Chapter 36: Absolute Sense of Taste (1)
Chapter 36: Absolute Sense of Taste (1)
An elimination candidate.
Jo Minjoon had always known that one day he might find himself in this position, but he had never expected that day to come so soon. Carrying his tray, he returned to his countertop and saw the worried expression on Marco’s face. Marco silently mouthed something to him, but Jo Minjoon could not make out what he was saying. He simply smiled and looked down at the food he had made.
It’s closer to a family meal.
When he heard those words, Jo Minjoon had realised what he had overlooked. There was nothing in his meal captivating enough to serve as its centre. If he wanted to take advantage of the abundance of a Korean table, he either needed one particularly striking dish or enough side dishes and garnishes to create that sense of richness. Yet his tray held only four dishes: gamjajeon, miyeokguk, bibimbap, and cabbage rolls. It had neither the characteristic abundance of a Korean table nor anything particularly compelling to draw the diner in.
When the judges called it a well-made family meal, he had been unable to think of anything to refute them. Perhaps it would have worked as a menu at an inexpensive neighbourhood restaurant, but it was not something that belonged in a high-end restaurant. He had hoped the unfamiliar flavours would give him an advantage, but the result had not been as good as he wanted.
And yet, strangely enough, he did not feel that bad.
Was it because becoming an elimination candidate did not affect him? No. That was not it. He was angry, and it bothered him. He regretted that the food he had made had only reached this level. But Joseph’s words kept echoing in his mind: this was the best food Jo Minjoon had made so far.
It was the first meal he had made not as a contestant, but as a chef. Joseph had not cared about its cooking score. That alone made Jo Minjoon feel that one of his suspicions had been correct. The cooking score was certainly important, but it did not determine everything.
Just knowing that made something inside him feel warmer. A bitter smile appeared on Jo Minjoon’s face. It was subtle enough that most people would have missed it, but the cameraman standing nearby immediately zoomed in.
It was a strange feeling. He regretted becoming an elimination candidate and felt bitter about it, yet at the same time, he was happy that his food had been recognised. The balance tipped slightly more towards happiness, but that did nothing to erase the bitterness completely.
The judging continued. There were three people Jo Minjoon watched particularly closely: Anderson, Kaya, and Marco. All three passed without difficulty.
Of their dishes, Anderson’s left the strongest impression on him. Thin slices of mozzarella had been wrapped in aubergine. When one of the judges bit into it and the melted cheese stretched from inside the aubergine, Jo Minjoon swallowed without thinking, momentarily forgetting his own situation.
Eventually, all the evaluations were completed. Of the twenty-one contestants, thirteen passed and went upstairs. Eight remained as elimination candidates. If there was one thing Jo Minjoon could consider fortunate, it was that none of the people close to him were among them.
He looked towards the second floor and met Kaya’s eyes. Her gaze was as sharp and fierce as ever. Kaya opened her mouth as though she wanted to say something, but in the end, nothing came out. Jo Minjoon gave her a faint smile. Even if she had spoken, they were too far apart for him to hear her, and knowing Kaya, she probably would not have shouted anyway.
Marco, standing beside her, clenched his fist in a gesture of encouragement. Jo Minjoon answered that round, pudgy fist with an okay sign.
At that moment, a loud voice came from the production staff.
“The elimination candidates will be interviewed before the elimination mission. Come to the interview room in the order you were judged.”
Jo Minjoon was second.
After waiting for a while, he entered the interview room. Martin was smiling as usual, and as soon as Jo Minjoon sat down, he asked, “How are you feeling right now?”
“Disappointed.” Jo Minjoon answered briefly.
For a moment, Martin wondered whether the question had irritated him, but he quickly changed his mind after looking more carefully at Jo Minjoon’s expression. For someone in such a bad position, he looked far too calm. Martin had always thought of Jo Minjoon as an ambitious contestant. Of course, there was hardly anyone here who was not ambitious, but Jo Minjoon certainly was not some detached Taoist who could remain indifferent to victory and defeat.
And yet there was not even a trace of the despair one would normally expect from someone facing elimination.
Should Martin interpret that positively? Perhaps Jo Minjoon simply did not hold grudges. But that did not quite fit either. The cameramen generally followed the contestants around only on filming days, but the fixed cameras installed in the kitchen and other rooms ran constantly. Those recordings had shown that Jo Minjoon was one of the contestants who practised most often in the kitchen.
That was why Martin could not simply conclude that he did not care.
“Considering you said you’re disappointed, you seem surprisingly calm.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Have you already come to terms with it?”
“I don’t know if I’d put it that way… I don’t feel good about it. But what Joseph said to me—that it was a good meal—has stayed with me.” Jo Minjoon smiled faintly as he answered.
It was not a forced smile, but a genuine one. Martin immediately thought it would make good footage.
“If you end up being eliminated in the next mission, do you think you’ll still be able to smile like that?”
Jo Minjoon remained silent for a long while. Just as Martin was beginning to grow impatient, Jo Minjoon answered quietly.
“What did I tell you the first time we met? That I wanted to find out whether I should keep cooking or not?”
“Yes. And you also said Kaya would win unless there was an upset, and that if there was one, you would be that upset.”
Martin said it jokingly, but the smile disappeared from Jo Minjoon’s face at once. When he spoke again, his voice was firm.
“I have to take back what I said then. I realised something this time. I don’t like losing, and I don’t like being eliminated. The others cook, and so do I. Their food is delicious, and mine is too. I’m not going to keep saying that losing is unavoidable. I’m going to climb as high as I can. I’m not going to stop myself.”
His determination was clear in every word, as though he were biting each one off before spitting it out. If this had been a film, Martin’s role might have been to sit there admiring the declaration. But this was an audition programme, and more importantly, an interview. He had to keep asking questions.
“But what if you come up against a wall you simply can’t overcome? What if you fall?”
Jo Minjoon answered without hesitation. “I’ll cry. I’ll shout and yell. But… in the end…”
He paused for a moment.
Martin swallowed. The cameraman beside him and the writer were both staring nervously at Jo Minjoon’s mouth.
“I’ll have to get back up. Because that’s what I have to do.”
Once all the interviews were finished, the eight contestants stood behind their countertops. The judges looked at the elimination candidates with grave expressions. Alan stepped forward, clasped his hands together, and spoke sternly.
“You are all standing on the verge of elimination. Three of you will be going home today, and possibly even more.”
A heavy silence settled over the room. Neither the contestants facing elimination nor those watching from the second floor could bring themselves to speak.
They had inevitably grown closer during the time they had spent together. They all knew they were competitors, but they had still lived and cooked side by side every day. On top of that, they all shared the same passion for cooking. It would have been difficult not to develop some attachment to one another.
Even for a judge, speaking into that atmosphere could not have been easy. When Alan finally opened his mouth again, his gaze was sombre.
“I’ll now announce the elimination mission.”
His voice was not loud, yet somehow it sounded clearer than ever.
Jo Minjoon stared at him.
Alan placed a large wooden box on the judges’ table. The moment he opened it, groans rose from the contestants. They could already guess the theme simply from what was inside.
“It will be a tasting challenge. Each of the fried tofu pockets in front of you contains twenty different ingredients. Your task is to taste your pocket and identify those ingredients. The three contestants who correctly identify the fewest ingredients will be eliminated. In addition, anyone who fails to identify even a single ingredient will also be eliminated, even if three contestants have already been sent home.”
Jo Minjoon stared at the wooden box. There were ten fried tofu pockets inside, each marked with a number.
At that moment, Jo Minjoon became certain of one thing.
He would win this challenge.
He could not think otherwise, because he had the system. He was confident that he could identify ingredients more accurately than anyone else in the world. Unless someone possessed an absolute sense of taste like Kaya, it would be impossible to name every ingredient with the same precision Jo Minjoon could achieve.
The cooking scores of the fried tofu pockets varied. Most were worth 5 points, though a few were only 4. Apparently, the focus had been on packing them with ingredients rather than making them taste particularly good.
Alan raised his voice.
“Choose your fried tofu pocket. Your tasting order will be determined by the number you pick.”
At those words, the contestants approached the box and began selecting numbers. Number 1 disappeared first. It was understandable. In a mission like this, going early could actually be more comfortable. Once you knew your own score, all you had to do was wait and see whether at least three people scored lower than you. Of course, if you only managed to identify two ingredients, choosing an early number would not help much.
Jo Minjoon did not rush. By the time he approached the box, only numbers 8, 9, and 10 remained. He calmly chose number 10.
Alan glanced at him.
“It would have been better to go earlier. Why didn’t you hurry?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.”
Jo Minjoon did not know how Alan would interpret that answer. Alan stared at him for a moment, but fortunately, he did not pursue it.
When Jo Minjoon returned to his place, Alan looked towards the contestant holding number 1.
“Selena, come forward and taste yours.”
Selena, who described herself as a housewife, stepped forward in her apron with a faint smile. After taking a bite, she began naming ingredients in a fairly bright voice. But when she got the first one wrong, then the second, and then the third, her confidence visibly began to fade.
In the end, she correctly identified five ingredients out of twenty.
The contestant after her did only slightly better, with six. The worst result came from the sixth contestant, Dan, a white man in his sixties, who managed to identify only three ingredients. It was understandable. The sense of taste tended to dull with age, and no matter how hard he tried to distinguish the flavours, there was a limit to what he could perceive.
The seventh contestant was Danny, a food stylist. He correctly identified eleven ingredients in a row, drawing murmurs of admiration from the contestants upstairs. After that, however, every remaining guess was wrong. Even so, eleven out of twenty was an excellent result.
Then it was Jo Minjoon’s turn.
“Come forward, Minjoon.”
Jo Minjoon walked up with a calm expression. Without hesitating even for a moment, he put the fried tofu pocket into his mouth.
(Translator’s Note: Fried tofu pocket / Yubu —Thin tofu deep-fried to form a porous sheet or pocket. Fried tofu preparations became widespread in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868). Seasoned pockets are commonly filled with rice in Japanese inarizushi and Korean yubu-chobap.)
It happened so quickly that even Alan looked taken aback.
Jo Minjoon chewed several times, swallowed, and closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, a window appeared.
[Fried Tofu Pocket]
Freshness: 84%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to display)
Quality: High (Average ingredients)
Cooking Score: 4/10
The taste was merely acceptable, but that was not important right now.
Jo Minjoon disabled the setting that concealed the ingredients.
At once, every ingredient appeared before him.
He began speaking in a calm voice.
“Beetroot.”
“Yes.”
“Coriander.”
“Yes.”
“Bamboo shoots.”
“Yes.”
Jo Minjoon continued naming ingredients without pause. Duck egg, pistachio, chaga mushroom, squash. He even identified unexpected ingredients such as pork foreleg, octopus flesh, and herring fat.
(Translator’s Note: Chaga mushroom —A parasitic fungus growing primarily on birch trees in cold northern regions, including Russia, northern Europe, Canada, and northern Asia. It has a long history in northern Eurasian folk medicine and is more commonly prepared as an infusion than eaten as an ordinary culinary mushroom.)
All Alan could do was keep confirming him.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
By the time Jo Minjoon had correctly named seventeen ingredients, the contestants on the second floor were staring in amazement. It was an astonishing performance.
Alan was no exception. He was forcing himself to remain composed, but one of his eyes twitched slightly. Even Alan himself would only have been confident of identifying perhaps twelve ingredients if he had been given the same challenge. Yet standing in front of him was a young Asian man naming every ingredient correctly.
What kind of ridiculous sense of taste is this…?
No, this went beyond taste alone. To identify an ingredient, a person first had to have tasted it before and remembered it well enough to distinguish it from every other food in the world. Without that memory being deeply ingrained on the tongue, this would have been impossible.
Was it even humanly possible to distinguish the exact cut of pork or the part of an octopus when only a bean-sized amount had been used?
Jo Minjoon opened his mouth again. Perhaps he had grown tired of naming the ingredients one by one, because he listed the final three together.
“Ground cherry pepper, dangmyeon, tofu.”
(Translator’s Note: Dangmyeon —Korean translucent glass noodles now generally made from sweet-potato starch. Sweet potatoes were introduced into Korea from Japan in 1763. Dangmyeon later became particularly associated with japchae, although the original form of japchae predated the addition of noodles.)
With that, Jo Minjoon slowly opened his eyes.
His voice was cool and calm.
“That’s all.”
Alan stared at him before finally muttering, “…You’re going to drive me insane.”