Absinthe novel Chapter 24

I now know the reason why Chef Maxwell's classes were expensive as fuck. I thought we'd be in the kitchen all day long, learning secret techniques to cutting vegetables and roasting meats. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Classes started at exactly 7 in the fucking morning. That wasn't new to me since I used to work earlier than that for more than a decade back in Samsong Group. However, the few months I'd practically done nothing but party and shop had ruined my body clock. It was now near impossible for me to wake up that early and attend the class on time.

At 7, we had professors from the Atheneum University come over to give custom-tailored classes in marketing, accounting, management, finance, and other relevant business administration courses. Chef Maxwell explained that those were all needed because we were training to be not just cooks in the kitchen but also executive chefs who would one day lead the culinary industry in the country.

Executive chef? I liked the sound of that.

"For today's class, I've prepared a case study for one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the history of the country," Professor Stefano Martinez began.

To be honest, I hate marketing. It's the least exact of all the disciplines in business administration. And I've never seen a marketing specialist climb their way up the corporate ladder. Even the top marketing executives at Samsong Group were not marketing experts—like me, they started out as corporate finance analysts.

"Have you ever wondered why sausages in the Philippines are extremely soft and juicy compared with sausages abroad?"

I saw all three of my classmates looking genuinely surprised. It had been more than two decades since I had last eaten Filipino hotdogs and sausages. But when I thought about it, I did remember them to be very soft, almost to the point of not being able to maintain their shape. I even recalled the TV commercials wherein the hotdogs literally bent when raised with a fork.

"Cost savings?" I guessed.

"Can you expound on that, Mr. Alvarez?"

"Um, when you look at the composition of sausages, I'm guessing that a bulk of their manufacturing cost comes from the raw materials, in other words, the meat and the additives they use to make the sausages."

"Uh-huh, go on."

"So in order to make more profits, they would have to replace some of the meat with extenders—maybe potatoes, chayote, even flour."

Jiwoo, Nico, and Vivi murmured in agreement to my answer.

"That's a highly logical guess," Prof. Martinez said. "But unfortunately, it's not correct."

I looked at Jiwoo, and he smiled patronizingly. Excuse me, but my ego wouldn't easily be hurt by guessing wrong in an informal business class.

"Actually, the success of the country's top hotdog producer, Chastity Foods, all started from a mistake."

What? I could feel everyone else's shock at that statement.

"Yes!" Prof Martinez exclaimed, smiling as he noticed our looks of keen interest. "A production mistake. You see, one of their quality control supervisors made wrong calculations on their production specification. That mistake caused a week's worth of hotdogs to have double the normal amount of water.

"There they were, in that fateful meeting room, deliberating what to do with hundreds of containers of watery hotdogs. Should they throw them away and write the whole thing off as millions worth of losses?

"Lucky for them, one of their executives came up with the idea of marketing those products as a new product. And that, lady and gentlemen, was how Chastity Foods' most famous Tender Juizy Hotdogs were born!

"Just this year, they launched that very same product in other Southeast Asian countries, and the reception was off the charts! This is the power of marketing, and this is what I intend to teach you all!" Prof. Martinez explained cheerfully.

"Does that mean Chastity Foods' hotdogs are a scam? That their success was built on a lie?" Vivi asked, a genuine look of discomfort on her face.

"I feel lied to," Jiwoo said, half joking. "I always thought they had a special way of preparing their hotdogs to retain maximum moisture even after cooking."

"But do you like them? Do you like their hotdogs?" asked Prof. Martinez.

All four of us nodded our heads. Personally, I enjoyed eating their hotdogs when I was a kid.

"Marketing is not only about understanding what the customer needs. It's also about taking it a step further and finding out how the customer wants something," Prof. Martinez explained. "It's a happy mistake that Chastity Foods marketed their hotdogs that way because it aligned with how the Filipino masses wanted their hotdogs to be. You may think it's cheating, but Chastity Foods is just making and selling hotdogs the way Filipino people like it—tender and juizy!" Prof. Martinez explained, stressing the Z sound in juizy.

"For our class, though, I'm not expecting you to rely on luck. I'm expecting you to use the tools we'll learn and analyze what your customers need and how they want it."

Nico, Vivi, and Jiwoo all went out for lunch, but I excused myself and ate the sandwiches I had prepared that morning. I was eating inside my car, and I got bored at being alone. I dialed Cass' number, but it was still unreachable. I tried Faye's number next. After a few rings, Faye rejected the call, which got routed through to her voice mail.

I decided to send her a message instead: Hey Faye. I'm sorry. I miss you. Call me back okay?

Then I dialed Derick's line. It was probably out of habit as a doctor, but he picked up on the first ring.

"Dr. Evangelista on the line."

"You didn't bother reading the name on the screen?" I asked.

"Oh, it's you. What's up?"

"Nothing much. Just wanted to check up on you."

Derrick was quiet at that. I was about to say something again when he spoke.

"BJ, I've got to go now." It seemed that he was still uncomfortable with me, after all. "But let's hang out this weekend. Let's go to Janus' bar, okay? Bye now. I'm being paged."

And with that, I finished my sandwich in better spirits.

Afternoon classes were dedicated to the sciences—we had lectures on food chemistry, food technology, nutrition, and the like. We had them until 3 PM when we finally joined Chef Maxwell's kitchen staff in preparation for dinner service.

"What does it mean to cook?" asked Professor Pamela Bibing. "What exactly do we mean when we say the word 'cook'?"

Vivi raised her hand, and Prof. Pamela nodded in acknowledgement. "To cook means to transform raw materials, more particularly food, into something more edible."

"Edible, you say?" Prof. Pamela asked. "Then does it mean raw food like sashimi, most salads, and fruits, for that matter, are not edible?"

Two gentlemen in their early twenties smiled and nodded at us. Jiwoo and I smiled back. After the introductions were done, Chef Karl explained to all four of us the menu for the day and the types of vegetables that had to be prepared. Soon after, we all found ourselves busily washing, peeling, blanching, and cutting all sorts of vegetables for the other sections of the kitchen.

Every time we finished a task, Chef Karl had to inspect and approve it before we could hand the ingredients over to the other sectional chefs. As expected, Jiwoo was a natural. His years of experience working in kitchens shone as he gracefully chopped onions, carrots, potatoes, and everything else.

"Pass," came the voice of Chef Karl after glancing at Jiwoo's chopped carrots once.

I offered mine next and saw Chef Karl frown. "This has to be 50px in length. I can see some of them are uneven. Repeat!"

To my shock, Chef Karl proceeded to chuck my plate of cut carrots into the bin.

Six more of my plates were chucked into the bin after that, and I couldn't have wished for an earlier end to that training.

At 6 PM, we headed to chef Maxwell's R&D Kitchen located behind the main kitchen. It was pretty cramped since they had built individual workstations for all four of us, but it still looked like a neat, modern kitchen.

"On to your stations now," Chef Maxwell said as we entered. "How were your classes? Liking them so far?"

Nico, Vivi, and Jiwoo nodded. I smiled and nodded quickly when I noticed Chef Maxwell looking at me.

"I wanted to give you a holistic training—your morning classes will hone other essential skills needed to succeed in this industry, your OJT at the kitchen will help you become a top chef, and your classes with me—" He paused for dramatic effect. "Will take you to places no other chef in this country has ever reached."

I turned and saw Jiwoo listening intently, absorbing every word from Chef Maxwell.

"I will use the entirety of this week to train your palate. You will learn to identify flavors. You will learn to predict how flavors work with each other—how they complement, how they fight, how they change when mixed together. You will learn what happens to flavors depending on what cooking method you use.

"This is the basis of all your training with me. Failure to develop your palate means you will no longer be able to catch up to any of my lessons in the future.

"As such, at the end of this week, you'll undergo a test to see how much you've improved. Those who fail will have their fees refunded and booted out of this course."

We exchanged nervous looks, but Jiwoo nodded at me and mouthed don't worry.

We spent the rest of the evening tasting different foods prepared by Chef Maxwell. While working earlier, I had been wondering if we were going to have a dinner break and was disappointed when nobody mentioned anything of the sort. But it looked like we won't be needing a separate meal—trying all the dishes was more than enough to make one full.

It was around 9 PM when Chef Maxwell announced that we are dismissed. We cleaned our stations and started to head out when Chef Maxwell called out to us.

"I almost forgot. All of you are exempted from kitchen OJT tomorrow. You have an interview with Tita Gay Abundance. She's featuring my program in her magazine—what do you call it again?"

"Ka-Vogue?" I asked jokingly.

"Yes, that's the one."

What the fuck? Ka-Vogue was the biggest fashion and lifestyle magazine in the country! Nico and Jiwoo began excitedly murmuring about it.