Chapter 154: Global & Local (4)
Chapter 154: Global & Local (4)
Of course, it was not as though that single step immediately brought about some dramatic change. His tasting level was still eight, and people’s reaction remained the same: ‘Absolute taste really is incredible.’ In fact, the comments flooding the chat were almost entirely along those lines.
It was then that Jeremy looked down at his dish with thoughtful eyes.
“It’s delicious, but… I think this restaurant would be more popular with tourists than with Japanese people. Am I right?”
“Mm… I can’t completely deny that. You could say we made certain compromises, so we weren’t able to cater perfectly to Japanese tastes. Of course, it’s not as though we have no Japanese customers… At least half of half of our customers are Japanese.”
Not even a quarter of the customers at a Japanese fusion restaurant were Japanese. Even for an internationally recognised Michelin three-star restaurant, that was a rather strange proportion.
Jo Minjoon slowly thought back to the sushi he had just eaten.
…It was definitely delicious, but it felt like sushi wearing a mask.
Perhaps it simply did not suit Japanese sensibilities very well.
Rachel spoke. “Bringing those two things together is difficult in the first place. Foreigners… More precisely, if Westerners enjoy it, isn’t that enough? The people a chef needs to satisfy are the customers sitting inside the restaurant. Worrying about the preferences of people who never even come here is foolish.”
“…Ugh, I think I understand what you mean. Even so, I still can’t help wondering whether this is fusion cuisine disguised as Japanese food, or Japanese cuisine disguised as fusion. Well, I suppose that depends on the individual.”
At Jeremy’s words, Rachel turned towards Anderson and Jo Minjoon. She looked at them with the eyes of a teacher preparing to pose a question. “What do you two think?”
“What exactly do you want us to answer?”
“When balancing local and global cuisine, what do you think matters most? Tell me your opinions.”
[It’s homework.]
[I always hated questions like that. It feels like you’ll fail if you answer half-heartedly.]
Jo Minjoon and Anderson glanced at each other.
Anderson spoke first. “The ingredients.”
“Why?”
“Because ingredients show a country’s characteristics most clearly. In that sense, I don’t really understand what Jeremy was saying. If we’re talking about the sushi we just ate, I think it felt plenty Japanese.”
“Good. Then, Minjoon?”
“For me… condiments and spices. No matter what ingredients you use, once you add a sauce associated with a particular country, the colour of that country immediately comes through. A lot of people in Western Europe think that if a dish has raw fish and soy sauce, it must be Japanese. If it has cheese, they think it’s European. So in the end, I think the sauce matters most.” Jo Minjoon thought about it.
If he wanted to globalise Korean food—if he wanted to localise it within other countries—what sauce would have the greatest overlap with other cuisines?
It had not happened yet, but judging from the future he remembered, gochujang would become extremely popular in Western Europe before long. Kimchi would not reach quite the same level as gochujang, but there would still be plenty of demand for it. Not everyone liked the fishy smell of less-fermented kimchi, but it could still be used as an ingredient to add a tangy sweetness.
So it’s the spicy side.
There was nothing strange about the prejudice that Koreans preferred Korean food. Most of them genuinely did.
He began wondering what would happen if he could master every spice and condiment in the world.
Anderson suddenly grabbed Jo Minjoon by the shoulders and shook him. Startled, Jo Minjoon turned around.
“Wh-What? What happened?”
“Teacher Rachel’s been calling you for a while. Why are you so absent-minded? What were you thinking about?”
“…Ah. Once we started talking about global and local cuisine, my head filled up with ideas.”
Apparently, he had been so absorbed in thought that he had not even heard Rachel calling him. Rachel smiled gently.
“Both of your answers have merit. This is a dilemma every chef running a fusion restaurant inevitably faces, and every chef arrives at a different answer. Whether that answer becomes the right one may depend on how faithfully they continue down their own path.”
“Then what’s your answer, Teacher?”
“Appearance.”
“…What?”
Jo Minjoon stared at Rachel in confusion. Anderson and the others reacted the same way. Only Jeremy continued sipping his sake as though there were nothing surprising about it.
For a chef to answer with appearance rather than something related to flavour—it was exactly the kind of response that invited those looks.
Rachel shrugged as though she had expected their reaction.
“One prejudice people have is that when chefs focus on appearance, they think the chef is doing something entirely separate from cooking.”
“It’s not exactly a prejudice… Isn’t that true? In the end, cooking is about flavour. What matters is what goes into your mouth.” Sera asked the question as though she genuinely could not understand.
Although she was an food critic, she was still a young woman, and like many people, she found herself impressed when a dish looked beautiful. Even so, she was certain that appearance had nothing to do with flavour. In fact, there were plenty of three-star dishes that looked needlessly luxurious, only to make you frown the moment you put them in your mouth.
Rachel shook her head. Her eyes were filled with unmistakable confidence. “That would be true if the food itself weren’t delicious. But if a flawless dish is presented beautifully enough to astonish you… then the story changes. Chefs stimulate a customer’s heart through the tongue, and that stimulation moves their emotions. But if the dish looks extraordinary from the beginning… then the customer is already emotionally engaged before they even taste it. The difference that makes is greater than you think.”
“…But what does that have to do with the issue of local and global cuisine?”
“If you can imagine the flavour simply by looking at a dish, that means you can also anticipate what country’s character it carries. Even if you serve the exact same sandwich, if you call it a panini, people will taste Italy in the stretching cheese. Ultimately, flavour has to win the dish, but what people imagine before eating is also a major factor.”
Jo Minjoon felt as though he understood what Rachel meant—and perhaps even understood how she had managed to reach decoration level ten.
He thought, Then what… am I supposed to complete mine with?
Was it really recipe composition?
He knew that was the area in which he felt most confident, but perhaps his inability to commit to it completely was simply greed. He also wanted Rachel’s decorating ability and Kaya’s sensitivity of taste.
But he did not have much time.
Once this tasting trip ended and he began working under Rachel, he might not even have enough spare time to sit around pondering questions like this.
It was then that Sera burst out laughing.
Rachel looked at her in surprise. Sera pointed towards the chat, her face turning red from holding back laughter.
“Rachel, they’re saying your lectures are boring. They think you sound like a school principal.”
“…What?”
Rachel turned towards the chat with wide eyes. After reading only a few lines, her expression immediately sank.
Anderson spoke gently. “I never disliked my old principal’s speeches that much. They all become flesh and blood in the end.”
“Stop flattering me. I’m not old enough to fall for something like that.” Rachel replied dejectedly.
The meal continued.
Grilled halibut served in consommé with vegetables. Grilled duck lightly coated with wholegrain mustard and wasabi. Dakkochi. One luxurious Japanese-influenced dish after another arrived at the table.
Everything was delicious, yet Jo Minjoon could not help feeling a faint sense of disappointment.
He looked at the menu again.
Most of the dishes scored eight or nine points. He had assumed that a three-star restaurant would surely have at least one ten-point dish… but there had not been a single one.
Even Alan’s restaurant, which isn’t three-star yet, had a ten-point dish…
Granted, most of that score had come from the pasta, but ten points was still ten points.
Was it really possible for a three-star restaurant to have no ten-point dishes at all?
Still, he could hardly order everything on the menu.
In the end, Jo Minjoon looked towards Samuel with an uneasy expression. Samuel, who had been wearing a bittersweet look while reading the mixture of praise and criticism in the chat, flinched under his gaze.
“…Do you have something you want to say?”
“Um… Don’t you really have a dish that you think we absolutely have to try?”
“Didn’t I tell you before? Every dish here was made with the utmost effort… Is the flavour lacking?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…”
Jo Minjoon stopped.
He had been about to say, I don’t think there’s been a dish that really shocked me.
Then he remembered what Rachel had just said.
Ultimately, flavour has to win the dish, but what people imagine before eating is also a major factor.
It felt as though the mist inside his head were beginning to clear.
Jo Minjoon looked down at his plate. On the small dish sat stir-fried udon topped with crab meat and masala.
The score was nine.
A good score. An excellent score, even.
In the past, he had been amazed merely by eating an eight-point dish. No—even a six-point dish had once been enough to impress him.
Had his standards risen simply because he had eaten so many delicious things?
No.
My standards… had already been decided for me.
The others, along with the camera, silently watched Jo Minjoon sink into thought once again.
It looked as though he had disappeared into his own world.
Jo Minjoon himself did not realise it, but the way he became completely absorbed in thought made him seem almost eccentric. To ordinary people who could not understand what was happening inside his head, he appeared to inhabit some special, exceptional world.
Ironically, at that very moment, Jo Minjoon was criticising himself for being foolish.
He had always told himself that he would never allow himself to become trapped by the system.
When he first revealed his absolute taste by borrowing the system’s power, he had resolved to use the system as a tool rather than become dependent on it.
But he had become dependent on it.
More precisely, he had trusted it too much.
He knew perfectly well that a cooking score could change according to time, effort, recipe, and technique. He knew that composing a recipe capable of drawing out an ingredient’s full potential could raise the score. He also knew that simple dishes often received lower scores yet could still taste better than dishes with higher ones.
And yet Jo Minjoon had become obsessed with the numbers.
Whenever he noticed himself doing it, he would be startled and think, This isn’t right.
Then, once the moment passed, he would begin obsessing over the scores all over again.
It was not that he had to ignore them.
He simply could not allow himself to be dragged around by them.
Why had he been disappointed merely because there was no ten-point dish?
He could not keep thinking that way.
Jo Minjoon raised his chopsticks once more and slowly placed the stir-fried udon on his tongue.
The distinctive fragrance of masala melted across his palate like ice cream. The crab meat broke apart crisply between his teeth before softening with his saliva. Beyond that, the udon emerged from beneath everything else like a turtle poking its head out from its shell.
It was a flavour he had not noticed until now.
He had been impatiently waiting for a ten-point dish to appear. He had been prejudiced by the idea that a nine-point dish was somehow incomplete.
Once those thoughts disappeared…
Even though it was the exact same dish, it tasted completely different.
Right. This… This was tasting.
Jo Minjoon’s expression brightened.
[You have understood one of the fundamentals of tasting!]
[Through your broadened understanding, you have fulfilled the first condition required to achieve Tasting Level 9!]