Chương 134: Three Geniuses, One Disaster

To get the American team into fighting shape as fast as possible, Marcella rented a top private training kitchen in New York and scheduled a first three-day joint session. Ethan flew in from Los Angeles; Kira came up from San Francisco. When the three victors who'd fought their way out of the Selection stood together in this superbly equipped kitchen for the first time as "teammates" rather than rivals, the mood was distinctly strange.

"So — we're a team now." Ethan broke the silence. He looked around, a trace of his habitual arrogance in his tone.

"And since we're a team, we need a leader to set the direction." The implication needed no spelling out. As he saw it, in both seniority and technique he was the most qualified to be the team's captain. Kira said nothing. She quietly drew her two beloved Japanese knives from her roll and began honing them on a whetstone, fine and slow, as if everything around her had nothing to do with her. Chris spoke up.

"I think before we decide on a leader, we should first discuss the team's style and the concept of the menu. Every round of the League has a theme. We need a flexible framework, not a fixed commander." He was trying to steer the discussion somewhere more constructive — but he had clearly underestimated the egos of two geniuses.

"Style?" Ethan gave a scornful laugh.

"Our style should be precise, powerful, flawless. The top technique presenting the most perfect dishes. That's what the American team ought to look like."

"Perfect doesn't mean moving." Kira finally spoke, her voice light, but the words as sharp as her knives.

"Food has a soul. Technique is only the tool of expression. If all we chase is perfection, what makes us different from machines?"

"Ha — soul?" Ethan reacted as if he'd heard a joke.

"On a contest floor where every second counts, I trust only data and muscle memory. Not some vague, formless 'soul.'" Seeing the two about to quarrel over a fundamental split in cooking philosophy, Chris hurried to smooth it over.

"All right, all right — let's not argue this now. Today's task is to simulate the League team round: cooperate on a five-course menu. Let's start with the menu design. How about that?" But the menu design became the first powder keg to blow the conflict wide open. Ethan immediately took out pen and paper and scribbled down a menu of extreme complexity and luxury — from sous-vide lobster to a liquid-nitrogen dessert, every course loaded with showmanship.

"This is my concept." He slapped the menu on the table.

"I'll take the appetizer, and the main. The soup — Chris, you can do that. Kira, you take the two desserts." It wasn't a discussion. It was orders being handed down. Chris frowned. This menu was near enough a rerun of Ethan's one-man show, with no thought at all for the other two's styles and strengths. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Kira only glanced at the menu before saying coldly, "I disagree. My dishes, I design myself."

"Your designs?" Ethan raised an eyebrow.

"The kind of art the judges can't even understand? Kira, this is a competition, not your personal exhibition."

"My dishes don't need you to understand them," Kira said, her tone going cold too.

"Enough!" Chris put weight into his voice.

"We keep arguing like this, we won't settle a menu in a day. Let's do it this way — each of us takes one dish, the one we most want to make, and then we find a way to string them together." It was a compromise, of a sort. Ethan and Kira were unwilling, but in the end they grudgingly agreed. And so the kitchen time that followed became an utter disaster. The three of them ran their own affairs in the kitchen like three parallel lines that never met.

Ethan seized the largest, most advanced molecular-cuisine station, clattering through his array of instruments and equipment, letting no one near his "territory." Kira, at another corner of the kitchen, worked her ingredients in silence. Now and then she closed her eyes and read the grain of a fillet with her fingers; now and then she held a leaf up to the sunlight and studied its veins. Her world seemed a self-contained thing, full of a Zen stillness. And Chris became the most awkward one of all.

He tried to gauge Ethan's progress and was rebuffed with a curt "Don't bother me." He tried to talk to Kira, to learn the flavor of her dish so his own could dovetail with it — but Kira only answered, simply, "Haven't figured it out yet." He felt like a spare part. On Burning Kitchen he could easily direct Jack and Sarah, because there was a gap between their ability and his. And at Le Château, he could keep the whole hot line running in order through clear process management.

But now he faced two geniuses on his own level. Both had powerful egos and firm cooking philosophies. They neither needed nor accepted anyone's "command." In the end, five hours later, the three of them produced three dishes that had nothing whatsoever to do with one another. Ethan made a structurally complex "deconstructed gazpacho," using spherification to turn assorted vegetable juices into gleaming pearls — the plating gorgeous, but the mouthfeel cold, full of rational calculation.

Kira brought out a plate of "dry landscape" — a karesansui garden: squid-ink-blackened rice crackers for "stones," matcha powder for "moss," a few slices of sea-bream sashimi thin as cicada wing for the "current." Deep in feeling, but extremely light in flavor, more an object of art than a dish. And Chris, to bridge the two of them, made a by-the-book pan-seared scallop.

When the three dishes were set side by side, they looked absurd and fractured — like three painters who'd each painted the part they did best and then jammed the pieces together by force. At some point Marcella had come to stand in the kitchen doorway. She had watched the whole chaotic "joint session," her face without expression.

"This is the American team's first work?" Her voice was cold as a scalpel.

"If you bring this kind of thing to Paris too, I promise you the American team goes out in the first round and becomes the laughingstock of the world." All three hung their heads in shame.

"Four years ago, we lost to the Korean team. Not because we were worse in technique — because of infighting." Marcella's gaze swept each of them.

"Every one of you wants to prove you're the strongest. But you've forgotten: on the League floor there's no individual champion. Only the victory or defeat of a team."

"Think it through," she said at last.

"Do you actually want to win, or do you only want to prove you're better than your teammates." With that she turned and left, leaving the three of them staring at one another across the vast kitchen. The first joint session ended in total failure. A deep sense of helplessness settled over Chris's heart. He realized that the challenges of technique and creativity were manageable enough; how to truly fuse these three powerful individuals into one team was the hardest problem they had to solve before Paris.