“I miss Chloe.”
“Alright.”
“I miss Min-joon, too.”
“I guess so.”
“I miss Kaya, too.”
“…”
Anderson suddenly went quiet. Ella was burying her face on the armrests of her sofa with a gloomy look. It had been nearly 15 days since Min-joon, Kaya, and Chloe left Los Angeles for New York. And for the past 15 days, Ella was sometimes in good spirits, but in a gloomy mood most of the time.
“When are they coming back?”
“Well, the longer you wait, the later they will come. Why don’t you just forget them?”
“You don’t want to see them, Anderson?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You are so mean.”
Glaring at him, she pouted. When he sighed, looking at her, Marco came in with a green tea cream puff. Ella’s mouth was soon covered with cream.
Marco asked Anderson, “How are you doing these days? Are you doing alright at Gluto’s Restaurant?”
“Well, it’s my first restaurant anyway.”
“Oh, you’re right. I often forget it because I’ve been with Rose Island since I saw you. It seems like you are more natural when you work at Rose Island kitchen.”
Anderson just sipped coffee instead of replying. It was only then that Marco felt that the word Rose Island itself might have hurt Anderson’s feelings. Anyway, Anderson’s exit from Rose Island was not that smooth.
Marco said cautiously, “I heard from Rose Island main restaurant’s chefs that Min-joon already overwhelmed the kitchen staff at the New York branch.”
“Well, I think that’s natural. If they have an eye for character, they have no other choice but to recognize his cooking abilities.”
“You bet. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even worry about him from the beginning because I knew he would do well. But I’m concerned about Kaya and Chloe. Their business will do well, but they might be embroiled in controversy.”
It was not sure if it was for the short-term or long-term, but as soon as they opened a restaurant, lots of customers would come to the restaurant at first because Kaya and Chloe were well known in the restaurant field, and Delia’s hotel was famous.
“What do you mean by ’embroiled in controversy?’”
Ella asked in a cheerful voice as if she felt better after tasting the sweet puff.
Marco smiled lightly and said, stroking her hair, “If you’re famous, they gossip about you a lot. You hear a lot of bad things about you as much as you hear good things about you. So, you have to try harder to listen to the good stuff about you only.”
“Are those bad talkers bad people?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Marco replied feebly.
“I just wish Kaya and Chloe can only hear good things from customers.”
“I hope so.”
“I like this cream puff. Thank you, Marco.”
***
Although Marco and Ella were concerned about them, Chloe and Kaya were having an easygoing routine daily life. More precisely, they could not afford to spend time worrying. It wasn’t that difficult to hire their staff because they were not trying to hire a chef with experience, but a sincere part-timer who could properly carry out their assigned jobs.
As for the interior design of the restaurant, professional designers took care of it, so what they had to care about was the recipe, above all.
But the recipe was quite a challenge for them because what they needed wasn’t just a delicious and special recipe. What they wanted was a recipe that would simplify and differentiate the cooking process, and make the division of labor easy. Such a recipe wasn’t easier than they thought.
It would be possible in the case of hamburgers and pizzas, but even pizza was clearly a different case.
“I now know it’s so difficult to sell good food cheaply,” Chloe muttered, frustrated.
Actually, she spent several days trying to come up with the recipes and simplify the cooking process.
“Well, I think we have achieved a lot,” Kaya said in a calm voice. They had developed almost 20 recipes until now. They made the recipes incredibly fast, but it was not that great, given that they refined most of the existing recipes to suit the division of labor.
There were many types of recipes, but the main was pasta because pasta was simpler than any other recipe. Part-time workers only needed to prepare ingredients and cook pasta for the right time and at the right temperature. Of course, if they hire a chef specializing in it, Kaya and Chloe would save lots of time, but they couldn’t because hiring a chef would push up the price.
“In fact, if we wanted to sell it cheaply, it would have been more convenient for us to run a restaurant with our money. No matter how cheap we sell in a hotel, there is a limit.”
“Well, if we sell too cheap, the risk is too big. We’re checking to see if our concept of division of labor can pay off in high-end dishes. If we can, we might try something ambitious with our ideas and recipes.”
If all things went well, she could open tens of thousands of branches around the world. At least that was Kaya’s dream. She wanted to open the type of restaurant that people could find wherever they visited in the world. Her dishes would be cheap, but with a taste that would never make the customers sick and tired no matter how often they ate it. She wanted to help people taste quality food at tens of thousands of restaurants with Michelin’s three stars.
Maybe Kaya and Chloe’s names would remain more than just chefs. They might be remembered for widely popularizing high-end cuisine. Their awkward combination could really make Kaya’s dream into this reality.
The reason why they were working in Delia’s hotel was because they needed a place for a rehearsal. Given that what Delia wanted from them was more about putting her new restaurant in the media limelight rather than sales, they would benefit from each other.
So what they could do right now was to make the customers get carried away with their dishes with the best possible recipes. And that was their immediate task.
But soon they realized their judgment was wrong.
***
Everyone, good or bad, had the same seeds of jealousy and envy in their hearts. And that was no exception to the chefs at Delia Hotel. It was not known who spread the rumors, but rumors quickly spread among them that the employment conditions and compensations for Kaya and Chloe were incomparably better than other chefs.
Several reasons were cited for their differential treatment. For example, some said Chloe and Kaya were famous, and some of them even gossiped that Delia had a crush on Min-joon so much that she gave such preferential treatment to his friends. Whether such rumors were right or wrong, it was certain that they received generous compensation. And it was also clear that their cooking experiences were not impressive enough to justify their special treatment.
Kaya and Chloe noticed such an atmosphere among the chefs and cooks, but they didn’t initiate to bring up the topic because they knew it would backfire.
Anyway, when Kaya and Chloe’s small restaurant opened in Delia’s hotel, they faced another problem. They were part-timers. Kaya and Chloe didn’t expect anything like cooking skills from them. So, what they were supposed to do were simple things such as chopping onions and peeling off potatoes, boiling water, and mixing sauces, according to the recipe.
However, Kaya and Chloe didn’t give a thought to the part-timers’ passion and determination.
While the two chose their career because they liked cooking, the part-timers were just there to make a few more dollars. They were slower on chopping ingredients than the two thought, and they did it carelessly. They sometimes brought potatoes with dirt. Kaya and Chloe tried to check them hard, but one of the customers chewed something with dirt while eating food.
If it had happened at an ordinary restaurant, they would have expressed apologies to the customer and forgotten it. But bad things kept happening to the two. Unfortunately, the customer who chewed the dirt on food was a famous reporter. Besides, the other chefs sharing the same floor with the two were jealous.
So, it didn’t take even one day for them to blame the two. An unidentified chef argued that Kaya and Chloe didn’t have any basic understanding of the kitchen. He also pointed out that they used part-time students instead of chefs to lower the unit price. He even argued that they were receiving the best treatment possible by using their popularity, citing the generous conditions Delia gave them.
When the controversy over the two chefs was reported in newspapers, Kaya and Chole were instantly embroiled in the controversy. Shortly after the opening of the restaurant, there was not a single day when it was packed with customers. This was really shocking, given that people lined up to eat their dishes covered the entrance of another restaurant on the first day of the opening,
“Son of a b*tch! Do they know how much sweat and toils I put in this restaurant?”
Chloe was patting Kaya’s shoulder, who was so drunk. Min-joon was not there.
Kaya could get so drunk like that because Min-joon was not with her since she had a habit of pretending to be strong and perfect in front of him.
“I really thought our restaurant would hit the jackpot. What did I do wrong?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Chloe calmly.
However, it seemed that Kaya could not believe it yet. Actually, she had never really experienced something like this. Since her great success at the Grand Chef competition, she had had no hardships or difficulties except for a few personal scandals. In other words, she was on a roll without any failures, so it was a shocking setback for her career this time.
“What should I do? Give up here? Nobody would blame us.”
“You can’t solve the problem even if you gave up or cried or got upset. I’ve been through it already.”
“Then, what should I do from now on?”
“Just leave it to me,” Chloe said in a calm voice.
Kaya looked at her with an angry and sad expression. Chloe, who was always gentle, looked stronger than anyone at this moment.
“Let me resolve it.”
“Can you do it?”
“This is something I can do better than you. We need someone who can smile and apologize now, rather than someone who is upset. You have to pull yourself together. I’ll help you stand up, so make a promise to me.”
Chloe looked into Kaya and said in a calm voice, “If I raise you up again, promise me that you will never cry and just keep going. Then I’ll solve this problem well.”
“Chloe…” Kaya called her name in a troubled voice.
Chloe smiled and asked, “So, can you promise?”
