It had been strange for Takumi to call his parents and haltingly explain that yes, he was going to fly back to Italy for the summer break, but no, he wasn't going to be returning to the trattoria. The news that followed had been met with congratulations and warm regards, much to Takumi's relief, and it had been thankfully easy to switch his destination to Bologna.
The thought of the city was enough to send trembles of anxiety pulsing through Takumi again. It's not like he'd never been there before; Bologna was all of a half-hour train ride from Florence, and his father might not have been Tōtsuki-trained but he was a professional chef with exacting standards. He and Isami had been taken on food tours around the city many times throughout the years and told to enjoy and think about what they ate. It had been Takumi's primary education in flavor profiling until he entered Tōtsuki.
He had the feeling Fuyumi was going to have a very different curriculum for him.
Takumi managed to stave off the worst of his stress during the plane ride to Italy, only allowing himself to acknowledge the slowly growing excitement that was overtaking him. This was what he expected from going to a world-renowned cooking school, wasn't it? He'd hoped for the sort of pseudo-apprenticeship Fuyumi offered him, even if it had come years before he thought it would. It didn't matter that he was still fifteen; he'd have to find some way to impress a chef who he began admiring the second he learned about her career. Fuyumi had taken him on as a Tōtsuki student who impressed her; she would most likely allow him leeway but not as much as someone more concerned about his exact age would.
In a way, it was almost refreshing. He'd be treated as a semiprofessional and not just a child invited to shadow someone for just over a month.
No one was waiting for Takumi by baggage claim. He suppressed the niggling doubt that wormed around inside of him, choosing instead to focus on finding his luggage. Maybe they're waiting outside. Worst case scenario, I can take the train home and wait to hear from Chef Mizuhara, he told himself, rolling his bag behind him. He wandered into the main lobby of the airport, hoping he didn't stand out too much as he scanned the crowds murmuring around him.
Ironically, Takumi finally ran into Fuyumi when he took a break from looking around to pick up a bottle of orange soda from one of the airport stores. She was dressed simply in a dark button-up shirt and simple jeans and looked so utterly ordinary that Takumi worried that he'd wandered past her at least twice.
"There you are," she said. Takumi took a moment to admire her practically flawless Italian; all that remained of her Japanese accent was a softness around her words that could easily be ignored. "Are you ready?"
Takumi nodded, throwing his soda into his bag. "We're starting right away, then?"
"Of course. We are here for work, after all." She turned, gesturing for him to follow her. "Are you too tired to cook today? I've preemptively closed the restaurant today to explain what our task this summer will be in more detail, but if you'd like a day to rest I can contact my sous."
"I'm okay," Takumi assured, hurrying after her. "Really, it might be better for me to keep active today so I can reset my internal clock."
"Sensible." She ushered him to a car, climbing into the driver's seat. "I've arranged a room for you to stay near Ristorante F until we begin traveling next week. It's fairly utilitarian, but it's got the basic necessary amenities. Restaurant staff is also free to take from the remaining produce in the pantry at the end of the night. I'm not legally allowed to pay you without you signing a contract with Tōtsuki itself, and the administration is fairly strict on not allowing first-year students to work in this capacity so early in your education." She crooked an eyebrow at him as they left the parking structure. "However, I can simply pay for all of your expenses during the break, which would be roughly the same cost for me and equate to the same experience for you. It's a known loophole in the Academy's system."
"I— see," Takumi said haltingly. "Thank you, Chef Mizuhara."
"Think nothing of it," she said dismissively. "I asked you to join me here because I feel you'd provide a valuable perspective that I as a non-native Italian wouldn't have. As long as you hold yourself to your personal standards and find the freedom to discuss whatever culinary advancements we will be making, it will be well worth it to me."
Fuyumi drove Takumi to the place she'd secured for him to drop his things off before bringing him to her kitchen. Ristorante F was an airy building of brick painted white and framed by gauzy curtains that filtered light in from windows that spanned the entire length of one of the walls. There was a small bar tucked against one side and pale wooden tables and chairs dotted the floor. Though a much larger space, Takumi could tell that Ristorante F would seat about as many customers as the trattoria could. It made sense; while the trattoria operated from a semi-open kitchen where people picked up their orders before sitting, there was no way that Fuyumi operated her restaurant without a team of properly trained waitstaff to take care of whoever might be seated at the tables.
The chef ushered Takumi past the empty dining area and through a door hidden behind an almost invisible alcove next to the bar. Ristorante F's kitchen was a much more utilitarian space than the simple, elegant space he just passed: stark white lights, stainless steel work areas, and ovens neatly dotting the workbenches arranged in an easily traversable grid. There were two pairs of fridges on either side of a doorway that led to an open pantry, which Takumi assumed was meant to facilitate multiple chefs working on the same thing at different stations. Most of the work areas had been wiped down to a flawless finish, but one near the food storage area had a neat row of ingredients laid out on it.
"You, of course, recognize what these make," Fuyumi said, standing by the counter.
"Yes," Takumi said. "They're the ingredients for the Ristorante F agrodolce sauce."
Fuyumi nodded. "The recipe is unpredictable by some standards: house-made apple cider vinegar instead of a traditional balsamico, the dolce property from whatever fruit is seasonally available. It's variable due to this, but taking advantage of the seasons' produce means providing our guests with a refreshing experience that they can continue to find new depths in, even if they were to order the same thing every time they visited. At least, that was the thought.
She began briskly pitting and chopping cherries into a bowl. Takumi watched, wide-eyed, as her knife flew through preparatory steps and her words did not falter. "We're not going to stop using this agrodolce. We're going to be creating a second agrodolce base to substitute into recipes or create entirely new flavor combinations with, this time based on the traditional flavors that were decided against when Ristorante F was founded. This means we're pursuing an agrodolce that tastes distinctly different from our standard recipe while still providing the expected flavor profile. Today, I want you to taste the original Ristorante F agrodolce and synthesize a full analysis of the flavor combinations and how they play off of each other. Over the course of this week, you'll be working alongside my kitchen staff, learning how to perfect this one recipe. By the time we leave Bologna, you will know every single step of this recipe so intimately that you'll be able to accurately imagine how it tastes at each stage."
Takumi's mind spun. "Is that even possible? Can I do that in a week?"
"This is standard procedure for any new chef that joins the Ristorante F kitchen," Fuyumi said, tossing in the red onions that Takumi hadn't even noticed her chopping into a saucepan and turning the heat on. "Every member of my kitchen staff has a full working understanding of every single recipe we cook here. Other big-name chefs insist it's a bad idea because one of your chefs can leave and bring your 'trade secrets' with you, but I just make sure none of my chefs wants to leave unless they're branching out as head chefs themselves, in which case they'd be too prideful to try and steal any of my secrets. It's a good system; I hired some of the guys in my kitchen when I first opened this place years ago, and not once have they considered leaving."
"Ah," Takumi said faintly.
The intense aura that surrounded Fuyumi finally abated slightly. She turned towards him, still stirring the contents of the saucepan though clearly not thinking too hard about it. "You'll be fine," she said. "You've demonstrated a reasonable array of basic skills throughout the Training Camp, and I'm confident that you'll be able to learn this recipe to my satisfaction. I wouldn't ask you to join me if I didn't believe in that."
Takumi nodded, his mouth dry.
Fuyumi turned the stove off with a single deft twist of her wrist and held the spoon she'd been using to cook out to him. "È fatta. Give this a taste."
Takumi took the spoon, feeling his mouth water just from the smell of it. He'd grown up eating agrodolce as all Italians did but never one so rich and enticing as the sauce she presented to him. He gently blew the steam from the spoon before carefully nibbling some of the sauce off of it.
Immediately, the flavor exploded in his mouth. From Takumi's experience, agrodolce was a simple marriage of two simple flavors: sour and sweet. Even the name just described the flavor combination. Takumi could intellectualize about the different shades of sourness and sweetness all day, but he never considered what those different shades would contribute to something as rote as agrodolce.
Clearly, Fuyumi had. The sauce clung to Takumi with an almost syrupy texture, an almost unbearably cloy sweetness underlying the sharp sparkle of vinegar that bit at him. The extremes to which both sour and sweet had been taken felt almost like a strange tug-of-war in his mouth, with the two sides fighting to be the primary flavor— and in fighting, they balanced each other out. As Takumi swallowed, he realized the conflict in his mouth was far from what he'd first thought.
It's less a tug-of-war and more a pit fight to the death, with the chef as the emperor declaring who wins… It was almost too easy to imagine Fuyumi sitting atop a throne, watching her creation battle itself until she grew bored and declared one side or the other the winner.
That same chef was waiting patiently for Takumi to look back at her. "We've moved to summer fruits for the season. We use a combination of fresh Amarena cherries from orchards in the area as well as Maraschino cherries prepared specially for Ristorante F. The Amarena cherries provide the tart bite that the Maraschino cherries are able to mellow into an overall sweet flavor that doesn't overpower any more than it should. As we rely on the fruit to provide a solely sweet flavor, we must rely on our agro to provide a solely sour flavor, which is why I decided to use an apple cider vinegar rather than a more traditionally Italian flavor. What we get is an unusual but very effective agrodolce, one that both stands on its own and elevates anything it's cooked with."
Fuyumi gestured towards her saucepan. "Do you better understand the mountain you will be helping me climb?" she asked. "I don't anticipate that we will come away from this summer victorious. Honestly, I think we will barely scratch the surface of the perfect recipe, and that's to be expected. There are always going to be more flavors to test, more combinations to try, more food to create. But we will make a solid attempt to find the perfect balance we seek."
Takumi put the spoon down. "Can I see you cook this again?" he asked.
Her expression curled into that satisfied grin that he'd only seen a handful of times. "Of course."
Takumi would have scoffed at the thought of working in a professional kitchen at his age, let alone the day after he'd been familiarized with the kitchen space. The trattoria was an obvious exception; ten years of experience working alongside his father and cousins overrode any doubt he felt over being a teenager in a frenetic environment surrounded by several sharp implements. Takumi wasn't deluded; even if his family (and now his peers, it seemed) thought he was a good enough chef to keep up with the forefront of his generation, he didn't have the experience and education that most kitchen staff did. That's why he decided to attend Totsuki, after all.
Fuyumi didn't have the same reservations. Takumi self-consciously straightened the fresh Ristorante F uniform jacket that she'd thrown at him not an hour before.
"Everyone!" she called out, clapping her hands twice sharply and silencing the entire kitchen with that single gesture. Takumi didn't even have a second to appreciate her control over her staff before she put a hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him in front of her. "This is Takumi Aldini. He's a student from my alma mater, Tōtsuki Academy in Tokyo. While he's younger than the typical trainee we'd take here, he's been brought on solely to help with the formulation of the new agrodolce recipe that we're aiming to pilot next season. Today, Aldini's only job will be to observe whoever is on sauces for proteins today. He's been instructed to taste our house agrodolce at every single step. Though he's not technically required to report a fluctuation in flavor, feel free to use him as a judge of such if you wish. Any questions?"
"If he's a student from Japan, will we be required to communicate with him in Japanese?" one chef called over.
"Aldini's family is from Florence," Fuyumi said. "He's more fluent in Italian than Japanese; don't feel the need to switch languages just for him."
"Oh, thank goodness," another chef closer to Takumi mumbled.
"How much restaurant experience do you have, Aldini?" one of the older chefs asked. Takumi stiffened slightly at being addressed, but the man had spoken with more curiosity than animosity so he forced himself to settle.
"I've worked in my family's trattoria for at least ten years now in varying roles," he said, "but I'll admit that most of my formal training began this year, when I started at Tōtsuki."
The chef nodded to himself. "Chef Mizuhara, I'll take sauces tonight to ensure that Aldini's first exposure to our work environment is from the perspective of a senior member here."
Fuyumi inclined her head to him. "Reorganize yourselves as you wish. I expect the same caliber of result from all of you, regardless of Aldini's presence." She clapped her hands again. "We open in thirty minutes! To your stations, everyone!"
"YES, CHEF!" The entire kitchen boomed without a second beat before jumping into a flurry of motion.
Takumi stumbled backwards a step as three chefs bustled past him, offering only offhand nods of apology as they stormed by. The kitchen suddenly came to life with the sounds of brisk chops and fridges being opened and closed, oil heated on pans and cookware taken down as each chef found the time to prepare. It was the rush of setting up the trattoria in triplicate, and Takumi felt himself becoming lost in the furor.
"Aldini, over here!" The older man waved him down. Takumi gratefully hurried over to him. "It's a bit hectic, isn't it?"
"Nothing I'm not used to, I suppose," Takumi said. "Though, at the trattoria, there are only five of us making all of the noise."
"That sounds practically peaceful compared to these lugs," the chef said with a small smile. "I'm one of Chef Mizuhara's sous chefs. I'm usually in charge of the pasta portion of our menu, but tonight I will be our sauce chef on the other entree line. Most of my preparation will consist of arranging the ingredients of our sauces at my station; if the chef wants you to focus on our house agrodolce, I'll set up that section over here." The man gestures towards a section of counter space that was just removed enough from the rest to give Takumi a bit of breathing room. "You have your tasting spoons?"
Takumi nodded, gesturing towards a pocket currently weighed down by around twenty small spoons.
"Good. Feel free to take a small sample of the agrodolce whenever you wish, and drop used spoons into the sink behind us. Just warn me before you stick your hand in front of my knife, hm?"
"Sounds good."
After the third day, when Fuyumi came to check on Takumi at the end of the night, she found him staring blankly into the pantry with two bulbs of garlic in one hand.
"Not going to make much of anything with just that," she said calmly.
He jumped, whipping around with an expression equal parts startled and sheepish. "I'm just—"
Fuyumi waved him off. "You're more than welcome to raid the pantry. I thought I told you that already."
"Ah, yeah, you did." Takumi stared at the garlic he held as though he didn't realize it was there.
"Then what's bothering you?" Fuyumi hadn't quite dragged up one of the bar stools kept tucked under a counter and perched on it, but based on her expression she was close to it. It was apparently her favorite position to be in whenever she was in the kitchen, including in the middle of dinner rush. Maybe it grounded her or something.
"I've been thinking about school," Takumi admitted. "I was trying to focus on the work here, but—"
She waved him off. "You're a student. It's understandable. Is there anything in particular you're worried about? I assume the Election."
"Yeah. Faction recruitment is coming up, as well." Takumi began fidgeting with the garlic in his hands. "I'm more worried about that, to be honest."
"Some would call you foolish for that; the Election is your first formal chance to impress non-Tōtsuki professionals. It opens doors for many students."
Takumi looked at her flatly. "I'd care more about that if I wasn't literally standing in your restaurant pantry and wearing a Ristorante F uniform, Chef Mizuhara."
"Hm. Good point." Fuyumi finally gave in and dragged a stool over. "Okay. Faction recruitment. Which are you aiming for?"
Takumi sat down on a crate of flour. "Gold, I think?" he said hesitantly. "I don't— Silver seems just as interesting, but—"
"They're not," Fuyumi cut him off with a mutter. "They'd rather map out old trails than setting out on their own. Unimaginative at best, boring at worst."
Takumi blinked. "Were you in the Gold Faction, Chef Mizuhara?"
She waved at him irritably. "Drop the 'chef' when we're not in a professional setting. Just Mizuhara's fine." She replied only to his second question by tugging on a plain titanium chain around her neck that Takumi hadn't noticed prior. A glimmering band of gold dangled from the end. "All graduating third-years are traditionally given something to remember their time in their Faction with," she said. "Shino got an earring. I got this." She tucked it back under her collar. "Can't wear rings in the kitchen, of course. This is easier."
"Shino?"
"Shinomiya. Tall bastard with the pink hair."
Takumi decided to simply move past how easily Fuyumi waved off Kojirō's accomplishments with a single sentence. He couldn't imagine treating Ikumi with any professional respect after graduation, especially having seen her nearly choke on a smoked grape after all of Polar Star warned her not to try it.
"Took First Seat from me seven weeks before finals, and by the time the Shokugeki moratorium between Faction heads ran out, I was too busy studying and setting this place up to bother challenging him for it." Fuyumi snorted irritably. "He always knew how to time his moves. Advice number one: if you plan on taking the helm of the Gold Faction, make sure the Silver is distracted with in-fighting so you don't have to deal with them teaming up against you. It never goes well."
"I… see." Takumi decided that he wanted a couple potatoes to go along with the garlic. They were easy enough to make into some semblance of a meal. "Did you have to go through the recruitment trials yourself?"
Fuyumi was silent for a second. "No," she said finally. "I got in by winning the Autumn Election as a first-year and a subsequent Shokugeki with a high-ranking member. I don't recommend going that way if you've decided you're going to focus on Gold."
"You were in Silver first," Takumi realized. "Then you put your place in the Faction up as collateral?"
"Something like that," she said. "Advice number two: no matter how fun your mentor makes it sound, sitting around a library and reading through esoteric historical texts is just studying in your spare time, and Tōtsuki has never been a school for scholars. Save that for after you graduate."
"Noted," Takumi said with a sigh. "So you can't help me with Faction recruitment?"
"Aldini, the Faction recruitment week is for the students who aren't actively being scouted already," Fuyumi said drily. "I may not have participated in one myself, but I helped run them twice. Any students who already caught the eye of a high-ranking Faction member were approached before recruitment was even advertised to the campus as a whole. Knowing you and the crowd you run with, the only reason you haven't been invited to an individual trial yet is because someone's laid claim to you already."
"And how am I supposed to prepare for that?!"
Fuyumi tapped a finger against her lips in thought. "Gold's tasks are unpredictable by virtue," she said thoughtfully. "I suppose you'll just have to learn how to think like a member of the Gold Faction without being in it properly."
Takumi stared at her. "What does that mean?"
"It means that your time with me this summer is going to get a lot more intellectually intense. You should start thinking about how to structure a nighttime routine to eliminate stress." She got up from the stool and patted his shoulder consolingly. "I suggest chamomile, personally."
The week passed in a blur. As uncertain as Takumi had been to jump into Ristorante F's kitchen, he'd slotted right into the flow of things.
Takumi no longer doubted his ability to learn Fuyumi's agrodolce recipe to the standard she set for him. By his fourth day, he'd been promoted to preparing it himself. It had taken about an hour for the chef who was watching him to stop correcting his measurements by minute increments, but by the end of the day he could probably make the recipe in his sleep. There was a spark of something tempting him to mess with the proportions of the ingredients to start figuring out where the delicate balance of flavors fell apart, but he tried his best to ignore it.
The next night, there was a smaller saucepan that Fuyumi told him explicitly to use as an experimentation station. Clearly, he hadn't hidden his curiosity well enough.
Fuyumi held him back after closing on their final night in Ristorante F. Takumi blinked bleary-eyed as she put a small glass bowl and accompanying tiny pitcher in front of him. He stared uncomprehendingly at the dollop of ice cream in the dish.
"Affogato. Should wake you up just long enough to get through this conversation," she said, pouring espresso over her own serving. "Now, tomorrow morning, we start our search for agro. Traditional recipes suggest balsamico, so we will be heading to Modena. It's all of a twenty-minute train ride, so we shouldn't have to wake up too early to have a full day there. I've arranged for a few meetings with members of the consortium so that we may taste their offerings. The rest of our time will be spent exploring the area and searching for lesser known answers to our question." Fuyumi glanced over to see Takumi absentmindedly eating his affogato. "You're more than welcome to pick up any ingredients you find interesting on our search. I'm sure they'll serve you well when you return to Tokyo."
"Is there a specific flavor profile you think we'll find?" Takumi asked.
"There's a profile I hope to find," she said, "but not one that I am looking for precisely. To narrow your scope to one particular result is to unknowingly ignore all possibilities available to you. We will enter Modena with open minds and curious palates, and we're sure to find something enticing while we're there."
Takumi blinked. "I'm sure if it wasn't past midnight, that would have sounded very profound."
Fuyumi sighed. "Alright, alright. Go get some sleep. Meet me at the train station at around 9."
This chapter was supposed to be posted two weeks ago. Instead, it chose to fight me with every single fiber of its being. Apologies for my radio silence.
Welcome to the summer vacation arc! This is going to be a bit shorter than the other arcs, even if I took a bit longer writing than I expected because of how much research it took to figure this arc out. It mostly sets up for future arcs, but hopefully it's still a bit interesting to read? Let me know if you're interested in this sort of cooking-centric development.
I don't think I've made this disclaimer yet, but I don't work in the food industry and never have; everything I use for this fic is based on home-cooking or (more often) hours and hours of research ^^"
