‘Food is so tasty I wouldn’t have noticed if my husband died right beside me!’

Chef de Cuisine Bernard Butz of the Millennium Seoul Hilton rewrote a time-honored traditional Korean saying that is said in praise of an extremely tasty food. The Star Chef won the unprecedentedly high comment for the food he cooked at the ‘International Food Show of the Star Chefs of the Super-Deluxe Hotels in Korea’ staged at the 2015 Namyangju Slow Life (Food) Festival at the Namyangju City on Oct. 9, 2015.

Butz was accorded the following comment by a Korean housewife connoisseur, “The food is so tasty I wouldn’t have noticed if my husband died right beside me!” Originally, the widely-known Korean saying was “I wouldn’t have noticed if nine out of ten people died beside me!”
Chef Butz presented the cooking demonstration with his Assistant Korean Chef Cho Doo-hyun who helped him on the stage.
The menu on that day consisted of Marinated Abalone Salad of Chestnut & Cucumber Wild Sesame Dressing, Seafood Bouillabaisse with Saut?ed Spicy Shrimp, Tomato Confit plus Onion Tart Tatin Sauce Verte, Vacuum Slow Cooked Chicken Breast with Saut?ed Zucchini and Potato Olive Oil Mash, and Fresh Cherry Gratin with Tiramisu Cream with Vanilla Ice Cream.

After the cooking of each food, the session host (popular MC Chung Taek) and his assistants brought the dishes to about a dozen ‘connoisseurs’ chosen from the estimated 150-plus guests to sample them.
The thumbs-up signs and extolling remarks were even stronger than Mrs. Cho Kyung-jae from Chungcheongnam-do Province who “wouldn’t have noticed her husband’s dying because the food was so tasty.”
Host Chung asked Butz, “Tell the guests your secret for making such tasty food,” whereupon Butz said, “Good food materials.” Asked how one selected good materials, Butz said one way to do it was to smell them.
Following the one-and-half-hour demonstration session, all the 150-plus guests were invited to sample the food. They immediately formed a long queue.

The cooking demonstration given by the Star Chefs of the five-star hotels in Seoul throughout the 10-day Festival came in the midst of fast-growing interest on the part of the general public in good slow food (vis-?-vis fast food) for good health and longevity following the continuously growing economy of the country that now ranks 13th in the world.

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