Chapter 199: The Courtship of 36 People (3)
Chapter 199: The Courtship of 36 People (3)
Nobody in the room thought Rachel was bluffing. She was not always a serious person, but when it came to her cooking, she was never the type to make empty boasts. In fact, if someone at Rachel’s level lacked this much confidence, that would have been the greater problem.
Debra looked at her with an expression that held equal parts faith and concern. “Will it really be possible? You’ve had ten years to get rusty.”
“An ageing tiger does not become a cat. Its claws do not suddenly turn brittle either.”
“Oh my. Should I buy you some nail clippers?”
“……That sense of humour of yours is exactly why you still haven’t made it past one star.”
“Seriously? Are you going to keep rubbing that in?”
Debra glared at her.
Rachel smiled, then looked around at everyone else. “Anyway, since all of you are here, I want you to criticise us as harshly as you can. Me, and my children as well. Swear at them if you want. Just don’t hit anyone. None of you have become the sort of idiotic head chef who strikes their own kitchen family, have you?”
“If we had, we’d be in prison instead of standing here.”
“Good. Then help me out. Annoy everyone here until they never want to see your faces again.”
Dave smiled faintly. “That happens to be our speciality.”
*
“The confit is done properly. But that’s only natural when the machine handles most of it for you. Unfortunately, you didn’t simmer the yuzu sauce correctly. Javier, you already know it feels grainy, don’t you?”
(Translator’s Note: Confit — From French confire, “to preserve”. Traditionally, meat—especially duck or goose—is salted and then slowly cooked and preserved in its own fat. The technique is strongly associated with southwestern France and predates refrigeration by centuries, originally serving as a method of preservation.)
“……Mm. I haven’t tasted it yet, so I’m not really sure.”
“You sent out a dish you made without tasting it first? If Teacher Rachel had seen that, she would already be swearing at you. Ah, has she become too gentle compared with our days? Is that why you aren’t nervous at all?”
“No, that’s not……”
Javier stumbled over his words, his expression visibly anxious. He tried his best to smile, but the result only looked awkward.
The moment Rachel finished speaking, the head chefs had begun searching for faults as though they had been waiting for permission. Nothing was off limits. The food, their attitude while cooking, even their uniforms were all fair game.
And naturally, Javier was not the only target.
Debra stood beside Janet with her arms crossed and a deep frown on her face. “Do you know, I was actually very excited when I first saw you? I suppose it was a sense of camaraderie as another female chef.”
“That sounds like you’re not excited anymore.”
“It’s more that I’m disappointed. Look at this tuna ceviche carpaccio. These two slices aren’t exactly the same thickness. The difference might be small, but small isn’t good enough. Where do you think you’re working?”
“Rose Island.”
“And do you understand what that name represents?”
Debra’s tone was sharp, yet there was a strange respect beneath it, enough that anyone listening might have had trouble deciding what she truly felt.
Janet did not.
Perhaps because her own personality was similar enough to Debra’s, she understood immediately. There was no hostility in those words. Debra was genuinely concerned for her.
“Yes. It means I’m part of the greatest restaurant in this country.”
“Not just this country. The world. And the main branch is the pride of every chef who came from Rose Island. It’s proof that our roots lie in what we believe to be the greatest restaurant in the world. That pride is in your hands now. So don’t do anything that makes us ashamed of you. If you can do that, you’ll have even more reason to hold your head high than you do now.”
Janet bit her lip and nodded.
Debra did not soften her expression in the slightest. “What do you think is the most important thing for a female chef who wants to survive in a kitchen?”
Janet silently stared at her. Her expression quickly hardened into a glare before she answered.
“……Malice.”
“In some ways, you might be right. But if that malice only wears you down, getting rid of it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Compared with men, we may be at a disadvantage in raw stamina. We can try to compete through organisation or cleanliness, but plenty of male chefs are just as meticulous, some of them almost obsessively so. The one thing we absolutely cannot do is settle. ‘This should be enough. This is perfect.’ We can’t allow ourselves to become satisfied that easily.” Debra glanced down at the plate. “This carpaccio. Are you satisfied with it?”
Janet quietly looked at the dish.
Then she picked up the entire plate and emptied it into the rubbish bin.
“I’ll do it again.”
“Please do.”
Watching her, Anderson scoffed in disbelief.
At that moment, someone spoke beside him in a teasing voice. “Anderson, you seem awfully relaxed. You even have time to watch other people work.”
“There’s no reason I shouldn’t be relaxed.”
Anderson answered shortly as he filled pasta dough with the lamb-and-vegetable mixture.
The chef observing him watched quietly for a moment before speaking. “I heard you’re the Russos’ son, and that you started learning to cook by helping in their kitchen when you were young.”
“I’m sorry, but please don’t bring that up. Before I’m my parents’ child, I’m my own person. I don’t enjoy being treated like something that belongs to them.”
“Hmm…… Fair enough. Children always want to become independent of their parents.” The chef watched his hands. “Anderson, the way you’re shaping that ravioli is excellent. No matter how you feel about it, you did learn that from your parents, didn’t you?”
Anderson said nothing.
It was his way of making clear that if the chef kept bringing up his parents, the conversation was over.
The chef, however, did not stop. He had not mentioned them simply to irritate Anderson.
“You may have cooked under your parents, but I doubt they taught you how to supervise other people. Anderson, are you certain about the flavour of the filling your assistant made?”
“……Huh?”
“I asked whether you’re sure the filling your assistant prepared is perfect.”
“I can’t taste it right now. I’ll know once I cook the ravioli and taste it.”
“And if it turns out to be wrong, are you planning to throw all of these ravioli away?”
Anderson’s expression stiffened.
He could not answer.
The fact that his hands had stopped moving made his unease obvious.
Slowly, he turned towards Gerrick.
Gerrick immediately shook his head. “I followed the recipe perfectly. There weren’t any mistakes.”
“Yes. I’m not saying Gerrick made a mistake either. This situation is entirely Anderson’s fault.” The chef looked back at Anderson. “You need to learn to trust the people working beside you. But before Gerrick is your colleague, he’s your assistant. Someone you’re responsible for looking after and helping to grow. Trust like that should come after you’ve watched how he works and confirmed for yourself that he deserves it. From what I’ve seen, you barely check whether Gerrick is doing things correctly.”
“……My efficiency would drop if I tried to watch everything he did.”
“Yes. I understand. But something like a filling, where you won’t know whether it’s right until after the pasta is cooked, needs to be checked during preparation. Learning to do that without losing efficiency is one of the skills a demi chef needs.”
There might not have been anything wrong with Gerrick’s filling. In fact, there probably was not.
But that was not the point.
The chef was telling Anderson that instead of simply relying on trust, he needed to know whether the work was correct.
Anderson understood exactly what he meant.
And yet……
In the end, I suppose the only things I really have are the things I learned from my parents.
His delicate technique and refined cooking skills had all been learned at Glouto.
Jo Minjoon was not spared the head chefs’ scrutiny while the other demi chefs were being criticised.
If anything, he probably had more eyes on him than anyone else.
There was no reason for it to be otherwise.
Rachel’s extraordinary interest in Minjoon was far too obvious.
Some of the head chefs looked at him as competition. Others watched with expectation. There were probably a few who felt bitterness as well.
At first, all those gazes were burdensome.
But Jo Minjoon quickly shook off the anxiety they caused.
This was hardly the first time he had cooked in front of a crowd.
He was preparing all sorts of molecular gastronomy dishes. He made espuma from fruit cream, while also preparing ice cream, sherbets, and jellies from scratch.
Of course, Jo Minjoon was not doing everything alone.
Maya helped prepare ingredients and combine mixtures.
And that was where things became interesting.
“Hasn’t Minjoon only been a demi chef for a few months? Didn’t they say he didn’t have any prior experience?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Then how is he so good at using an assistant?”
The head chefs murmured among themselves in disbelief.
A demi chef was already a chef, but it was still very much a position for learning. Advanced techniques, proper use of assistants, supervision—those were all skills people were expected to develop during this stage.
It was not their fault that they struggled to find serious flaws in Jo Minjoon’s cooking.
Most of what he was making at the moment involved molecular gastronomy.
Of course, if they looked closely enough at his fundamentals, such as the way he boiled ingredients down for sauces, they could probably find something to criticise.
But that would be judging him by head-chef standards, not demi-chef standards.
And even then, they might have difficulty.
When it came to sauces, Jo Minjoon had already gone well beyond the expected level of a demi chef. At this point, calling him a sauce specialist would not have been an exaggeration.
“So he didn’t end up in charge of the molecular gastronomy section for nothing.”
“Right. It really does seem to suit him.”
“I can understand him having a knack for it, or just being naturally talented. But how is he using his assistant that well? I thought that came entirely from experience.”
It was a reasonable question.
Jo Minjoon seemed completely aware of what Maya was doing at all times.
The evidence was obvious.
Whenever it looked as though Maya was about to make a mistake, or whenever the result seemed likely to drift away from what he wanted, Jo Minjoon immediately spoke up and guided her.
For many new demi chefs, having an assistant actually made things more confusing.
In fact, assistance was often the biggest reason inexperienced demi chefs lost their composure.
Because they were no longer doing everything with their own hands, it became difficult to keep the entire flow of the dish clearly organised in their heads. They had to wonder whether the assistant had made a mistake, then stop and check, only to feel as though having an extra pair of hands had somehow created more work instead of less.
“……I wish I had a demi chef like that in my kitchen. No, at his level, he might do well even as a sous chef. He doesn’t make mistakes at all.”
There was no way for him to make that kind of mistake.
Jo Minjoon could see the expected Cooking Score of a dish.
If Maya brought him a sauce with a flaw in its composition, he could anticipate how it would affect the finished result.
And because he could immediately verify whenever something went wrong, he had gradually developed an intuition independent of the system itself. He was learning when Maya’s work needed checking, what signs to look for, and how best to guide her.
The easiest way to describe it was this:
He was solving the problem while already knowing the answer.
Naturally, that made it much easier to discover the method.
Dishes prepared under that kind of supervision were bound to taste good.
Almost flawless.
It was not that Jo Minjoon’s basic cooking skill was superior to that of the other demi chefs.
In terms of pure technique and efficiency, Anderson or Janet were probably better.
No.
They were definitely better.
But Jo Minjoon’s greatest talent did not lie in performing every task himself.
It lay in supervision.
Dave let out a low groan before murmuring, “From what I’ve seen so far, he might have the greatest natural talent in the world for becoming a sous chef. Of course, that’s assuming he can maintain the same level of concentration and supervision when he has far more people under him……”
“In that case, wouldn’t his style be closer to Teacher Rachel’s than Teacher Daniel’s? Teacher Daniel was better at creating dishes than supervising people. Teacher Rachel was exceptionally gifted at supervision.”
“There’s a flaw in what you just said.”
The other chef looked at Dave.
Dave continued quietly.
“We still haven’t seen what kind of creativity or intuition he has when it comes to creating food.”
“Ah……”
The chef fell silent.
After seeing how naturally Minjoon handled his assistant, he had unconsciously assumed there was no way the young man could be equally gifted in another area as well.
After all, it simply seemed too unfair for one person to possess everything.
Dave murmured under his breath.
“If he has that intuition too……”
He did not finish the sentence.
He did not need to.
Every chef listening subconsciously completed it in their own mind.
The wording differed slightly from person to person.
But the meaning was almost identical.
If Jo Minjoon possessed that intuition as well—
No.
If he could develop it……