God of Cooking

Watching him with an unpleasant expression, Kaya just stepped forward without answering.

Min-joon whispered to her in a ridiculous voice, “I hope he doesn’t look at you romantically...”

“Actually, he is! He has a crush on me.”

“What?”

“It hurts. Don’t just hold my hand tight like that,” she said in a lowly subdued voice.

Min-joon looked askance at Brian, whose eyes were fixed on her back.

“Can I rebuke him?”

“Don’t do it now. Cameramen are here, so I don’t want to raise the attention of people because of this on the air.”

“Man, if it were not for the broadcast, I would...”

“What the heck? You want to hit him? I know you can’t fight well.”

“You hit the nail on the head...” Min-joon said with a bitter smile.

While chatting like that, they soon arrived at the kitchen. Normally, they would be so delighted to see the kitchen and pantry after a long time, but they were not excited at all perhaps because of what they heard a moment ago.

At that moment, Brian opened his mouth as if he was bragging.

“I heard that you’re a member of Rose Island.”

“How did you know? I didn’t expect that you know that because you didn’t recognize my face.”

“Well, I just heard that there was someone like you at Rose Island. Anyway, I recently got a job offer from Rose Island recently. Yeah, your Dallas branch. But I declined the offer because I received the head chef position at another restaurant.”

“Wow, congratulations!” Min-joon said sullenly.

Maybe Brian thought he was ahead of Min-joon because of that, but there was no reason for Min-joon to react to that. He was a member of the Rose Island main store, and even June, the head chef at its New York branch, the most popular branch, was extremely wary of him.

Something came to Min-joon’s mind then.

He made eye contact with Brian and smiled, saying, “Oh, I don’t think it’s good to congratulate you by paying lip service like this. How about a cooking competition with me?”

Min-joon was driven by competitive desire at the moment.

Startled by his sudden offer, Brian looked at him with a confused expression.

Brian never expected Min-joon would come up with such a suggestion. But he was a chef anyway. As a chef, he was more confident about cooking than anybody else.

So, he confidently replied, “Okay, what do you want to cook?”

“I don’t like cooking meat early in the morning. How about cooking fish?”

“Cooking fish? No problem. Mediterranean cuisine is my specialty.”

Brian turned up one corner of his mouth with a confident expression. Honestly, he was piqued by Min-joon’s throwing down the gauntlet so confidently.

‘I am the winner of the Grand Chef competition anyway.’

In fact, he didn’t feel good whenever he heard that the participants in the Grand Chef Season 3, where Min-joon participated in, were superior to those from other seasons, including him. This meant he was inferior to Min-joon. So, he wanted to clear the air by beating Min-joon on this occasion.

However, Min-joon didn’t feel nervous or agitated, looking at him. No wonder he was calm.

Laura’s cooking level was 8. However, Brian’s cooking level was only 7. Of course, a chef with a cooking level 7 was quite good, generally speaking.Given that he won the Grand Chef three years ago, his current cooking level seemed to prove that it was true that many people thought the Grand Chef Season 1 was the worst of all Grand Chef competitions.

“Why are you behaving so childishly?” Kaya whispered to Min-joon, blushing as if she felt ashamed of his proposal.

But Min-joon replied in an angry voice, “I want to have him pay the price for trying to hit on you.”

“Are you confident about beating him?”

“You tell me. You must have seen him cooking several times, right? Do you think I can win or lose?”

“Well, I don’t think I have to answer.”

“It sounds like you think I can win. Yeah, I think so.”

“You don’t know how he cooks. How can you be so sure?”

As if she was really curious, she narrowed her brows.

“It’s a matter of probability. He’s my age.”

“Why do you think so?”

“There are few my age who cook better than me.”

Given his cooking level on the system window, it was natural that Min-joon was so confident, but what he just told Kaya was also true. Any chef his age couldn’t beat him as far as cooking skills were concerned. Even Anderson, who were thought to cook as a kid by great chefs, was not as competent as him. As far as Min-joon knew, Brian was not so talented or an elite who received special education for the gifted.

Brian was just an ordinary chef with decent talent. The reason he could be Grand Chef’s winner was because people didn’t show much attention to the Grand Chef Season 1. There were not many applicants, and the competition was not so intense. So, Brian, who could not have won in another Grand Chef competition, won the 1st competition. That was what most people thought, and at the same time, it was Brian’s Achilles heel.

‘You can’t ignore me, Brian.’

Thinking like that, Min-joon looked at Brian coldly. Suddenly, he was surprised to find himself rather hawkish toward Brian. It had been a while since he felt hostile toward somebody like this. He never expected he would show Kaya his aggressive trait in front of Brian.

“What kind of fish should we use?”

“Well, you can choose your own.”

Having said that, Min-joon already decided on the fish he would cook—Sea bream. It was a cooks’ favorite fish. It wasn’t that fishy, but at the same time, its flesh had the most subtle chewy texture.

Laura didn’t get involved in their competition, but she knew what was going on between them. It wasn’t that difficult for her to realize that this wasn’t just a competition of their cooking skills to determine who would be the winner. She was already aware that Brian had set his heart on Kaya for a long time.

At that moment, more than ten people came into the kitchen suddenly. Watching the two casually, they opened their eyes wide after noticing Min-joon. Except for Kaya’s team, most of them saw him for the first time today.

“Uh, isn’t he Min-joon?”

“That’s right! Min-joon! Nice to meet you!”

“Are you cooking now?”

They asked a barrage of questions all of a sudden.

Jaden stopped before them and said arrogantly, “Hey, who do you think you are? Why are you guys speaking to him so thoughtlessly?

“What the heck?! Why are you stopping us, Jaden?”

“Why? Because I’m his best friend. Well, he is Kaya’s guest. In other words, he’s our guest. But you guys have nothing to do with him, right?”

Listening to him behind his back, Min-joon laughed at his ridiculous excuses.

With an air of conceit, Jaden said, “Anyway, don’t bother Min-joon when you have nothing to do with him.”

“Man, if somebody sees you now, he might misunderstand you as his friend.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Min-joon, we’re friends, right?”

Having said so, Jaden showed his fist. Looking at it briefly, Min-joon bumped fists with him.

Raising his chin, Jaden looked around others and said, “As you can see, we’re friends, so just go back.”

“Oh, you don’t have to go back. Since you are here, let me ask you a favor.”

“Favor?”

“I’m going to compete with Chef Brian over cooking, so can you be our judge? The more judges we have, the more fair the final results are.”

“Are you saying that Chef Min-joon is cooking in person?”

One of Brian’s team members asked, with his eyes twinkling. Watching him, Brian looked subtly upset. Obviously, when he came here, they weren’t excited about him at all. But they were now so crazy about Min-joon, who was not the winner of Grand Chef, which Brian could not understand.

‘You’re lucky to have Rachel as your teacher, isn’t that right?’ Brian thought to himself, despising him. He felt if he had met Rachel like Min-joon, he would have grown as a far better chef than now.

Of course, he wasn’t sure if he could have really become a great chef, but that was what he was thinking at the moment.

“Brian, shall we start?”

“Sure.”

Brian responded calmly when he spoke in a relaxed voice. In fact, Brian was a little concerned because he wasn’t sure if he could cook well. He had been active as a head chef until now. This meant that he didn’t have many opportunities to cook by himself in the kitchen.

Although he continued to cook alone, it was rather rare for him to cook before several people like now. So, when Min-joon asked them to serve as referees on their cooking, Brian’s heart sunk.

‘Hey, calm down, Brian. You are a chef. Just because you worked as the head chef directing your kitchen staff rather than cooking in person, doesn’t mean you’re not good at cooking anymore. Just keep doing what you have been doing...’ Brian was determined deep down.

While Brian refreshed his determination like that, Min-joon headed to the pantry. Curious about what he would do, the referees followed him like a chick chasing a mother chicken then whispered among themselves when they saw him choosing sea breams.

“Hey, what the heck? He picked up the sea breams even without checking their condition.”

“But the sea bream looked very fresh. Does he just trust the Grand Chef pantry or has he already checked the condition of the sea breams?”

“I think I remember Anchor Ellen commenting that as far as checking the condition of fish was concerned, Min-joon was probably the best chef in the world. I think her comments were no exaggeration at all...”

They could not help but admire Min-joon’s excellent ability to check out the condition of ingredients, for one of the things that took up the most time was the process of selecting ingredients when chefs were in the competition. Given Min-joon’s dexterity in selecting ingredients, it seemed he was born for the competition.

Min-joon picked sea bream while Brian picked mullet. And the other materials Brian picked were also gorgeous—pine mushrooms, fennel, red wine vinegar, tomatoes, and squid. Min-joon got a sense of what kind of dish Brian was going to cook just by looking at the ingredients he chose.

On the other hand, Min-joon’s ingredients were simple. Except for white wine for sea bream and Flambé, the other ingredients he picked were vegetables such as onions, celery, and carrots.

‘I don’t even have to pick gorgeous ingredients.’