would run the risk of illness or severe injury if I served them cooked mice.

Except for the horse. He just wouldn't eat them and likely would be rather offended by the notion.


-Alexandra

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Huh. I thought it was Yistreia that was known for its mice(and its intense spicing).

But in a hundred-and-some years, I guess it's only natural that the trends of cuisine would shift somewhat!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Ack! I screwed up! I guess everyone loves mice. -bb]

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

[I would be surprised to find that only one culture ate mice. I would also not expect every culture to be a great fan of the stuff. There are terrestrial meats which are heavily used in some cultures, lightly in others, and generally ignored in the rest. Yistreia I presume is a great fan of mice and arhoolie; the city you are presently in may have trade linkages with a Yistrean city and have developed a taste for the things; alternately, they could just like mice -too-. Most likely the arhoolie and the mice would be prepared differently from Yistrean foods, much in the way that Thai and South American dishes may both contain beef and prodigious amounts of hot peppers, but the actual dish is almost unrecognizably different.]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard scrambles around and moves Torwosis from one branch to the other and hopes nobody else notices.]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[I thought you were Flokin's expy. That sounds more like "Here". ;> ]

[kibbe.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good meal at lest. If one is going to expend money at a fancy eatery, one should at lest get the value of ones moneys.
Of course, it would help if I was sure that we where thinking of the same critter when you and I say mouse. I should also note that culturaly, it is no longer considered exceptable, or even legal, to serve mice, or simular things where I live, though I do beleave at one time thay and there larger breatheren where considered a source of meat for thoes less fotunate. Still, it sounds as if you found a most excelant place to dine. I do hope you remembered to tip well, it sounds as if the food, and the service where good.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Mice are delicious! They are very small animals, so, if one feeds them on a special diet for a few days, they take that diet's flavor in their flesh. One wonders what thoughts go through the mind of a mouse fed entirely on cumin and coriander seeds -- but one should not dwell too much on such a wonderment, or one might be tempted to find out.

In any case, yes, I paid suitably for food and service both. I generally do; too many of my friends are chefs and waiters for me to do otherwise.

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

There's a few dishes in our world that call for creative feeding of the animal in question. Ortolan is one such, which involves over-feeding finches until they are very fat, drowning them in very good brandy and then roasting them. Because of our uncertain ways about how to classify monsters and non monsters here and our particular bad habit of eating our fellow monsters our of existence, it is a rather controversial dish. Our gods are very sloppy about replacing monsters once they go extinct, hence the concern.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

No offence meant to the mentioned dining establishment, but I find that the older I get, the less I care for the words or the reality of "battered and deep-fried" anything. This does put me in stark contrast with my wife, so I count my blessings that we haven't a convenient way to deep-fry at home!

("The older I get"? If my maths aren't far off, I'm not yet fifty of your years! I don't get to complain about being old.)

(( OOC: I really need a proper icon for posting here. I'm not really all that Sleeth-like, I'm certainly not anything like Cani, and all I have are cat and fox icons. I really should commission a portrait-of-self-as-Orren.... ))

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I kept reading 'butterflied' as 'butter-fied'.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

D:

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

Now now... You would never be subjected to such indignities.

You would be served with gravy and cheese curds, as is the nature of such things.