— I’m not going to eat this slop,” Darina pushed away the plate of mashed potatoes with thick meat gravy. “Rostislav, we had an agreement.
I’m on a strict regimen, I’m calibrating my receptors.”
My son gave me a guilty look, then looked at his wife. He reminded me of an old rope being tugged from both ends, its fibers fraying louder with each passing day.
“Dash, come on, Mom tried… It’s just a homemade dinner.”
“‘Just dinner’ is fuel for the body, not food waste. I have the most important stage of the casting tomorrow, in case you forgot. I need to be in perfect form.”
Silently, I picked up her plate and took it to the kitchen. The aroma of butter, garlic, and stewed meat—the smell that had always made my home a fortress of comfort—was, to her, the stench of the ‘last century.’
Over the months they’d lived together, I had almost gotten used to it.
“I’ve applied to Culinary Olympus,” she announced when I came back, as if she’d told me she’d been accepted into the astronaut corps. “My concept—foie gras with wild cloudberry sauce—passed the preliminary selection.”
She bored into me with her eyes, waiting for a reaction—admiration, envy, anything at all. I just nodded. What could I possibly say?
That foie gras is the most hackneyed banality, something first-year culinary students make for an exam?
“You, Elara Konstantinovna, of course wouldn’t understand. This is high art, almost alchemy. Every nuance matters here, every note of the aftertaste. This isn’t boiling potatoes in their jackets.”
My son flushed crimson.
“Darina, stop it!”
“What do you mean, ‘Darina’? I’m just telling it like it is. A person cooks the same thing their whole life—how would they know anything about haute cuisine?”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t even imagine that for the last ten years I had been that very ‘Elara’—the strictest, most ruthless, and absolutely anonymous judge on that show.
The one whose verdict, delivered from the dark gallery, could wreck the careers of the most renowned and overconfident chefs in the country.
My secret life was my refuge. My late husband, Konstantin Belsky, was a genius. A real one. His restaurants made a splash across the country; his name was synonymous with taste.
And I was always just ‘Belsky’s wife,’ a talented assistant in his shadow. After his death I turned down the inheritance, the publicity, everything.
I wanted to prove to myself that my talent, my palate, belonged to me—that it wasn’t just a reflection of his fame. That’s how ‘Elara’ was born—the phantom judge, the bodiless voice everyone feared.
And now my brazen daughter-in-law’s world had set its sights straight on my secret world.
That evening the show’s perennial producer, Arkady, called me.
“Elara, we’ve got a bomb! A raw gem! Bold, beautiful, cheeky, but damn it, technically solid. Two hundred percent confidence. Audiences love that type.”
I listened, looking at the city lights in the night outside my window.
“Last name?” I asked, though the answer was already burning my tongue.
“Belskaya. Darina Belskaya. Can you imagine the irony? Your namesake. She’s cooking something incredible with molecular foam. You know I don’t know anything about your family, but this is fate!”
I gave a crooked smirk. Molecular foam. How predictable.
“Yes, Arkady,” I said, feeling a cold, investigative interest flare up inside me instead of the usual irritation. “This is going to be a very interesting season.”
Over the next two weeks, my kitchen—one that had seen both Russian stoves and French sauté pans—turned into a branch of a chemistry lab.
The familiar aromas of vanilla, cinnamon, and baked apples were replaced by sharp, sterile smells of essences, xanthan gum, and stabilizers.
Darina occupied the space. She dragged in siphons, a vacuum sealer, a centrifuge, a dehydrator.
My old cast-iron pans, which remembered my mother’s hands, were shoved contemptuously into a far corner to make way for Teflon mats and silicone molds.
“Rostislav, move your mother’s geranium from the windowsill. I need perfect daylight for spherification!” she commanded, and my son, sighing apologetically, carried away my favorite plant.
I watched this sacred rite in silence. I didn’t see creativity; I saw fuss.
She wasn’t creating flavors; she was constructing them from blueprints off the Internet. Her dishes were like architectural models: calibrated, precise, beautiful—and absolutely inedible and lifeless.
The day of filming for the first round. I arrived at the studio long before the start. This is where I transformed.
My home cardigan became a tailored pantsuit from a famous designer. The quiet voice of a mother-in-law turned into the icy, even tone of a judge that drove the sound engineers mad.
My place was on a special balcony, hidden from the main hall.
The contestants and audience saw only a dark silhouette behind glass. They heard only my voice through the speakers—impartial and final, like the strike of a judge’s gavel.
Next to me sat two others: Sergey Orlov, a genial restaurateur, and Violetta Listvyana, a trendy food blogger.
“Well, Elara, ready to decide fates?” Sergey winked at me. “They say there’ll be talent today.”
“Talent is work, not a show,” I snapped. “We’ll see.”
And then they announced her. Darina stepped into the center of the hall, flooded with spotlights. She carried herself like a queen. Confident, brazen—she blew a kiss straight at the camera.
“Today I present a deconstruction of sea scallop with champagne espuma and algae caviar,” she declared.
The dish looked spectacular. A perfectly white scallop, airy foam, translucent green pearls.
Sergey tasted first.
“Bravo! The technique is on point. Very, very bold!”
Violetta took a selfie with the plate.
“This is just cosmic! Visually—ten out of ten. My followers will go crazy!”
My turn came. An assistant in black gloves brought me the plate. I saw the perfect geometry.
I smelled a cold, almost clinical odor. I tasted it. And felt nothing. None of the briny freshness of the sea, none of the sweet tenderness of the scallop. Only emptiness, masked with special effects.
Tension hung in the hall. Everyone waited for my word.
“This dish is an excellent illustration for a chemistry textbook,” my voice said through the speakers. “But this is a culinary show. You took a beautiful, living product and killed it. You replaced its flavor with a trick.”
On the monitor, I watched Darina’s face change. The smile slid off; bewilderment flooded her eyes, and then—rage.
“You hid the essence of the product behind foam and spheres because you couldn’t handle that essence. This dish is a deception. It’s beautiful but empty. Just like its author.”
The hall gasped. Even Sergey and Violetta looked at my dark balcony with a touch of fear.
Darina couldn’t hold it in.
“You don’t understand anything about modern art!” she cried. “This is progress, the future! You’re stuck in the last century with your meat patties!”
That evening she burst into the apartment like a fury.
“That Elara! That upstart! Some old hag who’s afraid of everything new! She humiliated me!”
Rostislav tried to calm her, but it was useless. I sat in an armchair in the living room, quietly leafing through a book on medieval floristics.
“She said I’m empty!” Darina turned to me, seeking sympathy. “Can you imagine, Elara Konstantinovna? She called me a hollow shell!”
I turned the page.
“Maybe she meant that in food, as in a person, the main thing isn’t the pretty shell but what’s inside?” I asked softly, without lifting my eyes from the text.
Her face contorted.
“What could you possibly understand about that?!”
She spun around and went to the bedroom, slamming the door. And I knew this was only the beginning. I had tightened the first knot on her outrageous pride. And I had many more in reserve.
Contrary to my expectations, Darina didn’t break. The humiliation spurred her on. She decided to prove to everyone—first and foremost to the mysterious Elara—that she was a genius.
The atmosphere at home turned icy. She stopped talking, moved through the apartment like a shadow, and every creak of the floorboards under her feet sounded like a reproach.
Sensing blood, the producers made the next round even more elaborate. Theme: “The Taste of Memory.”
The assignment, which I had personally formulated, was this: “Prepare a dish that takes you back to the happiest day of your childhood.”
Darina, on hearing the theme, burst out laughing.
“How awful! They want tear-jerker stories. Well, I won’t play those games. I’ll show them what real art is!”
She decided to “deconstruct” the taste of cotton candy.
“I’ll create a cloud of isomalt with a strawberry aroma, and inside will be a liquid lemon curd center. It’ll be a blast!”
I listened to her musings and understood that once again she was taking the wrong path. She was trying to recreate not a feeling but a chemical formula.
On the day of filming I was particularly calm. Her “cloud” came out perfect. She went to the judges looking like a triumphant queen.
Sergey and Violetta were delighted. And then they brought the plate to me. I didn’t even bother to taste it.
“Take it away,” my voice ordered.
Darina turned pale.
“The assignment clearly said: ‘a taste that takes you back.’ Your dish doesn’t take you anywhere. It’s an attraction.
“Once again you’ve created a pretty hollow thing because you don’t have real memories. Or, worse, you’re ashamed of them.
“You hide behind your techniques like armor. You’re afraid that without these tricks no one will notice you.”
Darina stood like she’d been struck by lightning. Her armor of self-confidence cracked.
“You… you have no right…” she whispered.
“I have the right to judge what you cooked,” my voice cut her off. “And you cooked nothing. You brought us sugar and air. Zero points.”
It was a sentence. Rostislav, who was backstage, rushed to her. She sobbed on his shoulder.
That evening there was a scandal at home.
“She’s destroying me! That witch on the balcony! She’s stalking me! She somehow knows exactly where to hit!” She stopped short and looked at me.
A suspicion flickered in her eyes.
“And you… you’re always so calm, Elara Konstantinovna. Do you enjoy seeing me humiliated?”
I raised my eyes to her.
“I don’t enjoy it when a person lies to themselves,” I replied evenly. “And then tries to lie to others.”
She looked at me for several long seconds. And I realized two points had just connected in her head—my words and the words of Judge Elara.
After that day Darina became a shadow. She started searching. I found books shifted in my study, browser history changed. She was looking. But my anonymity was protected by an ironclad contract.
Shortly before the finale, I witnessed a scene. Rostislav brought home fresh Borodinsky bread. When Darina saw it, she blanched.
“Get rid of that!” she almost screamed. “I asked you not to bring that… that filth into the house!”
She snatched the loaf and tossed it into the trash with such disgust you’d think she was holding something vile.
That same evening I heard her whispering angrily to someone on the phone: “Mom, I asked you not to remind me of that! Ever! I don’t eat black bread anymore, and you don’t either! We can afford normal food!”
And everything fell into place.
Before the finale, I called Arkady to talk.
“Arkady, I want to pitch you an idea for the finale. An idea that will blow up the ratings.”
“I’m all ears, my mysterious lady!”
“The theme is ‘The Naked Truth.’ Three simplest ingredients. No tricks. And at the end… I step out of the shadows.”
Arkady choked on his coffee.
“You’re… serious? Ten years…”
“Ten years is a good term to put a period on,” I said. “You’ll get your show. And I’ll get my justice.”
On the day of the finale, the tension peaked. Darina looked exhausted. Her opponent was a modest guy from Kostroma.
Sergey chose beets. Violetta—goat cheese.
“The third ingredient…” my voice rolled over the hall, “…black bread.”
I watched Darina’s face twitch on the monitor. It was a punch to the gut.
She went into a stupor. She darted around her workstation. It was agony.
The guy from Kostroma made a brilliant salad. Darina brought out a plate smeared with purple and white streaks and sprinkled with black crumbs.
“Darina,” my voice began. “Once again you tried to deceive us. But today you only deceived yourself. You despised simple food because it reminded you of who you were.
“It reminded you of your childhood in a small town. And of your first true taste: a piece of black bread sprinkled with sugar. The taste of shame and a dream of another life.”
The camera showed her face in close-up. Horror. Realization.
“How… do… you… know?” she whispered, staring at the dark balcony.
On my signal—which Arkady and I had rehearsed—the light on the balcony slowly came on.
I stood up. And stepped out of the shadows. Just me. Elara Konstantinovna Belskaya. Her mother-in-law.
The hall gasped. Darina looked at me as if she’d seen a ghost. There was no hatred in her eyes now. Only emptiness. Total, crushing defeat.
“Because the truth, Darina,” I said in my normal voice, “always comes to light. In life and in the kitchen.”
I turned and left.
That evening Rostislav came home alone.
“She just packed her things and left,” he said, staring at one spot. “She didn’t even yell. She only said, ‘Now everything makes sense.’”
“Son, I’m so tired… At first I admired her strength, her ambition. I thought she could pull me out of my shell.
“But it turned out she was just building her own prison and trying to drag me into it.”
I set before him a plate of that same mashed potatoes.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “Sometimes, to build something real, you have to burn all the fake down to the ground first.”
We sat together in our old kitchen. And for the first time in a long while, it wasn’t a battlefield—it was simply home.
Epilogue
Six months passed. That season’s finale became a legend. Arkady blew up my phone offering a fabulous contract. I politely declined. The refuge became just a home again.
Rostislav changed too. He quit his dead-end office job and found work at a workshop restoring old furniture—a trade that demands patience and respect for the past. It was as if he straightened his shoulders.
One evening he came home thoughtful.
“I saw Darina today. She’s working in a small café on the outskirts. Not as a head chef, just in the kitchen. I stopped in for a coffee. They have… you know, everything is very simple there.
Soup of the day, sandwiches, homemade baked goods. At first I didn’t recognize her. No makeup, a plain apron. She was chopping vegetables.
She saw me and… just nodded. That arrogance was gone. Only a kind of immense fatigue.”
And a month later, I received a short unsigned email: “I baked bread. Real black bread, sourdough. It didn’t work at first. But I learned. Thank you.”
I deleted the letter. The lesson had been learned.
One weekend I stopped by that very café. Incognito, in dark glasses and a headscarf. The place smelled of fresh broth and cinnamon. I ordered the soup of the day—just a simple lentil soup.
They brought me a bowl. It was simply good, honest, hot soup. Food that warms you, not astonishes you.
Through the pass window I watched Darina at work. No rush, no pomp. She was simply feeding people. And, it seemed, for the first time in her life she was finding meaning in it.
She lost the battle for fame, but perhaps that crushing defeat gave her a chance to win the war for herself.
Because sometimes you have to lose everything to understand what truly has value. I left the money on the table and stepped out into the sunlight. My mission was complete.”