Chapter 13: Grand Chef Preliminaries, and… (4)
Chapter 13: Grand Chef Preliminaries, and… (4)
When Jo Minjoon heard those words, he unconsciously bowed. Only after doing so did he remember that it was a Korean-style gesture, but he did not care. Even so, he wanted to express his gratitude somehow.
“You’re one of the hundred contestants advancing to the next round. Let’s meet again, Minjoon.”
“Thank you.”
Jo Minjoon turned away with a smile. Alan watched his retreating back, and Emily glanced at him before saying, “It seems we’ve just met one of the candidates to win.”
“…I wonder. Maybe that was the best he can do. If he doesn’t improve, he probably won’t be able to take the trophy. This competition is more intense than you might expect.”
“You think so? Joseph, what about you?”
Joseph remained silent for a moment before slowly speaking. “The bream was delicious.”
It was a brief answer, but Alan and Emily understood what he meant. They judged dishes, not chefs. The competition was as simple as that.
Normally, contestants who passed the preliminaries liked to show off in all sorts of ways. Some hid their badges beneath their clothes and pretended they had failed before revealing them, while others even held the badge in their mouths and spat it out dramatically. Jo Minjoon had no interest in showing off like that.
He simply pinned the badge to his chest and walked outside. The spectators noticed it at once and erupted into cheers and applause, and Jo Minjoon smiled brightly as he accepted their congratulations. The Dean family came over to him, and Lucas pulled him into a brief embrace before laughing. “I knew you’d pass.”
“I knew too.”
The programme director standing beside the cameraman made an odd expression as he watched them. It was not because he disliked what he saw, but because there were too many things to consider. Jo Minjoon was certainly a contestant worth giving airtime to. He had reached the second stage of the preliminaries, his cooking skills were good, and he had a clear story. While Jo Minjoon was being evaluated, the Dean family had already been interviewed about their connection to him.
He’s definitely good material.
The problem was what sort of character they should present him as. For now, Jo Minjoon had four obvious characteristics. First was his passion, strong enough to bring him halfway across the world to participate in Grand Chef. Second was his confident, straightforward attitude. Third was the fact that he was Asian. The fourth, and most obvious, was his cooking ability. Depending on how harmoniously those traits were combined in the editing, his presence on the programme would change accordingly. Of course, a single contestant would not transform the entire show.
While the programme director was thinking about that, Jo Minjoon returned with the Dean family to the spectator area and watched the other contestants. There were at least twenty cooking stations, and none remained empty for long. Jo Minjoon checked the contestants’ levels. Most were level five, with the occasional level four among them. Surprisingly, he could not see a single level six.
Thinking about it, though, that was only natural. Before his reincarnation, Jo Minjoon had been the junior cook at his restaurant, yet his skills had still surpassed some of the older employees. Even after graduating from university, he had cooked thousands of times. In terms of experience, he was practically at the upper limit of what could reasonably be called an amateur.
And that Jo Minjoon was only level six. Even then, he had reached level six only after coming to the United States, broadening his knowledge and horizons, and gaining another level as a result. If level-six contestants were common in an amateur competition like Grand Chef, that would have been stranger.
The completed dishes were even worse. The contestants had to prepare a dish that could change their lives in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people. Under those circumstances, it was difficult for anyone to perform exactly as they normally would.
From what Jo Minjoon had gathered, if someone was level six, then an ordinary dish prepared normally would also tend to score around six points. Only by using the best possible recipe, the freshest ingredients, and cooking without mistakes could he achieve seven. For contestants who were only level five and this nervous, their cooking scores naturally tended to fall even lower. Occasionally someone managed to produce a six-point dish, but would that really be enough to satisfy the judges?
It was at that moment that one of the cooking stations became vacant and a girl stepped into it. Jo Minjoon froze the instant he saw her face. He knew her. There was no way he could not.
“Kaya… Lotus.”
It was her. He knew she had participated in the New York preliminaries, but he had never imagined they would be there on the same day. She was the greatest genius Grand Chef had ever produced, and he could hardly believe he was seeing her in person. Before his reincarnation, she had been an idol far beyond his reach, the winner of Grand Chef Season Three and, at the same time, the contestant Jo Minjoon had admired more than anyone else.
Kaya had been one of the most talked-about contestants of her season. She possessed not only skill, but also everything necessary to become a star. She was white, yet came from the lowest social stratum. Even though some people called her “white trash”, Kaya was far too striking for the insult to suit her appearance. Her curly black hair was tied back, and smoky black make-up framed her eyes. She had a decadent beauty about her, but there was also something poisonous in her gaze.
Jo Minjoon stared blankly into those eyes. Her pale blue irises gleamed beneath the dark make-up, and a powerful presence seemed to radiate from her, as though she intended to devour everyone else on the broadcast.
It took Jo Minjoon several moments to remember to check her status window, and when he finally did, he was left speechless. When he had first gained the system, Jo Minjoon had thought he had obtained one of the most extraordinary abilities imaginable. But that was not quite true. As with everything else, there were always exceptions that exceeded the standard.
At this moment, Jo Minjoon was merely an ordinary chef with no exceptional innate gift. Beside Kaya, he was like a star whose light disappeared beneath the sun.
Jo Minjoon watched her in a daze. The icebox on her counter had not even been opened yet, but he already knew what was inside.
Eel.
During these preliminaries, she would serve grilled eel coated in sauce alongside mimosa salad.
The moment Kaya began, she immediately started preparing the eel. Her knife work was so clean that it was difficult to believe she was only eighteen years old. Born in 1992, even by the traditional Korean age-counting system, she was not yet nineteen. Yet this girl, not even in her twenties, handled the eel with the skill of a veteran chef at a Japanese restaurant.
After cutting the eel, Kaya sprinkled it with white wine and salt. Then she put some eggs on to boil while simultaneously preparing the sauce for the eel. The ingredients were simple: ginger, garlic, soy sauce, the white part of scallions, mustard greens, and basil. She put everything into a blender, processed it, and spread the mixture over the eel before adding candied lemon peel. Once the eel had been prepared, she began working on the mimosa salad.
For the mimosa salad, the centre of a lettuce was hollowed out and the leaves spread open like a blooming flower, with the salad arranged inside. Kaya first sliced apples, onions, and cucumbers, then moved on to the boiled eggs. She crushed the eggs into small pieces, almost like scrambled eggs, and mixed them with mayonnaise, mustard, and pepper. After that, she seasoned some avocado with salt and pepper and added it to the salad, then sprinkled lemon juice over everything.
Then it was time for the eel, and this was the highlight. Kaya placed the eel on a grill and lit the gas flame beneath it.
It could only be described as reckless. Cooking over a grill, or more precisely, cooking directly over an open flame, was extremely difficult. Of course, Jo Minjoon himself had roasted a bell pepper directly over a flame, but it had not mattered if the pepper burned. In fact, charring it was an essential part of the method.
Eel was completely different. The delicate flesh burned easily over direct heat, and worse, Kaya had already coated it in sauce. It was practically the perfect combination for burning the outside while leaving the inside raw. On top of that, it was her first time using the burner at that station.
Yet Kaya did not hesitate. She seemed able to see things ordinary people could not. Perhaps she could even read the movement of the flames. Jo Minjoon genuinely found himself thinking that.
She controlled the distance between the grill and the fire while cooking the eel, making minute adjustments with perfect instinct. That sense bordered on the supernatural.
Could I do that?
He could. A thousand attempts, ten thousand. If he practised for years, perhaps he could eventually cook eel like that.
But he could not do it now.
At this moment, Jo Minjoon could only think of Kaya’s ability as something granted by God. He did not want to crawl slowly along the path of cooking. He wanted to become capable of making dishes even Kaya could not imitate, not someday in the distant future, but right now.
His throat went dry. Kaya’s statistics appeared before him once again.
Nineteen.
He was looking at the abilities of a chef whose talent had not even fully blossomed yet.
[Kaya Lotus]
Cooking Level: 7
Baking Level: 6
Tasting Level: 10
Decoration Level: 6