“Come, Valero,” the giant man insists while setting Valero’s table right-side up again, “surely a man such as you could take Yamarizake’s cooking one more time. Just one more time.”
“I will never leave the bathroom.”
“You are a judge, Valero. Act like it,” he says and smacks his colleague on the back with one great hand.
judge“You can eat that man’s cooking for me, Bozhidar. Yes, I am a judge, but my stomach was not made to be a furnace.”
“Very well,” Bozhidar replies and stands up to look over the shoji partitions and at a group of eight chefs as they approach. Kagiso is among them. “There’s a foreigner here who thinks he’s got what it takes to impress me. Do you think he has what it takes, Sigrun?”
“He’s cute,” she says with a smirk, “but that’s all he’s got going for him so far.”
