20. Food

What should the signboard of a Japanese restaurant be?

Sashimi, sushi, tempura?

In the year 2075, although these traditional Japanese dishes can still be synthesized using all sorts of strange ingredients, their appearance has changed so drastically from the past that nowadays, they can only be found as non-signature items on the menu. In the Japanese restaurants of Night City today, there is only one dish that truly enjoys widespread popularity.

Grilled chicken skewers.

Made from synthetic meat, these skewers look less like traditional chicken skewers and more like grilled meatballs. As soon as Jack arrived, he ordered twenty skewers and enthusiastically recommended that Karl and Oliver try them.

While Karl was still pondering what exactly these chicken skewers were made of and whether they were edible, Oliver, sitting beside him, had already grabbed a skewer and started eating. Watching him happily devour the meatball-like pieces one by one, it seemed that these grilled chicken skewers were perfectly suited to his taste.

After hesitating for a moment and thinking that eating insects was inevitable someday, Karl picked up a skewer and bit into one of the meatballs. After chewing it briefly,

“Ugh...”

He spat it out.

Karl wasn’t wasting food; the impact was just too strong. The instant he swallowed, his lips and teeth protested, his stomach twitched, and his body warned him that this couldn’t be ingested. Acting on instinct, he immediately spit it out upon sensing the threat.

How to describe the taste of this thing... If Karl had to use two words, he’d say “disgusting.” Three words? “Really disgusting.” Four words? “Absolutely revolting.” And if some crude language were added, it would be “damn disgusting.”

Overall, it tasted like the low-quality, starch-filled, sawdust-laden ham sausages Karl had eaten in his childhood—things even dogs wouldn’t want—only heavily seasoned. It felt like chewing a paper ball soaked in soy sauce, vinegar, and chili flakes. Simply put, it was unimaginably foul.

Oliver and Jack were happily eating their skewers but paused as they saw Karl grimace and spit out the meatball he had just chewed. Both were momentarily stunned, their minds flashing to a scene straight out of a movie.

“Is this thing poisoned?!”

They immediately stopped eating and grew wary. However, Karl’s next words, after spitting out the food, dashed their suspicions.

“This stuff is just way too disgusting!”

“Disgusting?”

Staring at the chicken skewer in Karl’s hand, which looked no different from theirs, Jack looked at Oliver, who returned the gaze. Both saw confusion in each other’s eyes.

These skewers were quite tasty, so why did Karl say they were disgusting?

Could it be that Karl’s skewer was somehow defective?

With this thought, Jack took the skewer Karl had barely eaten and bit into a meatball himself. After two chews, his face showed clear puzzlement.

“Is this really that bad?”

“Is it not bad?” Oliver asked as he took the last meatball from Jack’s skewer and chewed it a few times. He wore the same expression of bafflement as Jack.

“This isn’t bad at all.”

Seeing Jack and Oliver’s expressions, Karl realized they had grown accustomed to this kind of low-quality, overly seasoned synthetic food. He couldn’t accurately describe how difficult it was for him to stomach it, so he sighed and said,

“Compared to real chicken skewers, this synthetic stuff tastes awful.”

“Real chicken skewers?”

Oliver assumed Karl was joking because the skewers here didn’t suit his palate. “Those are illegal in Night City. Since the avian flu outbreak, poultry meat has been banned. If you want to try, we can secretly get some from the black market, but it’s really expensive.”

Jack noticed something different in Karl’s expression and words. He opened his mouth wide, hardly believing it, and said, “Karl, you don’t really mean you’ve eaten real chicken skewers before, do you?”

“Of course I have, that’s why I’m judging it like this,” Karl replied. “Anyway, I don’t want to touch these skewers anymore. Get me something else. Eating this is torture.”

“Having eaten real chicken skewers, you detest these synthetic ones that much...” Oliver now believed Karl’s past experience with real chicken skewers. He recalled when he first treated Karl to a meal and Karl only wanted vegetarian food. “You weren’t some company heir or something, were you?”

“An heir wouldn’t be carrying a Lexington now.” Karl waved off the suggestion and called the waiter over to order something else.

Meanwhile, Oliver and Jack watched as Karl, while eating, only took a bite of each dish before setting it down. The uneaten food piled up, and the two of them, unfazed, helped finish it. The plates soon formed a small mountain before them.

“Stop, stop, Karl.”

Seeing that if Karl kept ordering, their stomachs would burst from the sheer volume, Oliver hurriedly intervened.

With a slight twitch of his cheek, Oliver looked at the still unsatisfied Karl, covered his forehead, and sighed. “Fried pork cutlet, sushi, sashimi, Japanese curry, and a bunch of other random stuff. Sir, you’ve almost ordered everything on the menu and still haven’t found anything you like?”

“I can’t blame myself for this,” Karl said helplessly. “None of this stuff is edible. I’m just glad I’ve been eating Chinese cold noodles these past couple of days; otherwise, I might have starved by now.”

“I’m really getting more curious about your past lifestyle, Karl.” Jack rubbed his already full belly. “Not just chicken, you’ve had pork, beef, fish—all kinds of real meat. What kind of environment did you grow up in?”

“Probably one where real meat was just freely eaten...” Karl sighed and set his sights on the last dish served: chazuke.

Thankfully, the chazuke didn’t disappoint. At last, there was something edible.

As he ate the chazuke, Karl felt a bit pessimistic.

After trying so many dishes, he was still eating meatless food. At this rate, would he really end up eating only vegetarian meals in the future?