There's a Korean Netflix show called Culinary Class Wars and it is THE biggest Korean trend these days. It's a cooking competition that's based around this concept of well, class wars. It features 80 up and coming chefs and matches them with... 20 chefs with veritable reputation (usually in the form of Michelin stars).
It's actually season 2 of the show and I didn't really talk about season 1 with you because well, it was just an entertaining TV show and there wasn't much to talk about in terms of life coaching. But season 2 is rich with life coaching lessons and today I want to talk about one of them.
In Korean we have a saying that goes like, "if no teeth then gum". It's a bit of a gnarly sentiment but it's basically saying, if the primary method doesn't work get around it with secondary methods.
There's a chef with the nickname "Brewmaster Yoon" and she makes folk Korean food. In one of the elimination rounds the contestants had 3 hours to create as many dishes as they wanted with a fully stocked pantry, where each dish gets a score. The highest scoring dish advances to the next round.
As a folk Korean food chef she wanted to make Tteokbokki, a sauced rice cake dish. One problem: the pantry had everything but rice cakes. With this plan she could have pivoted to another dish, or panic at the foiled plan but she chose to do neither. She calmly collected rice powder, starch, other ingredients to make rice cakes by hand. If you've seen the Japanese mochi making videos while doomscrolling, you'd know that rice cakes come with a lot of work but she just carried on and eventually made the second highest scoring dish.
This was an isolated incident of if no teeth then gum. Another example worth mentioning is the story of chef Hu Deok-juk. A 76 year old seasoned veteran of Chinese cuisine, he's been taking the show by storm. He is a Korean of Taiwanese descent who lost both his parents around the Korean War. He became a chef because his father's friend offered him a job at the Chinese restaurant's kitchen since he was struggling to put food on the table.
But he didn't settle there. He worked overtime, he explored other Chinese restaurants to learn more about Chinese food. This was around the time where recipes were secrets and people didn't really care about human rights. Even in this harsh environment he secretly took photos of the food (with film cameras!), took memos.
If he got kicked out because he was taking photos he waited for the restaurant to close so he can talk to the chef behind the kitchen. He gifted things to the chef for the recipe, and sometimes disguised himself as another person to learn the recipe. He didn't stop just there; he went the extra mile to learn what kind of plate / dish the food should be served on and how it should be presented.
The result of this if no teeth, then gum is: the oldest contestant working with younger chefs, not telling them what to do but doing prep and assembly like he's a junior. He also advanced to the semifinals which means he had to prepare so many variations of different dishes but he never played it safe and relied on a dish he knew he was good at; he kept on engaging his creativity and had a tremendous amount of relaxed fun.
Fine dining, Michelin, molecular gastronomy, these are concepts that dominate the dining / cooking market in Korea. It's generally a young chef's game, and a foreign trained chef's game for sure. But in this environment these two chefs shine brightly because of this unrelenting attitude of no teeth, then gum.
So I want to ask you some questions, in 3 timelines.
What is something you couldn't do in the past because of limitations in circumstance? How could you have done it, with this unrelenting mindset?
What is something you're hesitating on right now, and what is it that you fear, such that it causes hesitation?
Think of the person you want to be in the future. What is it that you have to do to be that person, disregarding the limitations?
If no teeth, then gum will be one of the core driving principles behind Launch Pad, my upcoming program designed to build your base practice that you can always rely on for self-sustenance. Join the program before the deadline on January 15th.
