Bustle
I had two dishes to make.
"Did you get the water going?"
"You mean the carrots."
"That was ages ago. You sound like a country bumpkin."
"Ugh…! Hyung-nim, saying that to me…"
"Quiet, and make sure it steeps properly."
"Yes, sir!"
One of them was ramen.
Ordinary ramen wouldn't cut it. I'd prepared a stock in advance so the flavor could really come through.
I can't serve the elders something too high in salt, either.
I never forgot the fine points. Details tailored to each guest were the heart of my cooking.
While the water I'd set to boil earlier came up to a simmer, my hands kept moving. I needed to get the second dish ready.
"See the gim? This is exactly the right condition."
"Even the color looks different."
"Boss Jang got it for me. Apparently one of his relatives raises seaweed, and he went to a lot of trouble tracking it down."
"Man. His connections really are something."
"Right?"
The gim Boss Jang had brought me was unroasted. For the record, it was also absurdly expensive gopchang-gim.
"It's thick—will it roll okay?"
"How many times have we practiced? It'll work."
"Yeah. Whew…"
"Don't tense up. You roll one of the rolls yourself."
"Yes!"
The truth was, expensive gim alone didn't automatically make a better dish. What I'd prepared needed just the right thickness. Too thick, and the seaweed would bury the flavors of everything inside.
Finding that thickness had been hard enough; rolling it was harder than usual, too. The pressure had to be just so.
I laid rice over the gim and chose the fillings. Mostly easy-to-digest namul greens, and in place of meat, thick-cut strips of egg jidan.
"Success!"
"Nice work. Mine's good too."
"Whoa. Two rolls already?"
"I'm the boss. I've got to be fast."
And so the finished dish was gimbap.
That's right. The new menu I'd put together this time was gimbap that went perfectly with ramen.
Call it focus and selection.
Just because the restaurant had grown didn't mean I could forget my roots. My foundation was ramen. Expanding from that base was what mattered to me.
Which was how gimbap made the cut.
And for the record, the gimbap was mine to build however I liked. I'd prepped more than twenty different fillings for it—the basics like tuna, kimchi, and ham, plus every kind of egg-jidan "keto gimbap" that was trending these days.
What I'd chosen for this round was egg gimbap packed full of egg.
"All right. Watch how I cut it."
"Yes!"
I took a well-honed knife to the gimbap rolled in gopchang-gim and sliced cleanly through. I was meticulous about every cut, making sure each piece sheared all the way through.
Gimbap that doesn't quite separate at the ends. I can't stand that.
Think about eating gimbap when the ends haven't fully cut and you end up picking up two pieces at once. It's quietly annoying. The real problem is that it breaks your focus on eating.
I hated that, so I cut with extreme care—the kind of detail that went all the way to the very last step.
Someone might say it was nothing, that it was trivial. But cooking is exactly this: catch each of those little details one by one, and the quality changes.
Whatever I served, I believed that nailing these small things was both the start and the finish of cooking.
I plated the three finished rolls on a dish I'd prepared ahead of time—a plate that fit a bunsik-jip style perfectly—and set them beside two bowls of ramen already sending up thick plumes of steam. As a finishing touch, a portion of kimchi I'd pickled myself.
It was a well-built table.
"There. Done."
Heartfelt <Ramen Set Meal> Complete!
Two dishes with excellent compatibility have been plated as one set.
The dish's abilities are being adjusted.
Fatigue Recovery has been imbued.
A dish made with help from Jinwoo, who'd agreed to assist in part of the kitchen. It was a success.
You have successfully guided cooking.
The assistant chef's cooking experience has increased.
Jinwoo, working beside me, had gained experience too. He wasn't awakened the way I was, but stacking experience like this would give him something. Even in my past life, cooking together had always paid off.
Okay. One step forward.
Good signals kept rising one after another.
With the food finished, next came the serving.
"Harang, could you run this set out for me? I'll take the other."
"Yes! You're coming with me?"
"They're our first customers."
"Ah! Right."
"All right. Let's go."
"Yes!"
Clack. Clack.
Harang carried the finished dishes out. She glanced into the kitchen as if she wanted to be in there herself, then lifted the plates and brought them to the elders. I followed right after. For our first two guests, I wanted to serve them myself.
"Here's the food you ordered."
Both of their faces lit up as they received the dishes. They especially startled at the gimbap sitting beside the ramen.
"Oh. Gimbap."
"My. You do gimbap too?"
"Thanks to you two we expanded the place—so of course we had to expand the menu."
"Hoho. Now I'm looking forward to this."
"Please try it. It should be good for your health, too."
"Well then. We'll dig in."
"Yes! Enjoy!"
The first dishes I served my first customers. No moment was more nerve-racking than this.
The two of them carefully lifted their chopsticks and took a bite—one of the ramen, then straight into the gimbap.
"Wow… it's not too salty at all. The seasoning is just right."
"This is delicious!"
Both of their eyes went wide. After that, their hands went to the food in a hurry. Watching them, I was sure of it.
This one was a success too.
Hell yes.
A happy sense of accomplishment seemed to fill me all the way to the top of my chest.
As full as that proud satisfaction was the restaurant itself—packed with guests.
"Welcome!"
"Oh, this is it. Right?"
"Yeah. Come on, let's go in."
Customers who'd sought us out even though we were brand new.
"Oh? There's a restaurant here?"
"Weren't we headed for the foodie street?"
"That's far. This place looks newly opened—let's try it."
"Ramen and gimbap. Hong Kong home cooking, and a café?"
"Weird, right?"
"Mm. The range feels a little too wide… but let's go in."
The so-called opening boost—guests drawn in by curiosity about a new shop, plus the regulars.
"Order over here!"
"Yes! Order going out!"
The place filled in an instant.
"One order heading out!"
"Five rolls of gimbap ready!"
"Three rolls here!"
"Ramen up! Three bowls!"
"Water's all boiling, boss. Finish them off for me."
"Got it. Setting the gimbap."
"Yes!"
We had to move just as fast to keep up.
"That's a wrap!"
"Waaah…!"
"Great work today, everyone!"
Nine in the evening—closing time for us. Plenty of restaurants ran until ten, but that was completely beyond us. Too many customers. Far too many.
"So tomorrow's a day off, right?"
"That's right."
"You really need to hire more part-timers. I feel like I'm going to die. Seriously."
"Yeah, we do."
"You should hurry. I honestly have no idea how this week even went by."
As Jinwoo said, it had been six days since we opened. Add tomorrow's rest and it would make a full week. The guests who'd started as two elders had quickly become a crowd. Selling a few hundred bowls a day wasn't even the issue. The menu itself had grown, and one dish never stayed one dish.
"You eat ramen, you eat gimbap, and next you should be heading home for something warm like scorched-rice tea—but no, they go straight for a coffee, and I'm like… wow. Insane. Really."
"And that's not all. The Hong Kong pudding goes out with it too."
Three shops under one roof, and what do you know—they weren't separate customers anymore. They'd become combined customers. Ramen and coffee. Gimbap and coffee. Coffee and pudding. People weren't ordering one thing; they were stacking several at once, and the average spend per guest shot up. The work shot up right along with it.
Maybe because of that, Boss Jang had been grumbling.
"I clearly opened a home-cooking restaurant… and all anyone wants is the pudding! Feels like I've turned into a dessert shop."
"Having customers is still a good thing, though, right?"
"It is. It is good, but… ugh… I don't know. Better than when there were no customers at all, at least."
There was happiness mixed into that grumbling. Still, with his main menu—the full home-cooked set—barely going out, his worries were a mountain.
Either way, with the three restaurants sitting together, the synergy on display was well past ordinary.
"Boss Jang serves the pudding himself, doesn't he?"
"We still have to clear the tables together."
"Ah, right!"
I could see how hard Jinwoo and Harang were working. Two things kept them on their feet.
"Ugh. At least the pay is solid, so I'm hanging on."
"Same. At first I thought you were paying us so well because you were being thoughtful about us."
"And?"
"Turns out you knew the customers would come in like this."
"Of course. What kind of businessman takes a loss on purpose? Haha."
"Ugh… evil boss. But you do take care of the money, so not that evil. Heh…"
"Call me a good boss, you."
"Tch…"
First: money. Overwhelming pay. I'd decided to give them more than what ordinary restaurant work usually paid. Meals? Covered too.
And there was a second secret weapon. Once every shift was over, whenever they wanted, I treated them to my new dishes. Before they were staff at my restaurant, these two were people who loved good food. Every evening they ate a meal before heading out.
I'd slipped a small trick into that, too.
Without the stamina recovery, they might not have made it.
I always built stamina recovery and boosted natural recovery into the food I gave them. Without those two, both of them might have collapsed.
Harang had one more way of recovering on her own.
"It really is hard."
"But you're happy, right? Watching people light up over delicious food."
"…Yeah. That's what gets me through."
"That's nice."
It was the look on a customer's face when they ate something good and were happy. She'd sigh from exhaustion, then catch that expression and dig back into the work. I saw it often. It was something only Harang—more sincere about cooking than anyone—could do.
I hired good people.
My choice, sure. But a good one. I could allow myself a little self-congratulation for that.
Still, I meant to help more if I could. They loved cooking the way I did; finding a way for us to cook together would be good. And it bothered me how envious Harang looked whenever Jinwoo got to work in the kitchen with me.
She wants to cook, so there must be something I can do for her.
I was still thinking about how to help more when another two weeks had passed—right around the time the opening boost was quietly fading.
Huh?
The first person I needed to help wasn't Harang.