WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 220: Rest - Hell's Hotel Kitchen (2)
──────
- Lee Eun-sol
The ingredients were unsettling enough already, so I was shocked to hear I had to eat twelve dishes.
“Hey! Hey! Say something that makes sense. I’m not a competitive eater. How am I supposed to eat twelve dishes?”
“Why can’t you?”
Had this person, no, this monster, finally lost it?
“You told me to judge fairly, didn’t you? I’ve never even eaten more than three plates at a buffet. Do you think I can suddenly eat twelve?”
“Ah! You mean your stomach isn’t large enough?”
“That’s right.”
“You needn’t worry about that.”
The Merchant proudly pulled several pills from one hand.
“...”
“Take one of these every time you finish a dish. It’ll solve all your stomach problems. It’ll also prevent the effects of one dish from lingering and affecting your evaluation of the next. All dishes will be served on the Hotel’s special plates, so the later dishes won’t grow cold or lose flavor while you eat the earlier ones.”
I didn’t bother asking whether pills and plates like that could possibly exist. This was the Hotel. I just had to accept it.
More than that, I closed my eyes at the thought of forcing down twelve dishes made in that kitchen, where ominous noises kept coming from inside.
“Bro! Do cows normally have noses on their legs too?”
“God, this is driving me crazy! Seung-yeop! I told you to throw that away!”
“Sis, do mushrooms normally move?”
“Eek! Song-i, that’s not a mushroom!”
“I don’t have to eat this, right? Thank goodness.”
“Eun-sol is the one eating it.”
Ga-in, please! You’re just glad you don’t have to eat it? I was already disgusted, and I hadn’t even seen the food yet!
“Merchant! Merchant!”
“Oh? Participant Kim A-ri, do you have something to say?”
“Give us more cooking time. The ingredients are weird, so preparing them takes longer. Ah! That shrimp just split in two, and another shrimp came out from inside it!”
“That is the Hotel specialty, Split Shrimp. As for extending the cooking time, if all participants agree...”
“Everyone agrees.”
The cooking time was extended to an hour and a half. That didn’t mean they’d be able to make food a person could eat.
Couldn’t there just be normal shrimp instead of things like Split Shrimp? I covered my face with both hands, lowered my head, and waited.
An hour and a half wasn’t that long.
* * *
Once the cooking time ended, my companions gathered with eight dishes covered by silver lids.
--- Clatter! Clatter!
“...”
“Hoho! Participant Park Seung-yeop? Your dish is extremely fresh.”
“It wouldn’t die no matter how much I hit it.”
“So you simply put it on the plate?”
Buddha! Have I not cultivated myself enough?
“Chef Lee Eun-sol.”
“...”
“Chef Lee Eun-sol?”
“Mm...”
“Please put on the hat for the evaluation. It will help you give an honest assessment.”
A hat? Come to think of it, there had been a hat on the table from the moment I arrived. Did it have some kind of meaning? Or was it just meaningless decoration? What did the Merchant mean by helping me give an honest assessment?
“Participants, please bring your dishes forward in the order I call you. Participant Kim Mook-seong, first.”
Hearing Grandpa’s name made me feel calmer. Over the past few months, I’d learned that he had plenty of life experience and knew his way around cooking!
Sure enough, even before the lid was lifted, the dish placed in front of me smelled good.
“Grandpa, what is this?”
“You’ll know when you see it. It’s just steamed seafood, so don’t worry.”
Just as he said, it was steamed seafood with a good mix of shellfish, octopus, and fish. Was the tiny portion out of consideration for me, since I had to eat so much today? I liked that too.
...
“How am I supposed to judge it?”
“However you want.”
“Grandpa! Good work. My score is... eight out of ten! There isn’t any fishy smell, the seasoning is good, and the savory, rich flavor really comes through. The chewiness of the shellfish and the refreshing broth were both excellent.”
Grandpa tilted his head.
“I’m pretty confident in my steamed seafood, so an eight feels a little disappointing. You said it tastes good, so why’d you take off two points?”
Before I could answer, the Merchant cut in.
“Participant Kim Mook-seong!”
“...”
“Please address the chef properly.”
“... May I ask why you deducted two points?”
The answer was simple.
“The octopus is too fresh.”
The octopus I lifted with my chopsticks was clearly cooked through, white all the way through, yet its legs still slowly wriggled. If I weren’t someone who regularly ate live octopus, I would’ve thrown up just from seeing it!
“I cut off that bastard’s head and legs, then boiled it for twenty minutes. Why won’t it die?”
The Merchant spoke from beside us.
“Hoho! Participant, the Hotel’s specialty octopus is highly resistant to heat. It is weak to cold, though, so if you freeze it to death beforehand...”
“Cut the bullshit!”
Grandpa grumbled for a while before leaving the table. Once I took one of the pills beside me, the sensation of food in my stomach vanished completely, and my mouth felt freshly cleansed.
It was time for the next dish.
Elena was the one who brought it over.
“Phew! The others chose strange ingredients and had a hard time, didn’t they? But not every ingredient in that storeroom was weird. I made my dish mostly with normal ingredients, so you’ll like it, sis.”
Just hearing that was reassuring.
The moment I saw the pink soup Elena placed before me, I recognized it. It was borscht, a traditional Eastern European soup. Its characteristic reddish pink color came from red beets, along with smetana, a sour cream made by fermenting cream.
Just as Elena said, she seemed to have used only normal ingredients. No squid swam around in the soup or anything. I slowly emptied the bowl with my spoon.
“Elena, I’ll give you extra points for the ingredients first. It was nice not having wriggling onions in there.”
“Thank you!”
“Did you learn the recipe from your mother?”
“Not exactly. I just naturally learned it while growing up. It’s something we eat often.”
“You must have made it for other people many times too.”
“Yes. I made it for my father a few times, and for friends I made in Korea as well.”
“Did they all like it?”
“Of course.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Pardon?”
“They couldn’t tell you the truth after seeing your face. Or maybe they’d never had borscht before and thought it was supposed to taste this strange. I’m sorry, but I’ve had borscht before. It’s a relief you didn’t learn this recipe from your mother. Your mother would be surprised if she ate it too.”
“W-what?”
“The ingredients are excellent, the presentation is clean, and I can feel the thought you put into it for me. Everything is good except for one thing. The taste. From now on, only make borscht for people close to you. They’ll keep quietly eating it all.”
“Eeeeeek!”
“My score is five. Move aside, next person!”
Elena stood there with her mouth hanging open in shock after my vicious criticism, while the others looked dazed too.
Then I became dazed as well.
“Ahhh! What was that? Hey, Merchant! What was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“M-my mouth moved on its own the moment I ate that dish! I hadn’t even said anything. I was still choosing my words...”
“Hoho! Didn’t I tell you when I gave you the hat? I said it would help you give an honest assessment.”
“What does that even...”
“The Hotel is always concerned that school ties, regional ties, and personal connections might interfere with fair evaluations. You cannot praise someone just because you are close, or tear them apart because you dislike them.”
I was speechless!
Song-i’s dish was placed in front of me next. Since she had watched me, or rather this crazy hat, make Elena cry in real time, she was extremely cautious.
“U-um, sis. I originally wanted to make kimchi fried rice...”
“But there wasn’t any kimchi?”
“Yeees... There was no kimchi, and there was chili powder, but no gochujang either.”
“So what is this? Cabbage instead of kimchi, and soy sauce for seasoning?”
“Yes. Please think of it as cabbage and soy sauce fried rice.”
“This is completely inauthentic.”
“...”
I emptied the plate.
“At least the ingredients aren’t wriggling. The stir-frying is decent too.”
“T-that’s a relief.”
“But did you even taste this?”
“Pardon?”
“Did the cabbage go for a swim in the ocean? I’ve never had fried rice this salty in my life! And what is this fried egg? It’s burned all over! Even a Stone Age person would handle fire better than you!”
Song-i looked pitiful, as though she might fly away at any moment, then hurried off. Her score was four.
The kitchen was filled with chaos!
A-ri was the next to bring over a dish.
“I’m not going to say anything.”
When I lifted the lid, I found beef stew.
The moment I swallowed a single spoonful, the strange urge to keep spewing vicious remarks that the hat had been feeding into me disappeared!
The meat was tender enough to melt in my mouth, with the fragrant aroma of bay leaves and vegetables that made my mouth happy! The rich, savory stew broth was so full of flavor that I regretted there being so little of it.
“A-A-ri!”
“Yeah?”
“This is incredible! What is this? It’s so good! Have you ever worked as a chef?”
“Hmph. What’s my score?”
“Do I even need to say it? Ten points! It’s a ten. I’ve never eaten anything like this in my life.”
The corner of A-ri’s mouth curled up!
Had she really learned how to cook somewhere? She was the kind of companion who wouldn’t surprise me no matter what she claimed to have done, but this was incredible.
I wasn’t joking. Every spoonful felt like lightning was flashing through my head! How could food like this exist? I may not look it, but I came from a wealthy family and had eaten plenty of expensive food since I was young, yet it was hard to compare this to any of them...
... Did this make sense? It wasn’t as if she were a professional chef who had spent thirty years perfecting beef stew.
“I object!”
A booming voice came from behind me, and I looked up. Ga-in had raised his hand.
“I saw it earlier...”
“Be quiet!”
“A-ri, you be quiet. Ga-in, go ahead.”
“Right before A-ri finished cooking, she added her own blood. I believe there must have been some evil trick involving the power of Old Blood.”
... Everyone stared blankly at A-ri.
“Fine! Defense time!”
“... Go ahead.”
“Isn’t this cooking contest just about making delicious food? Isn’t it? There was no rule saying I couldn’t add my blood.”
“No, but that’s just common sense...”
“There’s nowhere in the world that tells you to cook with beef that stays alive even when only a leg is left! By the Hotel’s standards, maybe I’m the one who’s right?”
As my mind grew hazy, another voice added to the confusion.
“Hmm. That is true.”
“What do you mean, it’s true?”
“There is no rule in Hell's Hotel Kitchen saying you cannot use an Inheritance. I did not prohibit that either. Besides, the Hotel’s ingredients are somewhat ‘special’ by nature, so there is room to view Miss A-ri’s blood as her own special secret ingredient.”
This cooking contest had to be insane. Didn’t the Hotel say earlier that it rejected things like school ties, regional ties, and personal connections? A cooking contest that rejected school and regional ties but allowed brainwashing through an Inheritance. Wonderful.
“Besides, Chef Eun-sol already gave the dish a score of ten, so the judging is over.”
“Haha! You heard that, Ga-in! You should’ve objected earlier.”
“Wow! Isn’t the world completely insane?”
Not the world. The Hotel was a little crazy. I answered dazedly.
“Fine, whatever. But if you add blood again next time, I’ll give you zero points.”
“Okay!”
“Next!”
The next dish placed in front of me was Ga-in’s.
--- Clatter!
I had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling that an extremely fresh dish was about to appear!
Footnotes:
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