JAFARECTonight is our monthly Gourmet night…we always have about 50 items ready to go. We only get about 10% of the orders, so we don’t make a profit at all, just enough to cover the cost of the food.
Only a few of the leftover foods need to be discarded, and they can be stored and consumed little by little, so from an environmental standpoint, they aren’t wasted. The reason I go to such great lengths to prepare the menu is partly to train myself and partly to check my own skills to see how far I can cook.
The participants are people who have gained a lot of strength through work and counseling. It is a risky place to have a conversation with a man and a woman who have been perpetrated or victimised while drinking. If you don’t have a certain amount of ability, it’s possible that you could be hurt or harmed by your words or attitude. That’s why we don’t open it up to the public.
And gourmet night is almost endless. I myself leave around two o’clock when I’m done cleaning up, but the stay-over group is chatting even more, usually talking until the early morning and leaving on the first train… or… sinking in the middle of the night and rolling around on the floor.
At any rate, it’s not a typical Japanese ‘izakaya’ scene. It’s in a space where you can expose yourself without that common sense. This may sound like a “high risk”, but we have been doing this for about ten years and we have never had an accident.
It’s strange to say, but I kind of understand why, it’s hard to put into words though…
Now, let’s see what kind of foodie night it’s going to be tonight…
Originally posted on August 21, 2020
English text translated with DeepL (Japanese to English) and checked by Mina.
