God of Cooking

If Kaya was more faithful to her reason than her emotions, and if she really wanted to lead a life like that of an adult, not a child, what she just said was definitely evidence that she finally became mature. But he didn’t want her to change like that, nor did he want her to become mature. Even if she would be blamed for being immature forever, he wished she could say something immature and childish right next to him.

Kaya didn’t answer easily when he asked if she was serious about what she said. She hesitated, with freckles on her unpainted face visible to him.

In the end, she couldn’t answer. But he didn’t push her because he knew that even if she answered, it was not her real answer.

At that moment he instinctively felt that they put their feet in the mud before they knew it, so they should get out of it before it turned into a swamp.

But where should they walk?

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Clubs are everywhere. For example, bike club or fishing club.

Of course, there are clubs in the cuisine world.

And the club where Sarah belonged to was considered to be one of the most sophisticated gourmet clubs. Originally even she would not have been a member of this choice club.

There were only two reasons why she could join the club. First of all, she could join it thanks to Jeremy’s introduction. Recently this club has enjoyed a high reputation because the club ‘Hungry Jones’ didn’t accept anybody as its member.

The reason why it’s so hard to join the club was not because its members were authoritarian. Most of them were the type of people who had a good personality. They didn’t accept those gourmets who didn’t show any good manners or proper education. For they could not communicate with such people well.

Of course, it’s not bad for everybody to freely express their opinions, but if anyone who has a narrow view wants to have a discussion with somebody else on an equal footing, their conversation won’t give them a pleasant experience.

“Ah, Brad. I hear you recently have been to the Rose Island main restaurant. How did you feel?”

“It’s still good. It’s good. Compared to the old Rose Island that I knew, I thought they still lacked something.”

“Tut tut tut. It seems Rachel is still wandering after Min-joon left.”

Jeremy clicked her tongue and shook his head. All of them knew that Rachel was a great chef because she was so perfect that everybody agreed on it.

But Rachel herself was not perfect as a human, even though she was perfect as a chef. Rachel he used to know was not supposed to stop growing. Perhaps the void left by Daniel had a lot more impact on her than they thought.

“Well, it seems that she has stopped imitating Daniel’s cooking these days.”

“She has been cooking in Daniel’s style, not her own. It’s no wonder she could not show off her real cooking skills.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s fortunate she changed her mind faster than I thought.”

If Min-joon had heard this conversation, he would have been quite surprised because they already talked about Rachel’s problem as if they took it for granted, which he found out over a long period of time.

In fact, the gourmets already knew Rachel’s problem a lot. But the reason they didn’t mention it openly was simple. They felt she also knew her own problem. If a chef like her didn’t know it, it wasn’t because she didn’t know it, but because she didn’t want to know it. So they didn’t want to question her or pretend to know it in such a situation.

It was totally because of Min-joon that she began to change finally, who implored her to change.

“Well, I’m really looking forward to seeing if the Rose Island main restaurant’s menu will become more sophisticated in the near future,” said one gourmet with a smile.

Jeremy also nodded with a smile.

Generally speaking, gourmets tend to criticize as much as they praise a chef’s food. Because of that, some chefs regard gourmets as their enemy, but gourmets want to see chefs make good dishes more than anybody else. They are gourmets because they like to eat. How can they hate people who cook food professionally?

“By the way, would it be better to think of Lotus Bridge as another branch of Rose Island? I heard that the current location of Lotus Bridge was the place where Rose Island ran its main restaurant temporarily, and its owner was Ratchel.”

“Well, if they had wanted to open a restaurant that has the flavor of Rose Island, they would have named it Rose Island from the beginning. So I think Lotus Bridge is a separate entity from Rose Island. In fact, Lotus Island has a two head chefs system that even Rose Island has never tried except for its main restaurant. And Kaya has never worked for Rachel.”

“Oh I see. I’m more concerned than I expect. As you know, this is Min-joon’s first time opening a restaurant. Since he has been doing well until now, people have lots of expectations of him. I wonder if he can satisfy their expectations.”

“Did you hear about their menu?”

“Well, I hear that they would let customers choose only the chef’s test menu for one month.”

“It looks like they’re going to tell the customers how distinct their dishes are…It’s interesting.”

The club members nodded, voicing their own opinions about Lotus Bridge.

While watching them chatting like that, Sarah felt Min-joon really grew a lot as a chef.

He was obviously a mediocre chef who talked about his dream at the time when he was on Hunger Trip with her, but he was now about to realize his dream anytime soon.

“But you have to be careful. There are quite a few idiots who think that Min-joon’s emergence will be a good opportunity for their own business,” she said cynically.

But others shrugged at her words.

One of them replied, “Well, that’s something every celebrity should consider when they open a restaurant.”

“If there’s one thing I want to point out, it’s their business experience. As you know, generally star chefs have their cooking skills thoroughly verified, but Kaya and Min-joon have never run a restaurant by themselves. I know Kaya has run Irregular Lab before, but you can’t compare it to a regular restaurant.”

“Right, Min-joon and Kaya are perfect prey in some respects.”

The hungrier a dog is, the more aggressive she is to humans. And there are numerous gourmets hungry for attacking their targets in this world. For those gourmets, Min-Jun and Kaya would be really attractive prey because given their enormous reputation, they have never had their restaurant vetted by gourmets yet.

Because of that, it was often hard for people to refute gourmets’ criticism no matter how aggressive it was. They knew about Min-joon’s excellent cooking, but they were not sure if he was also good at running a restaurant.

Just by criticizing Min-joon and Kaya these gourmets could make their influence felt again in the cuisine world. At the same time, they could appeal to the general public by arguing that they were smart enough to find out the shortcomings of Min-joon and Kaya.

In other words, the chef couple without a long cooking career could not be a better prey for these sophisticated gourmets.

Sarah muttered quietly, “But these gourmets might not notice that they might be the case of the biter bit by blindly going for the prey just because it’s so tempting.”

No matter how much the Hungry Jones members were concerned about Lotus Bridge, Min-joon and Kaya didn’t pay any attention. Of course, they were warned that those gourmets hungry for fame would soon begin to criticize them and their restaurant. Nonetheless, they were too busy to pay attention to such trivial things.

“Are you crazy?” Kaya cried out in a sharp voice. “Why do you want to change our menu right now?”

“No, we can’t use this one as it is.”

“What do you mean? What’s the problem? We’ve tested this for a long time. If you want to change the menu now, it’s not because you lack artisan spirit, but because you are weak. You have surrendered to their pressure.”

“I know what you’re worried about. But there’s nothing special about our menu.”

“You might think it’s familiar to you because we’ve done it for a long time. But you and I agreed this menu would make all the people happy when we first came up with it. Don’t you remember?”

“Well, I don’t want to make people end up being just happy,” Min-jun said in a stubborn voice. “I want to surprise them.”

“That’s your greed. It’s not for our customers, but for yourself,” Kaya said with a cold expression on her face.

Greed. He felt that word was like an arrow stuck in his chest, but he didn’t take it out.

He said in a low voice, “I’ve come as far as here because of my greed. And my greed is telling me that the dishes I’m making now don’t contain enough of my greed.”

“So, what should we do? What do we want to change?”

“Cho Reggiano. Six Meats. Let’s take them out of the menu.”