God of Cooking

Suddenly, Min-joon remembered the dish Deborah asked him to try. The dish with ice cream and a grilled pork belly was fresh, but not tempting at all. At that time, her cooking was different from it now. Currently, her dish was a mix of everything intended to appeal to gourmets only.

But she succeeded in connecting the two factors, finally. In other words, she wanted to satisfy everybody by putting as many ingredients as possible in her dish, and at the same time, she didn’t want to be hated by everybody by not including many ingredients. After all, what she wanted was the same.

The main dish that came out next did not lessen Min-joon’s regret. Filet mignon made with Japanese Wagyu beef. It was a dish in which homemade Hollandaise Sauce was sprinkled on the rim and fried onions with roasted vegetables on top of the meat. Likewise, it wasn’t tasteless, but it was still hard to say that it had any distinctive taste. It was delicious, but it was rather ambiguous to explain why it was delicious.

Min-joon felt it was a complicated dish, which reflected Deborah’s complex thoughts. Although it might not be visible to the general public, her anxiety was clearly visible to a chef like him.

As soon as she ate the dessert, Rachel stood up without even enjoying the afterglow of the taste. She opened her mouth, looking back at the other demi-chefs and cooks.

“Let’s move.”

They didn’t have to ask where she was heading for now. She went straight into the kitchen. Deborah stared at her with her face turning white. Watching Deborah so tense and nervous, Min-joon felt sorry for her.

Rachel opened her mouth with a firm voice.

“Deborah, from now on, tell me all the recipes you have.”

“Right here?”

“Gaibasira is not ready for pochi yet, so I put them back in the water. It will take another 30 seconds. Let’s make Mousseline in that time.”

They never took a break and made no mistakes. As if they thought they were a sophisticated supercomputer, they immediately figured out what to do and how to help them without any hesitation or concern. Watching them, the demi chefs at the Las Vegas branch felt like they didn’t want to show their business cards to anybody.

‘Is that the way they work at the main restaurant of Rose Island?’

Deborah’s demi-chefs clasped their hands. They felt their pride was broken in an instant, and at the same time, they felt a strong sense of fresh resolve. They were filled with the desire to be like these guys.

Watching them interact with her demi chefs, Deborah just kept silent without saying anything. She felt like she would fall, so impressed with a total change in the atmosphere of the kitchen.

At that moment, Rachel turned to Deborah and shouted, “Deborah, what are you doing without checking the cooking? Can’t you check how the roasting is going and if the viscosity of puree sauce is right? It’s your job as sous chef right now to check it even before I came here!”

“…”

“Deborah!”

When Rachel shouted again, Deborah raised her head, startled. When was the last time that Deborah got so tense by her voice? Deborah bit her lips, raised her head, and stepped forward. Then she uttered in a strong voice, which she felt she couldn’t, “Got it, Chef!”

She replied like herself in a good, not bad, sense. She was a veteran chef who had decades of cooking career. In fact, her cooking certainly had both depth and quality, unlike a simple veteran chef.

Min-joon easily discovered that her cooking skills were not gone, but were just hidden.

That was especially the case when she sometimes helped her demi chefs with the main dish. Her technique clearly showed how she could land a job as the head chef of the Las Vegas branch of Rose Island.

‘Cooking level 9 is not something any chef can achieve.’

Although Min-joon had recently achieved cooking level 8 very quickly, it did not mean that the cooking level itself showed everything about the chef. For example, Alan served as a judge for the Grand Chef competition even when he was at cooking level 8. At the same time, he won a two-star in ‘Olive Island,’ gaining world fame.

When he came to think about Alan, he found something interesting. Deborah, with cooking level 9, was struggling to maintain even a Michelin one-star, but Alan had already received attention because he had earned two stars, and soon, he is expected to earn three stars with his cooking level 8.

‘What makes such a difference? It’s not because the Michelin Guide Inspectors’ evaluation is strange.’

Of course, their evaluation was inevitably subjective because Michelin was criticized a lot for its overly European-centered attitude, especially based on French gastronomy. The number of stars was also one of the factors that had been consistently criticized until now. Food was, after all, a matter of individual preference, but there were few gourmets who gave a proper answer to the question of how to rank the tastes of dishes.

These days, some people have begun to say that Min-joon could be an absolute standard because they believed that he had a perfect palate. However, Min-joon knew what was going on in the cuisine world, so he was aware that their expectations would never come true.

‘Although there is a cooking score, it’s not the same as the score for the dish.’

In fact, that was Deborah’s case. Her cooking score wasn’t bad, but compared to it, her dish wasn’t that good. Considering her cooking level, the score for her dish was not so high.

“Min-joon, could you finish the vegetable symphony? I don’t have time to put vegetables in onions right now.”

“Yeah.”

He did not answer long because it’s best not to say much in the kitchen. The moment a chef said long, he or she could focus more on talking, which might distract their attention and make their dish less perfect. Some might argue it was overly perfect, but cuisine had to be perfect because no customer wanted a dish made with imperfect cooking.

Though Deborah’s demi chefs pretended not to pay attention, they watched the way Min-joon used his hands cooking the dishes and admired his nimble hands. Stuffing vegetables on a round onion. It was never easy to build it like a tower, not simply stuffing it, for it was difficult to keep it in balance.

In fact, it took a long time for them to get used to it. But Min-joon skillfully stuffed the ingredients as if he had long experiences with doing it. And it was natural he could do so, given Rachel’s unusual food decoration.

Min-joon wasn’t just good at decorating the food. He showed dexterity in handling the frying pan or checking the searing of shellfish and fish or figuring out when to turn it over, a clear indication that he was a master in this field.

‘Definitely, he hasn’t gained fame by sheer luck,’ Deborah thought to herself.

She admired his wonderful skills. Honestly, many chefs felt the same thing about him.

Of course, there were genius chefs who overcame all the difficulties to claim the top position, but in the real world, these demi chefs and head chefs like Deborah knew well how hard cooking was. It was hard to deny that talent was needed in cooking, but at the same time, talent could not surpass one’s efforts to make the best dish.