God of Cooking

“Well, that’s risky,” June said in a calm voice.

Yohei asked Min-joon and Kaya to evaluate his boss Yoshimoto’s cuisine honestly, so his boss could take a lesson. So, when Min-joon and Kaya told June about it, she immediately reacted negatively.

She continued slowly, “Wasabi? In fact, those who know something about cuisine know that the Wasabi food is not good enough despite its good reputation. But the reason why it has not been discussed publicly is because so many people visit that restaurant and praise its cuisine. The problem is not gourmets or chefs, but the fans that Wasabi has won over.”

“Fans?”

“Wasabi is open around the clock from morning till night. And it’s been attracting customers for decades. That means it has a huge number of customers that an ordinary restaurant can’t even imagine. And they think the dishes served at the Wasabi restaurant are delicious.”

“Is that important?”

“Yeah, it’s important. Why do you think so many gourmets gave such a rave review about Wasabi?”

“Well, it’s because…”

Min-joon, who was trying to say something, was shocked to recall something and bit his lips

“Do you mean they are conscious of Chef Yoshimoto?”

“Yeah, gourmets are human like us, after all. They can’t help but be scared. Even if you think you know the answer, the answer is not true when people say it’s not the answer, which is often the case in cuisine, a very subjective field.”

“How come they hide their honest feelings about Wasabi and praise it all the time?’

“Well, not all of them do it. People who don’t want to say good things about the restaurant from the beginning or those who are scared about criticizing the restaurant just avoid evaluating the restaurant. Of course, sometimes some brave gourmets stepped forward and criticized Wasabi in the past, but they were only a few. That’s why it’s important which group you want to take side with.”

Having said that, June looked into Min-joon. Only then did Min-joon realize why she said it was risky. “So, which group do you want to support? Are you willing to take side with those who are brave enough to speak out the inconvenient truth of restaurants and fight them?”

June already knew the answer while asking such a question because she knew what kind of chef he was. As far as she knew, he was brave enough not to avoid such a fight.

“I don’t want to be a liar. If they avoid criticizing Wasabi because they are scared to do so, they’re actually making fun of that restaurant. It’s like you are watching somebody boasting about something when you know he doesn’t deserve it. I don’t want to do it,” he said firmly. “I’m going to cut this close link between the gourmets and Wasabi.”

Cut the link? Did Min-joon really understand what he had just said?

June looked at him again and peeked into his courage and determination.

And she asked quietly, “Do you think the decision by the majority is smart?”

“Well, I’ve never thought about it seriously.”

“Actually, you can understand it easily by looking up the definition of ‘wisdom’ in the dictionary. Being wise means being wiser compared to ordinary people. So the moment people become the majority, they cannot be wise because it’s the minority, not the majority, who are wise.”

“But sometimes the majority can follow a wise judgment, right?”

“Yep, but the one who talks about the wise judgment and wise way is not an ordinary man, but a wise man,” she said, looking out the window for a moment. There were lots of people crowding on the streets who were maybe wise or maybe not.

“It’s the duty of a wise man to guide people in the right way. When he does it, he often gets ridiculed, just like Galileo who said the earth is going around the sun. But those who sneered at Galileo at that time didn’t imagine they would be regarded as fools forever.”

“You mean I should be like Galileo.”

“My point is the path you’re going to take is not necessarily a glorious path. When I said you should be ready for a fight, I’m not just saying that. It’s going to be more intense than anything else in your life.”

“Well, it’s an inevitable fight,” he muttered. “That’s why I intend to win the fight.”

***

“It won’t be easy. Don’t you think you are being so hard on Min-joon?”

“If I’m not hard on him, he won’t go anywhere. If I had known that he wanted to be an ordinary chef, I wouldn’t have asked him for it. But he is not the type who is content with being an ordinary chef. If he had been a chef who said stupid things like, ‘If I can live happily, I don’t want anything more,’ I would not have felt wary of him or brought him here to work for me.”

“You know how difficult it is to live happily, right? Isn’t he too ambitious?”

“That’s why you are an idiot!” June cynically snapped.

She could feel that Dave, who was over the phone, was grumpy. But she said, feeling a bit good about his sullen moods, “Whenever it was, it was a gateway that Min-joon had to pass at least once. He is confident and competent, so why is he hesitant to do it? It’s a waste of his talent if he doesn’t do it.”

“Well, I thought you and Min-joon would do it.”

“Hey, don’t keep talking like a small potato who lives without any dream!”

“Yeah, the man you have met is a small potato, and you liked a lesser man like me because the way I lived was far from living a lesser life.”

“Hey, you can talk about such trifles later. Anyway, just do me a favor. Contact all the chefs and gourmets you know in Chicago and the central area to rally their support for Min-joon. Got it?”

“You are trying to do politicking even in the cooking area?”

“Well, that’s my style and my cooking. And Min-joon will inevitably face those who are opposed to him. You know him because you have him already, right?”

When she said that, Dave paused for a moment.

She read a lot in his silence because she knew how Dave thought about him. Min-joon was not ordinary. He shined among chefs. He was a light that would bewitch people, and he could make people feel jealous of him.

“Well, let me try my best to create an atmosphere where people around me here cheer for him…” he said. “By the way, I miss you. Just show up here!”

She stopped breathing for a moment, then breathed in and out.

“Get lost!”

She hung up the phone, letting out a sigh.

“Idiot…”

***

June played her role as Min-joon’s protege more perfectly than anybody else.

She didn’t call only Dave in Chicago. She called the head chefs of Rose Island branches including Daisy and Deborah, and at the same time, she contacted all the gourmets and chefs in New York.

As a result, when she was exchanging opinions with them about the Wasabi case, those who knew her directly or indirectly tended to support Min-joon. More precisely, June’s acquaintances had no choice but to support him.

Of course, those who weren’t very close to her or didn’t know her criticized Min-joon honestly, but even so, she had a plan. In other words, those who supported Min-joon felt a sense of solidarity, while even those who did not have a close relationship with her naturally tended to think of her as their ally.

Reading June’s mind, her close acquaintances like Deborah and Dave shook their heads, thinking of it as devil-like cunning, but at least her clever action like that did not hurt Min-joon’s reputation at all.

The debate among the chefs became more and more heated. Critics of Choters Guide’s questioned if the evaluators of the guide were qualified enough to look down on a restaurant that received Michelin three stars without any good standards. And they pointed out the excessive interest of the people in Choters Guide. Their point was that Choters Guide’s opinion was not just the subjective opinion of the evaluators, but it could bring about huge negative repercussions.

On the other hand, those who supported Choters Guide argued that the evaluators’ raging was not just that of young chefs, citing their brilliant performance until now. In fact, Min-joon’s victory at the Paris International Culinary Competition was enough to prove their claim. Even if his cooking career was not long, numerous famous and veteran chefs around the world attended this international cooking contest and experienced frustrations and failures.

In the end, the longer the debate got, the more their debate focused on the cooking skills of Min-joon and Kaya. As a matter of fact, their debate would be meaningless if they could confirm it. And it was Kaya who was being criticized and more scrutinized than Min-joon because compared with him, she didn’t show much to the general public. Some of them even said that Kaya could share the victory with Min-joon at the Paris International Culinary Competition thanks to him.

“This kind of debate is just pointless, guys. The longer and noisier your debate is, the more you guys’ names will be known,” June said.

Although June said that, Kaya, feeling a bit upset, couldn’t hide her frustration because she didn’t want to lag behind Min-joon. It was not just because he was her lover. She would obviously lie if she said she felt good even if she was behind him as a chef.

People often thought that Kaya wouldn’t have tried harder to come to the pinnacle of her career as it was now. Some of them thought so because of her image as a genius chef at the Grand Chef competition in the past, but it was not true that she didn’t try as hard as Min-joon.