[Dragaera] Vlad and his father

[Scott Schultz]

>Doesn't Vlad say somewhere early that there is no Dragaeran cooking?
>Not in a restaurant sense, any way?  Which can't be right, since there
>are Issolas.


While this is not a direct quote, what he says is essentially "Dragaerans 
can't cook and they readily admit this." He doesn't literally mean that they 
don't know how, of course. He just means that they aren't very good at it, 
and/or they normally don't have much interest in learning. Clearly, some 
Dragaerans specialize as chefs and there are plenty of inn-keepers who run 
their own kitchens, and plenty of Dragaeran restaurants in Adrilankha since 
Vlad eats at some of them during his tenure as a mob boss.

Cooking as a culinary experience, as opposed to something to fill your 
belly, is really what he's talking about. That's what Valabar's specializes 
in doing and, given that his father managed to be successful enough to keep 
his restaurant going and save some money besides, it was probably something 
that Vlad's family restaurant specialized in. Vlad's opinions on food and 
drink are generally more about the experience of eating (and sometimes 
preparing) the food than they are about satisfying his hunger.

Being a conneiseur may even be a trait that Vlad cultivated as something to 
set him apart from and feel superior to Dragaerans. Whether most Dragaerans 
are really culinary clods (and in a world where a salad with flaxseed oil is 
considered a meal, that's not hard to believe), Vlad's upbringing in a 
culinary household, where good food is commonplace in comparison to whatever 
Dragaeran food he tried, would naturally cause him to grow up to be 
something of a culinary bigot, if you will. It probably didn't help that, 
being a restrauteur, he really DID encounter a lot of Dragaerans who would 
say things like "I wish my wife could cook like that!" and such like.

He may be spot on about Dragaeran cooking, but, to one extent or another, it 
may also be just another one of Vlad's own prejudices showing.