Culinary Class Wars (흑백요리사: 요리 계급 전쟁)

And the contestant dismissed is...

ANNOUNCING THE MEMBER TO BE DISMISSED FROM TEAM CHOI HYUN-SEOK

...Ahn You-seong.

-Wow. -Really?

AHN YOU-SEONG DISCARDED

Ooh.

Chef Ahn, please move to the empty restaurant.

You've been dismissed.

I was dumbfounded.

It was like getting hit on the head with a hammer.

I had never considered the possibility that I might be dismissed.

They were out to get me.

Hmm.

I picked Chef Ahn You-seong.

I chose him.

Every person on this team is indispensable,

but his role was overlapping with chef Jang Ho-joon's.

I needed Auntie Omakase #1

on the seaweed as per our menu,

so I felt that we had to keep her.

Every single one of these people are skilled chefs.

But I believe that Chef Ahn was ultimately replaceable.

It seemed like it was a really intense vote for that team.

They all kind of looked tense and secretive.

They were hiding their slips when they went up to cast their votes.

The three dismissed contestants must now join forces as a new team

and start making preparations to open a new restaurant.

They have to start from scratch?

You will be given an operating budget of three million won,

and you must completely start over.

A new theme.

A new menu.

And you must shop for ingredients.

-Holy crap. -They're in trouble.

Oh.

To do all that work all over again, that must've shaken them.

Their morale must've already been pretty low,

and now they need a new menu.

It seemed like it was over for those guys.

I think it was the right decision to leave.

The three of us

decided we would each do what we were best at.

Well, what if we do this?

Let's each cook our best dishes

and name them something eye-catching that people would definitely want to buy.

His idea was for each of us to do something we were good at,

a dish that we were confident in.

I can make a dongpo rou.

No tweaks.

Not to toot my own horn, but I have a great recipe.

And it's the best-selling dish at my restaurant.

What do you think about me doing a tempura rice bowl?

-I agree. Yeah. -Sounds good to me, yep.

-I like it. -Yeah.

-I'll make a mapo tofu? - Mapo tofu?

-Yeah! -Yeah? Sounds like a good idea to me.

We should definitely be writing down each of the dishes we're making.

Yeah, let's write them down.

- Mapo tofu. - Tendon.

We can write stuff down like,

" Dongpo rou that was featured on Sung Si-kyung's Grab a Bite. "

I like where this is going.

Mapo tofu from Food Travel ?

-I absolutely love that. -What was that?

-Food Travel. -Food Travel.

Food Travel.

- Tendon. -And for the tendon...

-How about, "The Blue House..." -That sounds awesome.

-The Blue House master... -Holy smokes!

-...chef's... -Tendon.

... tendon.

We wanted people to feel like they couldn't miss out on this restaurant.

All three of us are very popular chefs, and now we're working together.

I figured that was how we could brand ourselves

and create our identity.

So we named it

"The Restaurant Even Those in Show Biz Want to Wait in Line For."

Oh, that sounds great.

I think we're really onto something special here.

-Let's go with that. -And 22,000 won.

I love it. Absolutely love it. This is amazing.

In that case...

-Right. -Let's keep refining the menu.

Should we get going?

THE DISMISSED TEAM BEGINS SHOPPING

It doesn't look that great, because it's too thick.

It'll be thinner if we julienne it instead.

-I think so too. -Should I chop it up thinner?

It looks a lot nicer this way.

I'll just do it myself.

Chopping, it's no big deal.

I won't be sleeping anyways.

I shouldn't have said chopping wasn't a big deal,

because it took a very long time.

It took me four or five hours straight.

Looks like we are going to have to pull an all-nighter.

Staying up all night at my age...

I'll probably get dementia.

Just let me know if you think it's too salty.

It's too salty.

I'll get new ones from the store and make another batch.

We've all got a higher workload now

since we're down a member.

-You bummed? -No, we've just got more work.

-Is there any more? -Let's go. Let's go.

How about we do this? What if we prep the vegetables first?

This one looks like it's out of juice. Do it again.

9 HOURS 30 MINUTES TO OPENING

I'm making chili oil like a madman right now.

7 HOURS 30 MINUTES TO OPENING

I doubt they even work this hard on Physical 100.

5 HOURS 30 MINUTES TO OPENING

Why bother sleeping? I'll sleep once I'm dead anyways.

I'm so exhausted.

My body feels like it's melting like butter.

4 HOURS TO OPENING OF RESTAURANTS

I've got to see this through.

I'm giving it my all.

-I'm so close to passing out. -I've been chopping forever.

00 PM

There's so much trash in here.

Wow. I'm really just so exhausted.

We've got over fifty servings now.

-My eyes keep closing. -Oh.

We really don't have that much time left.

2 HOURS TO OPENING OF RESTAURANTS

-Look! How did this happen? -Hello! Welcome!

We were shocked to hear the news.

I'm sure you guys went through a lot last night.

Well, you know, it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I think all three of us have been itching to finally make our own signature dishes.

And so now, we're actually getting that chance.

So we really couldn't be happier,

despite the fact that we got no sleep and that we had to stay up all night.

These two were popular with the network people.

But this one will be the star of the show.

-Right. -Yeah.

I've gotta try this one to see if all the past presidents

will approve of this.

This tempura rice bowl,

I can see why the presidents liked this dish so much.

Thank you.

This is dongpo rou.

At first, I set out to make normal dongpo rou,

but I actually ultimately decided to remove the skin.

-There's no skin. -This is skinless pork belly?

-A traditional dongpo rou. -Named the classic dongpo rou .

Mm. Melts in your mouth.

This is up there in terms of overall execution.

-It's restaurant-level. -Thank you so much.

-And next? -Sichuan-style mapo tofu.

It's one of my personal favorites because it's the first dish

that earned Mao some respect.

-Mao from the comic book series? -That's right.

Mmm.

There's a gentle rush of umami. The juices...

The other teams better stay on their toes.

The other restaurants better do more than just that.

This menu's really good.

Yeah, agreed.

The unusual thing about your guys' restaurant

is that your prices are all quite uniform across the menu.

The other teams prices are like this or like this,

with a low-price, medium-price, and high-price dish.

You guys went a different route

and are featuring all of your signature dishes.

A dish from everyone.

And I can see this either being an advantage or a disadvantage.

Out of the four restaurants, you guys have the lowest average price.

I love restaurants that offer the best bang for your buck.

But on the flip side,

some people might question the quality of the dishes

because of the prices

because they might just see them as cheap.

So it might help to come up with

a compelling narrative for each of the dishes

if you want them to perform well today.

-And I'm only giving you guys this advice. -Oh yes.

It's only fair.

-You lost so much time. -Right.

They do have one advantage.

They're all former members of the other three teams.

Together, they have a lot of insight

into their former teams' strengths and weaknesses.

That could work in their favor if they play their cards right.

Beef brisket. Shrimp.

-The mala is softer with the cream. -That's right.

What's this over here?

So that's the gochujang butter.

That butter's delicious. Hmm?

TEAM TRIPLE STAR TRIPLE CHINESE RESTAURANT

This is great.

I mean, you guys are all set.

You simply cannot judge chefs at this level

based on culinary skills alone.

We wanted to test their business acumen as well

to see how they would run a restaurant.

This should be fun.

10 MINUTES BEFORE RESTAURANTS OPEN

All right, everyone on standby?