Of course, it would be okay for Min-joon to remember his impressions and feelings of June’s dish when he first ate it before evaluating it later, based on his memories. However, rather than relying on it, she thought it was better to stimulate his appetite more.
Min-joon concentrated all his feelings, appetite, and hunger on the knife. He cut the octopus’s legs with the sharp blade of the knife. After slicing the raw yellow tails marinated in soy sauce and shrimps, he placed them one by one on top of the perilla cream paste that looked like a miniature pile of rocks on the coast. He put green vegetables on top of that, then finally placed a foam made from a fish broth like a wave rushing to the shore.
And the plate on which everything was placed was a glass plate. But it was no ordinary glass plate. The glass plate on top of the box showed the grains of sand on the New York beach in the box. And the plate was soon placed on the table of each chef along with a large conch shell. June wanted to make them feel as if they were on a beach when they tried it. Besides, the conch shell was not just an ordinary conch shell because all the mini speakers installed inside the conch shells were playing the sound of waves.
All of them could not help but admire her plating direction. When it came to directing how to plate dishes, she could be arguably called the top in the field. Usually, restaurants that stuck to the perfect plating like June’s often disappointed customers, but she didn’t.
At some point, the reporters here tended to focus more on watering their mouths than reporting what was going on. They felt it was like an incomparable tragedy for them to just watch the chefs breaking perilla paste and putting the seafood on top into their mouths with foam.
But the main course only started now. After she succeeded in having people here feel as if they were on a picnic and then on a beach, she led them into the deep sea, namely salmon boiled in liquid jelly, vanilla mayonnaise, grapefruit, and trout wolf served together on a plate.
This kind of plating was typical, but the taste wasn’t typical. Who said that a chef who knew how to cook seafood well was a really talented chef? Given that, nobody could blame June for her seafood cuisine.
Min-joon could not stand it because he was also so anxious to taste this seafood. He thought it would be a long time before he tasted all of this, but now he could taste all of this food made by June in person.
While tasting all of June’s dishes, Rachel didn’t say even one word as far as her evaluation was concerned. She wanted to give her feedback to him. And at the same time, she didn’t want to influence his feedback even before he tried June’s dishes.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t just Min-joon who was anxious to taste her dishes. Except for the head chefs who were currently tasting her dishes, everyone wanted to know what kind of dish this was and how it tasted.
But the main course wasn’t over yet. Min-joon looked at the lamb being grilled on the frying pan as if he was possessed by something. Just a few minutes ago, this was nothing but tough raw meat, but it was now ripening to such an attractive color just when it was heated.
Thinly sliced and grilled crispy, the fat placed on top of the meat would stimulate the chefs’ tongues more delicately. And the cucumber served on the side would make them forget its greasy taste, and the heart, liver, and jellied consommé to be served as well would make them feel this dish was far from simple.
The main course was over with that. And Min-joon didn’t have to handle the rest of the course including dessert. He looked at June, making a strange expression as if he finally finished a long trip. She was looking back at Rachel and the chefs eating her dishes with a mysterious expression.
Min-joon didn’t know exactly how June felt now, but he could understand her feelings to some extent. Rachel’s and his evaluation of her cuisine on which she spent her whole life was about to come to an end. Of course, she had to do it over again for the sake of Min-joon, who was also a judge of her cuisine.
“You can get out and have a seat,” said June.
“Are you sure?” Min-joon replied.
“Anyway, the patissier will take care of the rest. You can take a break now. If you try my dish when you’re tired, you won’t enjoy it fully anyway. So, just whet your appetite before trying it.”
“I’ll cheer for you, Chef June.”
He calmly replied then turned.
At that moment, she stopped him.
“Min-joon!”
“Yeah.”
“I can tell you this only now, but when you told me to beat Dave by cooking better, I felt bad about your attitude.”
“Oh, really?”
“But I made it thanks to you.”
He looked at her. Their eyes met.
She said, “Now it’s your turn to judge my dishes. Hope I’m in your good hands.”
He smiled instead of answering. He didn’t have to give her any favor. All he had to do was to evaluate her dishes like the others. His relationship with her would not affect his evaluation at all.
He went to Rachel’s side and sat down at the judge’s seat. Rachel was drinking tea for dessert, and many cameras were now directed at his face. It wasn’t just the cameras. Even the chefs who were sampling her food turned their eyes to him.
At that moment, he felt a bit overwhelmed by their intense glances. Everyone was conscious of what he would have to say. It would not be an exaggeration to say that everything about June’s dishes would depend on how he would evaluate them.
He looked at Rachel, but she didn’t. He suddenly wanted to ask her why she had him as a judge of this competition. But he didn’t feel up to hear her answer.
While he was thinking about it. a plate of beet meringues was placed before him. He slowly picked up the meringue and put it into his mouth. He felt like he heard a crunching sound in his mouth, but there was nothing left to chew in his mouth when he tried to check it. Through the meringue that melted like cream, he felt the bitter, sweet, and salty taste of horseradish.
When a server familiar to him was about to ask him to choose an accompaniment, he chose tequila and grapefruit flavors.
The real taste of her course started from that moment. With the alcohol subtly spreading through his blood vessels, he savored each food more seriously than before. He began to feel what she meant when she said she really distinguished her cuisine from Dave’s by working harder.
“I am almost choked with tears…”
At that moment, he was eating a parfait and truffle toast followed by grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage Gazpacho. Watching the smoke of dry ice overflowing over the box full of moss, he couldn’t help but be choked with tears.
“I can see how much Chef June has tried. I know why you could not be satisfied when everybody said your dish was delicious enough. When you want to make more perfect food, it’s because you were convinced that somebody was better than you.”
That ‘somebody’ could be Daniel or Dave. Maybe it was Rachel. What was certain was that all of them were chef giants that she could not catch up with. She had to strive constantly to catch up with them. Just imagining her pursuing that hard process, he felt like suffocating.
“So, only now can I tell you this because I have not yet tried all of your dishes today. June, I respect you. No matter what the outcome of your cooking is, my respect for you won’t change.”
June made an incomprehensible expression at his confession. But Rachel frowned a bit when he said that. Though it was really childish, she even felt worried that June would take her place as his teacher.
She looked at June and asked in a sullen voice, “June, why don’t you respond to him when he is admiring you like this?”
June reluctantly replied with a sigh, “Well, he makes me throw up.”
“Oh my… How could you say that when I plucked up my heart to praise you?” he asked.
“I thought you didn’t have the courage because you commented so naturally,” said June nonchalantly.
He let out a sigh. He didn’t think it strange at all when people said they would feel like throwing up whenever he said something. At first, he thought there was a problem with his poor English because speaking well in English was different from what native speakers of English spoke naturally. But he didn’t want to care about it now, for people took his way of speaking English as something like his idiosyncrasy rather than hating it.
“It doesn’t change my opinion whether you feel like throwing up. Thanks for your good food.”
At first, he was a little worried. He knew her cooking. So, he thought he might feel her dishes were no fun because he already knew them. Besides, all the dishes she served had been already reviewed by him in the process.
But he now realized that his worries like that were groundless. Since he had such half-baked expectations without any ground, he could not help but be surprised by her dishes that completely upended her expectations.
He was already eating snail porridge. The thinly sliced snails had oats stuck to them, and the herbal scent was so strong that he thought it was a bit harsh. Of course, he didn’t disapprove of it because he knew she deliberately broke its balance. Snails should taste like snails, and beef should taste like beef. It was controversial, but most chefs don’t deny that.
But at this moment, June was deliberately using only the texture of the snail. There wasn’t much of a difference between oats and snails, at least now on this plate.
‘How can she make its taste so attractive like this?’
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