Waifu Wars: A Food Wars Fanfic

Ch. 66 Showdown on the Sapporo Train

            By the time Torrey and Soma's match reached its middle phase, the crowd of first-year students finally grew quiet. Both chefs were basically just stirring risotto and adding stock at this point, and their rhythm was mesmerizing. Even Alice and Urara stopped their bickering to observe.

To begin his dish, Torrey had sautéed garlic and onion together in olive oil, which was used to coat the rice. The next step was drizzling the pan with some white wine. After waiting for it to reduce, he placed a second saucepan on the stovetop and used it to boil shrimp stock together with the squid ink.

The process of adding a bit of stock to the rice, stirring, then repeating, was what began lulling the audience members to sleep. Soma was doing the same thing, albeit with different ingredients, so the crowds initial hype was already dying down.

Risotto isn't a particularly difficult dish to make, but it requires constant care. Failing to stir for more than a few minutes can result in overcooking the rice. Slightly overcooked rice might not be an issue for a casual customer at a place like, say, a family restaurant. To a Shokugeki judge with a trained tongue, however, this would spell certain doom for a dish.

Sensing that she was failing in her role as an MC, Alice spoke up to try and re-engage the crowd.

"Should we like, do some trivia or something?" she said.

"Yeah, let's do that!" Urara agreed.

Just as Alice had earlier, Urara produced her own microphone, as if she possessed some sort of strange creation quirk. A strong sense of boredom seemed to have temporarily reverted her personality to its pre-Central state.

"Hmm, let's see...ah! Most of you might not know this, but Torrey actually has a really bad food allergy. Which tasty ingredient is Torrey allergic to? It's okay if you don't know the answer. In fact, you'd probably have to be as intimate with Torrey as I am in order to..."

"Whoa, Alice...we don't want to give them the wrong idea," said Torrey, finally looking up from his dish.

"Ohhh I see! You'd rather keep our relationship between us. That's so sweet!"

"That's not...urgh, nevermind."

"You're so full of crap! Torrey and I actually dated, in case you forgot. Obviously the answer is crab," said Urara. Torrey looked up again.

"Did you, though? Did you really? And that question was meant for the audience!" said Alice.

Urara bit her tongue. Alice was one of the few people in the room who knew the truth about that matter.

"Sorry, next question please," said Urara, after thinking it over carefully.

"Why don't YOU come up with the next question? You must know Torrey better than anyone here, since you dated and all," said Alice, smirking.

"O-okay. This'll be easy...uh..."

"OOOH!" roared the crowd, instantly revived.

It wasn't all that exciting, not by a longshot. But in that moment, Torrey finally did something besides stirring risotto. Well, that's not exactly true, because he was still stirring the risotto. In an impressive display of multi-tasking, he began working on the green onion vinaigrette at the same time.

"Forget the trivia, something crazy's happening in Torrey's kitchen!" said Urara.

If it weren't for the time constraints of a Shokugeki, Torrey would have likely prepared the vinaigrette before the risotto to save himself from these challenging maneuvers. That being said, pro chefs have to deal with time constraints every day in the restaurant business. This could very well be good practice.