Min-joon didn’t say anything to Kaya. Instead of talking, he lifted a fork and began to enjoy the taste of her new recipe. He ate the pork cheeks, boiled ox head and tail, brisket, and cotechino. And he found the cotechino the most delicious out of them.
‘I know sous vide sausage is delicious…’
When he tried the soft sausages cooked in sous vide, he felt the chunks of soft meat went surprisingly well with the other sauces. It had been a while since he felt overwhelmed by the taste of a dish, and Kaya’s dish at that.
He was done eating her new menu.
He looked at her, whose eyes were full of anticipation and excitement at that moment. He stood up and hugged her tightly.
“Yeah, you have made it!”
He tightened his arms around her shoulders. While feeling like she was being crushed by his tight hugging, she felt choked with tears. She didn’t know why. She lost her way for a long time, but only now did she feel she found her way.
She said, hugging him face to face, “I’m going to hug you tighter. If you can’t breathe, tell me. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“Sure, it’s not bad to be taken to a hospital… Ouch!”
As if to prove that calling an ambulance was not an empty word, she really hugged him so tightly that he could hardly breathe. He just could not understand how strong she was as a woman. After all, it was he who surrendered first.
When he relaxed his arms around her and tapped her on the back, she said quietly, “Tell me it was delicious.”
“Yeah, it was delicious.”
“How much.”
“As much as I like you.”
“Pass.”
She released him from her arms with a satisfying smile. He breathed out for a moment as if he was exhausted. Then he shook his head, looking at the dishes she made overnight.
“Man, it’s crazy.”
“I want to call it Six Meat.”
“It’s simple and nice.”
[Six meat]
Freshness: 91%
Country of origin: (There are several ingredients, so it is hidden)
Quality: High
Cooking score: 10/10
Her cooking score of 10 was not a big deal because her understanding of each dish was fantastic. She also had a fabulous sense of the temperature of a dish and its cooking time. But the most terrific thing about this dish was that she displayed the best of her strength in it.
“Fantastic! Well, anybody interested in cooking can make this dish as long as they know its recipe.”
“I guess so.”
Kaya nodded. She didn’t just simply cook the meat with the sous vide machine. She had to have the meat vacuum-packed with cube-shaped vegetables and chicken broth before putting it in the sous vide. She also made sure that all the ingredients were mixed and cooked in a proper proportion. Otherwise, she would not have brought out such a fantastic taste.
In other words, if anybody could do the same as she just did, based on her recipe and cooking method, they could bring out the taste that was not different from the taste of her dish. Given that the taste of Min-joon’s Cho Reggiano largely depended on the cooking style of each chef, Kaya’s recipe was remarkably different from his.
‘The fact that people in any part of the world can make this kind of dish with her recipe, it means…’
In other words, if the marketing of her recipe can be successful, it had the potential to gain popularity among the people as another Cho Reggiano. It also meant that Kaya’s true worth as a fantastic chef could be recognized by everyone in the world.
Cooking was more difficult than people think, but it was sometimes easier than they think. If one knew the recipe, even a beginner with a certain cooking sense could make a dish that would draw people’s admiration, but the problem was that a beginner couldn’t come up with a new recipe because he was not a real chef who made delicious food.
In that respect, Kaya’s recipe announced to the whole world that she was a real chef.
‘Nope.’
But Min-joon shook his head because he knew she would not end up being one of the real chefs. She was a chef that he respected, yearned for, and envied the most. She was a chef like that and would continue to be so.
‘From now on…’
<hr />
As for releasing Kaya’s new recipe, Min-joon didn’t want to have her just open it at her Irregular Lab, and he had no intention of doing so because the recipe she developed this time was far from ordinary and typical. No matter how extraordinary her recipe was, people would not think of it as extraordinary if they took it as ordinary. And that was why Min-joon felt it needed some sort of promotional marketing.
When he asked for some advice on Kaya’s new recipe, June gave him a simple solution.
‘First, get recognized by celebrities. If so, people would be looking forward to her dish. They might wonder why that dish makes so many people admire it. Of course, it depends on whether her dish can really make them admire it.’
As far as making people admire her dish, Min-joon thought it was not a big deal because he firmly believed that Kaya’s ‘Six Meat’ could draw praise from anyone who tried it. In his eyes, her new recipe was a perfect dish. So much so that he could not ask for more. He even wondered if she or he could make a better dish than it in the days ahead.
Anyway, Kaya and Min-joon faithfully followed June’s advice. The two visited their acquaintances, so they could try her new recipe. If the two could not visit somebody that they could not see in person, they sent out her recipe for their review.
None of those chefs who reviewed her recipe made any critical comments.
‘Well, that’s natural…’
Apart from the system’s evaluation that her cooking score was 10, even Min-joon could not find any flaw in her sense of taste. He knew as far as her sense of taste was concerned, she was already ahead of him. If she, who had a perfect sense of taste, could not find any flaw in her dish, it could be said to be the best dish that humans could enjoy.
“It looks like rumors about your new recipe are spreading slowly.”
“Really? How?”
“Well, there are rumors that the members of Choters Guide are engaged in something suspicious these days, or they are showing some people their new recipe for their evaluation, or none of those who reviewed it made any critical comments, etc. It’s natural that such rumors are spreading quickly. You know what? Maybe there are more than one hundred chefs that we have visited until now.”
“Man, we’ve seen lots of chefs!”
“And this is the last chef we’re going to see.”
When Min-joon said that, Kaya looked slightly nervous because they would not feel comfortable about visiting the restaurant and its head chef.
The chef they were going to ask for his evaluation of Kaya’s new recipe was a tough chef whose evaluation would be pretty meaningful.
Finally, Min-joon and Kaya stood before the restaurant. Their eyes turned to a huge wooden gate built in an old-fashioned way, then the restaurant sign hanging over the gate. Although it was written in English, they felt like the English alphabets were Chinese characters.
The last chef they would ask for his evaluation was none other than Yoshimoto, the head chef of Wasabi.
<hr />
The motto of Choters Guide was simple, namely making both customers and chefs happy. Customers could get good information from it while chefs could find ways to change their dishes in the future.
But there was one restaurant that didn’t follow the motto of Choters Guide, namely Wasabi. Yoshimoto’s consistent stubbornness and egoism made Min-joon and Kaya’s numerous comments and criticism just worthless.
He washed his face hard with the water in both hands. His vision blurred for a moment because of the water around his eyes, but he could see his own face in the mirror again.
Looking at himself in the mirror, Yohei asked, “I did the right thing, right?’
He had never thought of how painful it was to know that there was nobody who could respond to him.
Now he wasn’t a child, he couldn’t even get an answer to the question, and there were no teachers or parents who answered his question.
After the two chefs of Choters Guide visited Wasabi, the atmosphere of the restaurant was down drastically. Above all, head chef Yoshimoto was wearing a grumpy expression all the time. But Yohei thought it was good for his boss. He knew that it had been quite a long time since there was only arrogance on his boss’s face. But the fact that some other feelings replaced his arrogance on his face made him think he did the right thing by calling in Choters Guide.
However, just calling in the Choters Guide chefs was not Yohei’s sole purpose. The most important thing about it was not to kill Yoshimoto’s arrogance but to revive his initial commitment to cooking, which he had forgotten while pursuing his dreams.
‘Can the two chefs of Choters Guide change him?’
Yoshimoto didn’t want to see the Choters Guide chefs again. He tried not to meet anybody, with his ears and eyes closed to the outside world. He didn’t even raise an objection to Choters Guide’s evaluation of Wasabi. He complained, asking who would trust such a foolish evaluation. He even told customers that if they were swayed by the evaluation of Choters Guide, they have the option to not visit his restaurant again.
At that moment, somebody carefully opened the door of the bathroom and stepped inside.
He was Wasabi’s most junior chef.
“Sous chef, the Choters Guide chefs are here. Would you want to go out and greet them? Our head chef would not even see them…”
