Chapter 1 — Tomorrow's Kitchen

Khoi dipped the tip of his chopsticks into the pot of broth, brought it to his lips and stood still.

Not salty. Not the sweetness of radishes, nor the strong aroma of grilled onions. He only noticed a thin layer of heat passing through his tongue, followed by a frighteningly clean space. Khoi swallowed and waited a few seconds like someone listening to a lost call.

“Lack of salt,” he said.

Ha was chopping onions at the other table and stopped the knife. “How much is missing?”

Khoi looked at the pot, looked at the electronic scale, then looked at the twelve bowls of broth that had been arranged for lunch. The numbers are still clear. Four liters of water, eight hundred grams of chicken bones, two white radishes, thirty grams of grilled onions. You can read a recipe like you read a house address. It's just that a recipe cannot say when a dish truly has a soul.

“Two grams,” he replied.

Ha did not add immediately. She gave him a piece of grilled ginger, the old ginger that Lan always bought at the stall at the end of the market. Khoi bit. The skin is fibrous, slightly hot, and a little water is secreted. He knew it was ginger because Ha said it, not because his body recognized it.

“Taste it again,” Ha said.

“I have tasted it.”

“I just touched my lips to the spoon.”

Khoi heard her calm voice, but the knife table next to him was silent. In the kitchen, the rest pretended to be busy washing vegetables. No one wants to look directly at the chef when he stands in front of a pot of broth without knowing what is missing.

Khoi turned away. The smell of hot oil, the smell of fried garlic, the smell of dishwashing liquid, all of which were familiar like people working the same shift, today are just names. He still feels spicy when he inhales the wrong chili. Can still distinguish between hot and cold. But the flavor withdrew from the kitchen without warning.

Three weeks ago, Khoi had a fever for four days in a rented room on the fifth floor. The doctor said he had a viral infection and his body needed time to recover. Some people lose their taste for a few days, some take longer. No one gave a firm number. Khoi thought it was like a scratch: just work, get enough sleep, and it will heal on its own.

He still went to work at Lat Cut restaurant until Friday. During a trial of the new menu, he mistook the plum sauce for vinegar sauce. The duck dish returned four plates. The restaurant owner didn't scold him, just asked him if he needed a break. The question was lighter than a dismissal, so Khoi resigned that night.

His mother called the next morning. She did not ask about illness. She said the hood at Bep Nha Kitchen was broken again, the bank had just sent the papers, Vy was calculating the rent and the restaurant had no one to work in the kitchen for her.

Khoi took the bus to Hoa An town with a suitcase of clothes, two Japanese knives and a worn recipe book. He told himself he would stay for a month. Long enough to fix the kitchen, redo the menu, get the restaurant through the rainy season and then return to the city.

On the eighth day, he realized he could no longer use a spoon to decide anything.

“Can I add more salt?” Ha asked.

Khoi looked at her. Ha is six years older than him and has worked at the Kitchen since he was in high school. She knows which customers eat bland food because of blood pressure, which customers ask for more chili because they work the night shift, which children will leave out onions if they float on the soup. In the salary book, she is still recorded as a kitchen assistant. In Khoi's memory, she is the one who has never let a pot of rice go sour.

“Give me a gram first,” Khoi said. “Then wait three minutes.”

Ha followed suit. She stirred from the bottom, turned off the heat and covered the lid. Three minutes later, she scooped out three small bowls. One bowl for Mr. Sau, one bowl for Mrs. Huong selling lottery tickets at the corner of the market, one bowl for Khoi.

Mr. Sau hasn't arrived yet, Ms. Huong hasn't arrived yet. Only Khoi held his spoon.

“Do you want me to tell the truth?” Ha asked.

“Since when do you have to ask that question?”

“Since you started answering for people to eat.”

Khoi laughed dryly. “I'm the chef.”

“The head chef is not the mouth of the whole restaurant.”

The words fell amid the sound of boiling water. Khoi wants to argue that a chef must be ultimately responsible, must decide when people argue, must know when the dish is ready. But when he opened his mouth, he only found himself holding a spoon with no answer.

Outside the counter, Lan's mother laughed with a regular customer. Her laughter was still bright, but Khoi heard the thinness in it. His mother was sixty-two years old, with more gray hair than when he last came home. She wore a green apron with the name Bep Nha Kitchen embroidered in gold thread, a gift Khoi gave her when the restaurant turned ten years old.

Vy ran from the back door, holding a brown envelope.

“Bank for thirty days,” she said.

Lan's mother was carrying a tray of rice so she didn't hear. Vy put the envelope on the stainless steel table and looked at Khoi instead of looking at her mother.

“Thirty days for what?” Ha asked.

“Either pay the loan to repair the kitchen, or sign a mortgage settlement document.”

Khoi wiped his hands on a towel. “What property?”

Vy smiled unhappily. “Do you think the name Kitchen Home is just a sign?”

“How much did you borrow?”

"Four hundred and eighty million. The steam oven, freezer, range hood, stainless steel table and the right to use the brand are all included in the contract."

Khoi looked through the small window. Lan's mother was pouring more soup for a customer who had just returned from the market. She asked him if he could get catfish today, he said the fish was on the shelf, she secretly scooped another piece of meat into the bowl. Those things are so small that no one calls them business. But they are how Home Kitchen has existed for twenty years.

“Why didn't mom tell you?” Khoi asked.

"Mom told me. I knew last month."

“So why didn't you call me?”

Vy tore the edge of the envelope and folded it. "Because the last time you called, you said you were considering being promoted to assistant chef. I don't want to let my mother be the reason to drag you back."

Khoi was about to say that he was not promoted to assistant chef. He also intended to say he came back because he was worried about his mother, not because of the restaurant. Both are true statements but not true enough to say.

The phone in my pocket vibrated. A text message from Man, who used to work with him at Lat Cut.

SAM: I heard that Nha Kitchen is in need of capital. If your family wants to sell the name, I can arrange a meeting. Not forced. I think it's a good way out.

Unlock the screen.

Vy saw the sender's name. “Min is buying a third string?”

“He has money.”

“He has a whole legal team.”

“The shop needs money, not pride.”

Vy looked at him for a long time. “You just said that with the voice of someone who has never had to pay a debt for anyone.”

Khoi wanted to ask if she had ever had to stand in front of the kitchen and admit that she couldn't taste a dish. But he knows those two things cannot be used in exchange for sympathy.

That afternoon, the Kitchen was more crowded than usual. A group of construction workers from the construction site behind the market came in, seven people sat at two tables. Mr. Sau ordered the braised fish serving as usual. Mrs. Huong asked for half rice and extra soup. A student brought a box of medicine and asked Ha to make a dish without pepper.

Khoi stood behind the kitchen door, holding the order ticket. He didn't need to taste it to know things were going wrong: the soup came out seven minutes late, the braised fish lacked colored water, and the rice The top of the pot was soggy because someone had just added more water. You can fix it with your eyes, with your watch, with your memory. But every time he put down his spoon, he heard a small noise in his heart, like someone knocking on a locked door.

Mr. Sau called out: "Khoi, the soup is a bit bland today."

Khoi walked out. “Can I season it again?”

"No. Just enough salt. Yesterday it was too salty."

Mr. Sau finished speaking and bent down to eat. Khoi stood at the table, suddenly realizing that others did not need an absolute answer like he thought. They just need the right food for today, right for their budget, right for their health and right for their mood when they sit down.

In the afternoon, when the last customer left the restaurant, Ha washed the broth pot with hot water. Khoi sat with Vy in the storage room. Lan's mother went home first to get medicine.

“We have thirty days left,” Vy said.

"I know."

“What are you going to do?”

Khoi opened the recipe book. The pages are dense with his writing, arrows, numbers, notes like "add a little", "leave until fragrant", "taste again". He used to believe those words were handrails for the entire kitchen. Now they resembled a map of a city he could no longer smell.

“Cut the menu down to ten dishes,” he said. "Temporarily stop dishes that use ingredients. Redo the quantities. Test it out for a week, let customers score each dish."

Vy frowned. “Do guests come to eat or come to grade papers?”

“If we don't ask them, who should we ask?”

"Older brother."

Khoi bowed his head. “I am no longer enough alone.”

The words made the room quieter. Vy put her hand on the notebook but did not open it.

“If I sell the brand, Man can repay his debt.”

“Mom will lose the shop.”

“If I don't sell, I could lose my house.”

Khoi looked at the old scale placed on the shelf. Lan's mother used it to weigh rice from the days when the restaurant only had four tables. The scale needle was half way off, but she still kept it because it was the first thing her grandfather bought for her when she started selling rice. There is a long scratch on the body of the scale that resembles a fish.

“I will talk to my mother tomorrow,” Khoi said.

“You say from today.”

“Mom needs to take medicine tonight.”

Vy exhaled. “I always want to wait until I'm fully prepared.”

“In the kitchen, being prepared is the way to avoid making others hungry.”

“In real life, if you wait long enough, someone might take the kitchen away.”

Khoi did not answer. He took a pen and wrote at the top of the new page: THIRTY DAYS.

Since when did Ha stand at the door? She picked up the small, cooled bowl and gave it to Khoi.

“I asked Mr. Sau,” she said. “He said the water is fine for today.”

“What does it mean?”

“You ate it all.”

Khoi holds the bowl. He took a sip. It was still a familiar void, but this time he didn't try to call it by the name of failure.

Ha placed a piece of paper next to it. "I record customer feedback during the lunch shift. Not the scores. It's the sentences they say."

Khoi read:

THE SOUP DON'T GET BETTER, I'M ALSO TAKING MEDICINE.

STAKEFISH WITH LESS SUGAR IS BETTER, I EAT AFTER NIGHT SHIFT.

HALF SPEED BUT DON'T LESS VEGETABLES.

Ha said: "If you really want to do it again, don't make me just stand next to you to taste it for you."

“What do you want?”

"To be named in what I've done. To be able to say what dishes shouldn't be sold. And to ask the customer before you change the recipe."

Khoi looked at the paper, then looked at her. Another chef might find that challenging. Khoi saw that it was the first door to open that day.

He took the notebook and pushed it towards Ha.

“Start with ten dishes tomorrow,” he said. “You choose which one to keep.”

Ha did not pick up the pen right away. “I'm sure right?”

Khoi heard in his head the sound of Lan's mother laughing outside the counter, the sound of motorbikes in the market, and the sound of pot lids hitting the kitchen wall. There was no smell to go with them, but the kitchen was still full of people.

“No,” he said. “But I will learn how to do it when I am not sure.”

On the last page of the notebook, Khoi's phone lit up again. Man sent an attached file: a proposal to buy the brand, with a seven-day response period.

Khoi does not open the file. He closed the notebook, placed the spoon on the pot lid and looked at the words THIRTY DAYS.

Tomorrow, he has to tell his mother that her kitchen is in the hands of someone who no longer knows what food tastes like.

And maybe, that's not the scariest thing.