"Begin!"

"Understood!"

A flaaaaaare!

The fire began to catch in earnest at the burners.

Today at Cheonun, the Chinese section of the Signiel hotel, they mean to show cooking done properly.

Cantonese pork braised in a soy-based sauce until it gleams; dim sum in a thin skin, prawn and pork for the main filling with any number of other things added for the flavour; grouper steamed Hong Kong style; pine mushrooms fried with hanwoo fillet, and the rest of it — every dish brought to its flavour with ingredients of the first quality.

Clatter, clatter.

Lin Hao, head chef of the Chinese section, worked the wok without a tremor in him.

A chef of the first rank, his skill acknowledged on the mainland, and he is working in a Korean hotel.

The executive chef of the cooking division had given a particular order for the dishes going out today.

I shall show them what Chinese cooking is at its heart!

Shff-shff.

The air in Ao, the Japanese restaurant, was no different.

Sakai Haruto, head of the Japanese section, had taken up the sashimi knife as well.

He had prepared a sashimi moriawase of the season.

For the main he had settled on fish in season, brought in at dawn from the Garak-dong produce and fisheries market — otoro of bluefin tuna, shima-aji, benjari, suzuki.

For the sub items, live prawn from Dokdo, live abalone and sea urchin were ready.

All of them ingredients of the highest grade, at the peak of freshness.

Shhhhhck.

Like a samurai trained to the last degree in the one-sword school, he began to take the flesh off the fish without hesitation.

The way the fillet came off differed a little with the kind of fish.

Sakai Haruto, his whole attention on the blade going forward as though sliding!

Today he means to show the children of Korea's chaebol houses what real Japanese cooking is.

Without any fuss, the section kitchens of the Signiel hotel were going into battle.

Except in one place.

"Could you people know the taste of a true mille-feuille? Have you so…