I Started Seeing the Kick
“Is he insane?”
It was just an ordinary aglio e olio pasta that, on the surface, looked like nothing special.
But the moment I took a single bite.
“Our kitchen assistant really made this?”
The kitchen assistant. He'd been nothing more than a nobody, and yet.
“This bastard's a madman, isn't he?”
The kick was garlic. And not just any garlic, but garlic flakes fried crisp in oil.
The crunchy texture of the garlic flakes and the savory flavor spreading through the mouth met the pasta, its mantecatura done to perfection, and.......
“The taste is just insane, seriously.”
Do Eun-seong.
The kid who'd done nothing but pointlessly try hard in the corner started to change right before he was about to be fired. And like a completely different person, at that.
***
“The guest would like a rare steak without any blood.”
Michelin 2-star restaurant ‘Ayeon.’ One o'clock in the afternoon, in the thick of a busy lunch service. A server who'd been going back and forth between the hall and the kitchen carefully set down the steak on his tray.
A bloodless rare? If it's rare, the inside obviously isn't cooked, so shouldn't the blood show? It's not like this is a hot iced Americano or something. I was thinking to myself about how a bloodless rare could possibly be done.
At that moment, Kim Jun-ho, who was in charge of the entire meat section, came out and called over my two peers who'd come in with me but had already been promoted to junior cooks.
“Le Cordon, you first. In a situation like this, what should you do to satisfy the customer?”
“At our school... we would use a double-searing technique to cook the surface crispy while keeping the inside tender, making the blood less visible, or-”
Kim Jun-ho nodded.
“That's enough. America, what about you?”
“At my restaurant, when that kind of request came in, we served it by cutting the meat into cubes and cooking it to minimize the red.”
As expected of those who'd studied abroad, they gave answers that perfectly harmonized theory and hands-on experience. To the point that even I, listening, nodded along.
“Do Eun-seong, what about you?”
Then Kim Jun-ho looked at me and asked.
“I......”
I had no money, no connections, no credentials. Even so, I wanted to become a cook. A fine dining chef, at that.
So, with great difficulty, I'd gotten in as a kitchen assistant at this Michelin 2-star restaurant. It wasn't simply luck. I'd worked really hard on my own.
“From what I've seen in books, you could use a cut like top blade or chuck flap, which have a lot of marbling, so they look less bloody even when cooked rare, or......”
I dragged out as much of the cooking knowledge I'd worked so hard to build up as I could and answered. But-
“Are top blade or chuck flap prepared right now?”
Kim Jun-ho said coldly.
“They are being kept in the freezer.”
“No, I'm asking if they're prepped perfectly enough to be grilled right this second and sent out to the guest.”
“No. They have not been prepped to that degree.”
He let out a deep sigh.
“Eun-seong, that's exactly why you're the only one who still can't hold a pan. You still don't know why you're the only one who's been nothing but an assistant for two years?”
“......”
“Our restaurant doesn't keep assistants past two years.”
He was right.
Michelin 2-star Ayeon didn't keep the same kitchen assistant for more than two years. Meaning, if a kitchen assistant didn't show talent within two years, no matter how good they were at assistant work, they'd be cut without mercy. After all, there was no shortage of aspiring cooks who wanted to be a kitchen assistant at a 2-star.
“Do Eun-seong, you've got exactly one month left.”
***
Eleven at night.
Chop-chop-chop-chop.
Two years as a kitchen assistant. By now I'd become someone who could cut onions for an hour without shedding a single tear. Only after I'd cut all three boxes of onions alone did my work for the day come to an end.
Next, I took out the ingredients I'd bought in advance. This was my daily routine. Buying the cheapest ingredients I could find at the mart before work, then practicing cooking alone in the restaurant after everyone had gone home.
A bloodless rare. Today, I wanted to practice the bloodless rare steak I hadn't been able to answer for that morning.
Sizzzzle.
I put a slab of meat on the griddle and took out my notebook. The methods the junior cooks had answered were written there, without a single one missing.
Going through NewTube, cookbooks, and my notebook that held the skills of Ayeon's cooks, I made a bloodless rare steak on my own.
No money, no connections, no credentials, but that was fine. Effort was free anyway. I believed that if I kept trying, someday I'd become a fine dining chef. So, in the kitchen after everyone had left, I practiced every day, and practiced again.
“......”
On the way home.
What on earth could I show them in a month? That thought kept surfacing until it made me stop walking. No matter how much theory I studied alone or how much I practiced alone, I couldn't find the answer. My two years at Ayeon had always been like that.
“So this is what it feels like to crave soju.”
Feeling lost and stifled, I found myself wanting soju, something I normally wouldn't even look at.
That was when. As though it were a lie, a street tent bar I'd never seen before caught my eye on one side of a street corner.
‘Was there something like this here?’
In a bleak neighborhood that had nothing but apartment complexes and commercial buildings, a street tent bar I'd never seen before was giving off a very bright yellow light. So suddenly that it made me feel sheepish for having just thought of soju.
I wanted to go in and eat right away, but I had to hold back. I was a kitchen assistant who had to get up at dawn tomorrow and go to work. I was also worried about my younger brother, who'd be waiting for me at home alone.
“Pork skin 10,000 won, doenjang drinking soup on the house.”
As I deliberately looked away and walked past, the old lady who owned the place stood up as if she'd been waiting for me, and spoke to me.
“Student, it's cold out, so have a glass of soju with some piping-hot broth before you go.”
The grandmother's warm words. On top of that, the savory smell of the drinking soup brushing the tip of my nose on the wind pulled at me strangely. And with good timing-
Gurgle.
My stomach gave me a signal.
Truth was, I'd been working so frantically that I hadn't properly eaten a single meal. And it wasn't just today; practicing late every night, I'd barely eaten dinner.
On top of that-
-Study room today.
I even got a message from my brother saying he'd be home late today.
Alright, then. Today, I'll just eat here.
“Grandma, one plate of pork skin, please.”
I sat down naturally between a middle-aged woman who looked like she'd come from grocery shopping and a burly middle-aged man, both already seated at the tent bar.
“Soju too?”
As if it were a given, the grandmother first set a bottle of soju down in front of me with a thunk.
Soju.
Since I'd decided at twenty-one to become a fine dining chef, it was a drink I'd never once touched. That was my own rule for keeping my sense of taste as sharp as possible.
Not just soju, but cigarettes, and even soda like cola, I didn't touch. I'd lived like that for five years, as if in training, and yet.......
On a hopeless day like today, I needed this too. I hesitated for a long time, and then.......
“Yes. Please.”
It was my first soju in five years.
“Kuhh......”
The soju I drank after so long wasn't sweet, only bitter. Still, I just kept drinking. Hoping even such cheap comfort would work.
Thunk.
“Soju with this, and any worry'll come undone.”
The grandmother pushed over the drinking soup in an old porcelain bowl.
“Thank you.”
I picked up the spoon and took a sip of the drinking soup. The savory, salty aroma of doenjang filling my mouth. The sharp, spicy aroma of minced garlic. On top of that, even the subtle sweetness of radish cooked until soft and spreading out.
It was good. It was definitely good, but.......
The sweetness was a little lacking to balance out the saltiness, and a very faint pork gaminess rose up.
“Hmm......”
I took another spoonful of the drinking soup.
Well, even so, this was the best you could ask for as a side for drinking. Besides, it was on the house, wasn't it? Expecting perfect flavor here would be strange.
“Kyaaah.”
As the hot broth went down my throat, the sharp rush of the minced garlic spread pleasantly all the way to the top of my head.
But then.
“Why does this taste like this?”
An irritated voice came from inside the tent bar, and the burly man began shouting at the grandmother.
“You serve this crap broth and expect to get paid?”
His flushed face made him look quite drunk.
“Grandma! I'm telling you it tastes bad! What, are your ear holes plugged?”
The man shot up from his seat and made a motion like he was about to hit the grandmother.
Should I go stop him? The moment that thought crossed my mind, I got up, but.......
‘What is this?’
My body wouldn't listen. It was too heavy.
And at that moment-
“Huh!”
The world suddenly seemed to slow down, and a single fluorescent line began to appear before my eyes.
“What the hell is this now?”
Am I too drunk? Or am I seeing things because I'm too tired? But for that to be the case, the fluorescent line shone far too brightly and vividly.
I tried to pull myself together and stared straight at the drinking soup. Then the lines before my eyes began to writhe. Something was incomplete. The fluorescent line snapped off at one particular point. Something wasn't connecting.
The line headed toward a small jar poking out of the middle-aged woman's shopping bag. Bright yellow yuzu marmalade.
And.......
‘I'm supposed to put that yuzu marmalade in doenjang drinking soup?’
That kind of intuition, no, a certainty similar to intuition, came over me.
Then the broken fluorescent line in front of my eyes connected to the yuzu marmalade, and a perfectly completed trajectory was drawn in my head.
I didn't know what on earth this situation was... but I just wanted to check it quickly. I picked up a clean spoon from the cutlery holder and approached the woman sitting at another table.
“Excuse me, ma'am, I'm sorry, but could I borrow just one spoonful of the yuzu marmalade in that shopping bag?”
“The yuzu marmalade?”
“Yes. Yuzu marmalade.”
“Well, why this, all of a sudden?”
The woman looked at me with a puzzled expression, and I held out the spoon I'd brought.
Though the woman still looked like she couldn't understand-
“...Well, alright. If you want it that badly, student.”
She handed me the yuzu marmalade.
“Thank you so much.”
I took the yuzu marmalade and trudged over to the man.
Plop.
Then I scooped a big spoonful of yuzu marmalade right into the man's drinking soup.
“Y-you, what the hell are you doing to my soup?!”
The man yelled at me, and at that moment, the fluorescent lines that had been faintly broken before my eyes connected perfectly and drew a single, enormous, dazzlingly shining circle.
I mixed the yuzu marmalade into the drinking soup well with the spoon, then held it out to the man.
“Sir, would you try this just once?”
“Who the hell are you?!”
“Just try it once.”
“Get this away from me right now!”
“Please! Just try it once!”
I didn't know where or how this courage had come from, but I practically begged the burly man to please eat it, and in the end, the man pretended to give in and took a bite.
And soon-
“...What is this?”
Suddenly the man's voice grew louder.
“Hey, why is this so good?!”