God of Cooking

Min-joon opened his mouth slowly because he did not intend to simply show Michael his perfect taste.

“Well, you have cooked this lobster in sous vide style, mixed with beet juice, orange juice, and lemon verbena. But the cooking time was definitely short. It looks like sous vide, but it isn’t. You have to raise the heat to cook it within the limited time, but if you keep heating it, you often miss the strength of sous vide.”

“Can you feel it?”

Instead of answering his stupid question, Min-joon said, “You used orange juice and beets for the beet puree as well. As for the vegetable confit on top, you added carrots, beets, turnips, green apples, orange juice, and cardamom, lemon verbena, and lemon peel. Oh, you also added star anise. You overlapped a lot of stuff in various ways. I think you did it for a unified taste, but it seems a little too sweet for an appetizer.”

Michael kept silent. He then looked at him blankly as if he was astonished by Min-joon’s words.

Min-joon gave a quick feedback by saying, “Well, it tastes good enough, though.”

His evaluation was pretty harsh. He didn’t give such mean feedback because he felt offended by Michael. Since he examined every detail of Michael’s dish, he was now evaluating Michael not as one of the amateur participants, but as a professional chef.

As an amateur chef, Michael was probably perfect, but he had lots of room for improvement as a professional chef.

‘Should I continue to point out his problems?’

Min-joon hesitated for a moment. No matter how great Michael was, he was still an amateur. So, it was probably cruel for Min-joon to judge his cooking by professional cooking standards.

But he already shot an arrow. No matter how shabby the target was, Min-joon had to hit it once he shot the arrow. If he stopped here with half-baked advice, it would not be beneficial to Michael at all. So he decided to be perfectly strict with Michael as far as his dish was concerned.

Min-joon spoke slowly, “Do you know what’s wrong with your cooking? Michael?”

“Oh, really? Have you found one?”

“You cook according to the formula. And once you understand the formula, you seldom make a mistake. That means that you have sorted out many of the ingredients of the dishes in your head. If I rephrase it, however, you can cook, only based on the formulas you know.”

When he pointed it out, Michael’s expression became too serious. Rather than being disappointed, he seemed to think hard for a while, trying to understand his point.

He was a smart guy. So it was even before Min-joon blinked his eyes twice before Michael understood and fully accepted his advice.

“Do you mean there is a limit to the formula I know?”

“Did you have a cuisine teacher?”

“Ummm… well. I just studied cooking from recipe books.”

What he meant was he studied cooking mainly through textbooks. It was certainly great for him to have achieved such a high cooking level, but that was not enough.

“You need someone to teach you how to cook.”

“You mean somebody like a cooking teacher?”

“Yes. There are many flaws in your cooking. Nevertheless, the reason you can cook like this is because you have mastered the cooking theory perfectly. But that is not enough. You can’t come up with a recipe by simply calculating the ingredients. Before you understand the composition of taste scientifically, we need a human understanding. Are you cooking from such an angle?’

“I’m not a robot. Of course, I do enjoy a pure delight in taste.”

“Well, you still have a long way to go when it comes to what you just said.”

Having heard his reply, Min-joon could draw a conclusion about his cuisine. He might be wrong, but at least in his mind, this was a pretty credible conclusion.

Michael Orr was a genius, but he had no cooking talent.

This sounded contradictory from the start, but upon closer examination, it was not.

Michael Orr was a genius. No one could deny that. If someone who was a Harvard professor was not a genius, who else could be called a genius? But he was called a genius because he was so smart. In fact, he was said to be one of the best in the world when it came to physics. Like the saying that a smart man was versatile in everything, he was very good at cooking.

But he had no talent for cooking.

“He’s just a nerd. No more or no less.”

He couldn’t even catch up with Gwen when it came to cooking talent. More precisely, he was far behind Hugo or Peter. Nonetheless, even with that lack of talent, his extraordinary brain made him understand everything about cooking by going through not a general route, but a slightly frivolous and great route called science.

If a person memorized all the cooking formulas known to the world, that person wouldn’t make a mistake. Considering that even what people regard as creativity was sometimes found in the cooking formula, Michael could create dishes that were incomparable to ordinary people’s dishes by making just a little change in the existing recipes. But that was all.

Min-joon continued, “Cooking is sometimes a formula, but sometimes it’s not. You may not admit it, but I think so. In fact, that really doesn’t matter that much. You have to know how to put your own touch into the formula in order to be a special chef even if all the formulas are somebody else’s.”

“Can’t you find any uniqueness in my cuisine?”

“No. It’s pretty blurry,” Min-joon said in a calm voice.

“Let me tell you this. Your cuisine is excellent. I have nothing to point out about your dish as a participant in this competition. But I’m telling you this as a chef.”

When he said that, the atmosphere of the cooking venue changed quickly.

When Min-joon began to tell him the hard truths, the participants thought Michael’s dish was not as good as they thought. But that was not true. Min-joon was speaking to him as if he was a chef, not as a participant. That was why they took his feedback as something like criticism.

And only Michael deserved such criticism.

“When I had an interview with the media, I picked you as the potential winner of this competition.”

“Have you changed your mind now?”

“No, I haven’t because you are still the most potential winner. But if you ask me who I’ll pick as the most brilliant chef, I’m probably going to name somebody else.”

Michael’s limit was that he was a terrific amateur.

Even in the future, he would not be rated as the best chef, although he could make some regular customers by opening a unique restaurant of his own. In other words, he could make a good restaurant, but he would not be able to make the best restaurant.

‘Well, it’s funny for me to give him this kind of comment because his main job is not cooking.’

Nevertheless, the reason why he was making such comments was because he really liked Michael’s dish, though with some regrets.

Michael didn’t take his advice lightly. Just several minutes ago, he heard Min-joon completely analyze his dish from start to finish. How could he challenge such a chef with his cooking?

So Michael bowed and said, “Then just tell me.”

“Pardon?”

“Tell me what I’m lacking in this dish.”

“Well, I can give you several reasons for that. First, you have emphasized the unity of taste too much. For example, the taste of orange juice and beets was still there. Of course, it was good that you changed the taste of confit, puree, lobster, etc, by adding some other ingredients. However, the taste naturally grew stronger when you tried to create a difference in taste while keeping all the same flavors. And you made too much food.”

While hearing Min-joon’s explanation, Michael glanced at the plates on the table. Of course, he made the food enough so the three judges could try it, but there was still a lot left on the plates. Smiling at him, Min-joon pointed to the second plate.

“When I eat this, do you think it’s good for the lingering taste of the appetizer on my tongue?”

Only then did Michael realize the weakness of his dish. He wasn’t very good at looking at food from the eater’s point of view. As a result, he ended up making an appetizer that tasted too much of an appetizer. So much so that it not only stimulated the eater’s tongue but also made them sick and tired of it.

“Thank you.”

Then Michael cast a strange glance at Min-joon. Min-joon could not understand why he cast such a glance. As a genius, Michael had a somewhat different perspective from others.

So he seemed to feel that he finally found someone he could be on the same page as him as far as their conversation was concerned. Just like Min-joon, he could size up the other party’s strengths and weaknesses instantly, even if he said something trifling.

In no time, the three judges began to try the dishes of Michael’s team members.