Monk Seonjae, who drew attention by appearing on Netflix's cooking variety show "Culinary Class Wars 2," described watching the other chefs compete fiercely as "meeting 99 practitioners." The practitioner who left the strongest impression was chef Hou Deok-juk.
According to an interview with Yonhap News on the 14th, Monk Seonjae said people around him tried to dissuade him from appearing on Culinary Class Wars.
Monk Seonjae said, "To be honest, I haven't even watched season 1 yet. But from back then, people around me kept saying, 'If you get an offer, absolutely don't go on,' and they said it seemed like even famous chefs were eliminated left and right for the sake of entertainment."
Monk Seonjae decided to appear out of a desire to share more thoughts on Korean cuisine, temple food, food, and cooking.
He said, "I'm not interested in first place or prize money, but I wanted to talk about food from Korea, the concept of food as monks see it, and with what mindset someone who cooks should make food," adding, "If only those stories could be included, I thought it would be fine to be eliminated after about two rounds."
Monk Seonjae said, "One of the chefs who appeared with me said a lecture of mine they had heard before became a turning point in their culinary life. They used to think only about how to cook beautifully and deliciously, but afterward they began cooking healthy food with the eater in mind, and that made them happy," adding, "That is exactly why I went on Culinary Class Wars."
He added, "When the mindset of the person who cooks changes and they make healthier food more happily, the person who eats becomes happy too, and our society and all of nature can become happy."
Watching the other chefs compete fiercely, Monk Seonjae described it as "meeting 99 practitioners." The practitioner who left the strongest impression was chef Hou Deok-juk.
He said, "Chef Im Seong-keun, who contributed many ideas and did well in the team match, was excellent, but we were able to win because chef Hou Deok-juk, who is older than I am, offered support and drew out harmony."
Monk Seonjae presented a humble dish called carrot jeon in the "Infinite Hell" mission that used carrot as the ingredient and was eliminated in sixth place overall. On this, he said, "Rather than making a fancy dish with carrot, I thought about how I could let people know the taste of carrot."