Soon the judges tried all the dishes of Michael’s team members. Although they commented about their dishes a lot, the judges easily came to a conclusion.
“Looking at your dishes as a whole, you guys have some room for improvement, but we can’t find any flaw in each of your dishes.”
In fact, this team would not have been able to have such results without Michael. Even when Michael was leading them as a head chef here, he was making friction with team members because he couldn’t pocket his pride.
‘He’s not a genius, but he still is,’ Min-joon thought.
Michael was almost like an insurmountable wall to the participants in this Grand Chef competition, to say the least. His cooking level was as high as that of any good professional chef. Come to think of it, there were few chefs in the world who could memorize and calculate the cooking time of each ingredient before he started cooking.
At least, Min-joon knew he could not do it like Michael, for professional chefs did not cook ingredients according to the calculated cooking time, but by observing the touch, heat, or the state of the searing.
“Please move to the second floor.”
Anyway, Michael’s team made it. Believe it or not, they were really lucky enough to have had a fantastic chef like Michael as their team member.
Taking his eyes off Michael’s team moving up to the second floor, Min-joon looked at Hugo.
His team was the next up for their evaluation. The dishes they made must have gotten cold for some time, but the judges would take it into account, of course.
‘By the way, why doesn’t Hugo shine in this competition?’
Min-joon thought about it for a moment. Hugo was definitely a good chef. In fact, when it came to cooking skills, he might not be behind Michael. Moreover, he was a professional chef who had more cooking experience than anybody else in this competition.
Nonetheless, he didn’t stand out this time.
Participants here didn’t pay much attention to him. And his dishes didn’t catch their eyes. Even now, few cared about his dish. When Hugo and his team members stepped forward with their dishes, Min-joon didn’t feel excited about his dish, even though he was happy to see his old friend again here.
“Our appetizer is chicken flautas,” Hugo said calmly.
Min-joon quietly tried Hugo’s food. Flautas, a traditional Mexican food. It was a simple dish made by rolling chicken roasted in salt, pepper, and vegetable oil with a cocktail and a corn tortilla lightly roasted in oil, and then sprinkled with raw onion, cilantro, feta cheese, and sour cream.
His cooking score was 6 points, which was not bad. In fact, considering the general cooking level of the Grand Chef participants, it was a very good score. In fact, Min-joon often found a cooking score of 6 in other teams’ dishes.
The appetizer, served with a brown salsa sauce made by mixing Jamaican jerk sauce, was delicious. But that was it.
‘It is supposed to taste delicious, of course.’
After all, this was the dish of a professional chef, so it should taste delicious. If he couldn’t make it delicious, he didn’t deserve to be a professional chef. To be honest, Min-joon was embarrassed for a different reason now. He couldn’t feel any fun in his dish.
“Hugo,” Kaya called his name in a low voice.
She didn’t have any bad feelings toward him. Even though she was not a very good friend of his, she was close enough to exchange greetings with him with a smile when she bumped into him. But such an awkward relationship made her feel uneasy when she saw him. Of course, she was not the type of woman who couldn’t speak out just because she felt uncomfortable about him.
So she spoke out frankly without any pretense.
“Your dish has no fun.”
Actually, what she said reflected what Min-joon and Joseph felt about it. Hugo’s eyes trembled anxiously. He opened his mouth slowly and asked, “No fun in this dish means it doesn’t taste delicious, right?”
“Well, you should basically make it delicious, and it really is. Given the combination of the ingredients, it’s supposed to taste delicious, as you know. But Hugo, to be honest, I think this dish here is almost like a frozen pizza reheated in the oven, given your cooking level.”
The process of making this kind of dish was really simple. It would probably only take about ten minutes to make it, depending on who made it. This meant that Hugo’s team didn’t use one hour’s cooking time properly.
No wonder Hugo’s expression darkened.
It was that night when the first segment of the Grand Chef competition was on the air. Min-joon and Kaya gathered together with other participants at the Grand Chef House to watch TV.
It was the moment when these amateur cooks would climb to the top of this field with a dramatic repercussion on their lives as a chef. This was also the moment when they would testify to their transformation.
“The TV show has just started…”
Min-joon glanced at the participants quickly. Each of them was in a different mood at the moment. Some of them were watching the TV program with big expectations, while some watched it without any particular expectation. Some watched it anxiously while pretending to be indifferent.
Most of them showed the same reaction that Kaya did when she participated in the competition for the first time. Holding back the urge to be struck by some sort of strange nostalgia, Min-joon focused back on TV. The broadcast, which started with the Grand Chef’s logo, showed a familiar face.
“Did you ask me why I decided to participate again? Well, I think I have wanted to seize another chance. Maybe I wanted to make up for my previous mistakes with my growth.”
It was none other than Hugo. The ladders of years permeated deeply into his face and voice.
When Min-joon was about to be sentimental about Hugo’s past, Michael appeared on TV this time. There was a brief moment of his lecturing at college, followed by his voice.
“Cooking is science. The difference between a first-class chef and a novice chef can be narrowed down greatly if you memorize the cooking formula clearly. I’m going to prove it this time.”
After Michael was briefly on the show, some other faces were also shown on TV. Most of them have survived the preliminary rounds, but there were others who were already eliminated.
Min-joon felt strange while he was listening to the resolve and hopes of those who were already eliminated. He knew that the confidence on their faces turned into despair and disappointment by now.
Gwen’s face was also shown at the beginning of the TV program. It briefly appeared. With an anxious look, she said, ‘Winning this contest is my last hope.’ As if she was embarrassed to see herself on TV, she turned her head away from it. She had no problem talking about her resolve, but she was really reluctant to show it to the participants here.
At that moment, she made eye contact with Min-joon who happened to be looking at her.
Startled by his unexpected glance, she looked at the front. She then sneaked a glance at him again, but he was watching TV after taking his eyes off her.
‘Gosh, it looks like he has been caring about me a lot from the beginning.’
She was not sure if he really liked her cooking or not, and if he really liked her cooking, what it was that made him think so.
She couldn’t think straight, but she couldn’t find the answer easily. Rather than concentrating on the question that she couldn’t answer easily, she chose to focus back on the TV cuisine program featuring the Grand Chef competition.
This time, the program introduced the judges. As for Joseph, the producer’s introduction of him was not much different from what they saw in the previous seasons because his career didn’t change drastically for the past few years.
So, what the viewers expected the most was new judges, Min-joon and Kaya. It was Kaya who appeared first. With her walking down from the end of the dark hallway in the background, the producer walked through her past career one by one. For example, she had never formally learned how to cook since she was young, but she was a young genius who overcame all of the difficulties with her overwhelming talent. She was also the winner of the Grand Chef Season 3. Besides, she was the co-partner of Choters Guide and the owner of Irregular Lab that had been drawing attention across the country. Above all, she was the winner of the most recent Paris International Culinary Competition.
She boasted of a spectacular career. Given that she made her debut as a chef only two years ago, her resume was gorgeous, indeed.
So Gwen thought about Kaya again. She wanted to be like her.
What Kaya showed was not her typical success. She showed that her miserable days in the past would not cloud her future blindly. Gwen remembered the sickly pupil in her eyes when Kaya first participated in the Grand Chef competition. Although she was abandoned and hurt by people, she became more and more confident and happier as time went by. Gwen remembered that it was the Grand Chef that made her what she was today.
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