Looking into her eyes firmly, Jill said, “Just assume there is nobody on top of you. It doesn’t matter if you are really confident or not. Even if you can’t even make fried eggs properly, you have to go ahead and believe that you’re the best chef, thinking even our head chefs can’t catch up with you.”
“Do you also think so? Do you think you are not as good as the head chefs?”
“Well, I may not be as good as them for now, but I don’t think it’s impossible that someday I’ll be greater than the two of them. I’ve come this far with confidence.”
“Awesome!” Gwen said in a dry voice. She turned her gaze away. “But Jill, if you have come as far as here with your confidence, it’s my inferiority complex that has taken me here.”
Jill was speechless at her words. She didn’t know the mindset of a person like her who was motivated by a feeling of inferiority. So she had no idea what advice she should give Gwen.
Gwen said, “Don’t worry too much. I don’t think I’m a great chef, but I want to be a great one. Just like other chefs are great, I want to shake off my inferiority complex. That’s why I’ve come as far as here. I think I can keep moving with this mindset.”
Gwen smiled at Jill feebly. Jill thought it was a feeble smile, wondering if Gwen, who lived until now smiling such a feeble smile, would be able to find strength in her weakness.
Of course, Jill was not sure if her assumption like that was true or not.
It was when she shut up when Min-joon hurriedly came to the kitchen island near them.
“Chefs, come to the baking room with me now.”
“Baking room? What happened?”
“Well, something eye-opening happened in the bakery section right now. A patissier applicant made something like ciabattas, but everyone there was just speechless after tasting it.”
“Ciabatta?”
Jill giggled momentarily. She could not understand why they made such a fuss over how delicious ciabatta could be. She thought Minwoo got excited about even such trifling stuff easily because he was the youngest chef.
“Okay, let me come with you. Don’t make a big fuss.”
“I’m not making a fuss right now…”
Minwoo made a frustrated expression, but he didn’t bother to explain because he could not describe Rosa’s ciabatta. But he thought Jill would also understand why describing it was meaningless the moment she entered the baking room.
And his judgment was not wrong. Jill, who had a calm expression until she entered the baking room, immediately put a piece of ciabatta into her mouth and murmured. She then looked at Rosa, Min-joon and Kaya as if she could not believe it.
Then Min-joon said, smiling at Rosa, “Congrats for being part of our kitchen family, Rosa.”
Another genius baking lady joined Lotus Bridge.
<hr />
The opening of Lotus Bridge was successful in every way. Of course, considering the goal that Min-joon and Kaya had in mind, it might be a little far-fetched to call it a success. But both of them have given up their greed. More precisely, they had given up their excessive greed because they knew they should not expect too much on their first attempt.
Rachel once told Min-joon that she envied him because he could clearly see what he was supposed to do next. At first, he couldn’t understand what she was talking about because in his view she already achieved everything she wanted.
But he realized that Rachel was right when he hired Rosa. How could he find and hire a patissier with baking level 9? The moment he had the luck he had never even thought of in his own hands, Min-joon immediately realized what Rachel was trying to say at that time. Even if it was just one step, the pleasure he felt when he took that step forward was hard to describe in words. It was a pleasure that Rachel couldn’t feel anymore. Rachel already took almost every step she could have taken. Perhaps she could take her last step when she reached cooking level 10.
“Cooking is like a long journey,” Min-joon said in a low voice. “Jill, what do you think success is?”
They were having a simple get-together at the moment. Even calling it a get-together meeting was rather ambiguous because the place where they met was not a restaurant, but the hall of Lotus Bridge after its business hours was over. The kitchen staff was chatting here and there, and Min-joon was now talking to Jill.
After pondering over his question, she replied, “I think success means you are being recognized by somebody else. For example, you have a nice house and drive a nice car, and everyone who is watching me has a favorable opinion of me.”
“Have you always aimed for such a life?”
“Umm… well.”
“In my case, I wish I could only cook without doing anything else.”
To be honest, Min-joon only had bad memories of when he was the youngest chef in Korea, but when he first became the youngest chef, he even felt happy when his senior chefs scolded him a lot. Since he translated his dream into action, he felt cool about his courage, and he was convinced that he had made the most valuable choice of his life.
But the happiness that his success brought didn’t last long. He was so happy that he became the youngest chef, but such joy quickly faded, and he was soon faced with his own humble position as a junior chef.
And he had not yet completely shaken off such a mentality for some time. When he survived the finals in the Grand Chef competition, when he won 3rd place, when he was loved by people, when he received a job offer from Rachel, and when his signature dessert Cho Reggiano received such good recognition, he was so happy. But where was all his happiness gone?
Jill asked, “It seems you don’t enjoy cooking now like you used to.”
“Right. Not anymore. Just making ordinary dishes doesn’t make me happy. I want to make dishes that can thrill everybody.”
“Compared to anyone else’s dishes in the world?”
“Um…”
He pondered over it for a moment. He then opened his mouth soon.
“I used to think about it a lot in the past. In other words, I wanted to be the best chef, and I still want it. But the reason I want to be the best is because I want my cuisine to be no worse than anyone else’s. In other words, I don’t want to see people saying my dishes are lacking. In the past, I often thought of surpassing other chefs, but I don’t think about it these days.”
“You mean you don’t want to be jealous of them?”
“Oh, do you interpret it like that?” He chuckled at her words.
When he asked himself if he really didn’t feel jealous, he was not so sure. Obviously, he was less conscious of others than before. When he worked as a junior chef, his self-esteem tanked, but it was no exaggeration to say that he had regained it since then. ‘Jealousy…’
<hr />
“Is Catherine sleeping now?”
“Yeah, she has been whining for a while before falling asleep. It looks like she is looking for you Janet, rather than me.”
“Gosh, it’s still your turn to take care of her!”
“I know.”
Grumbling like that, Anderson laid Catherine on the bed. Since both of them were working, it was virtually impossible for one of them to take care of Catherine all the time. So they agreed to take care of her equally for a certain period of time everyday.
Of course, they didn’t feel comfortable about caring for their child like that.
Even after she let him take care of Catherine, Janet could not go to sleep well because she felt uneasy. She felt sorry for Anderson, but at the same time, she was concerned so much about him taking good care of Catherine that she could hardly have a good sleep.
“After all, raising a child is hellish,” she complained.
“Hey, watch your language! I don’t think that’s what a mother is supposed to say,” he said sharply.
“You and I can put up with it because Catherine is our baby Catherine. Otherwise, we might have given up on the baby.”
“Shut up! Stop talking nonsense!” Anderson answered in an annoying voice and turned off the lamp. The phone screen Janet was looking at shone dazzlingly in an instant.
Anderson said, frowning at her, “Put down your phone. Let’s go to sleep. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. I just checked out something. I’m going to turn it off soon. Don’t worry.”
“What are you watching?”
“Well, netizens’ comments about Lotus Bridge.”
When she said that, he had no choice but to show interest. He glazed over her phone slowly. However, only the dazzling light of her cell phone made his eyes tired all the more in darkness.
He asked, moaning, “What’s their reaction?”
“Well, overall it’s good. No wonder they show such a good reaction because the owners of Lotus Bridge are Min-joon and Kaya. How can their cuisine draw a bad reaction? Of course, there was some bad feedback about the patissier. But I heard they hired a good patissier the other day.”
“Great.”
“Are you jealous?”
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