Netflix‘s ‘Black and White Chef’ Ahn Sung-jae’s visual pictorial has been released.

In the pictorial, Ahn Sung-jae created a sensual atmosphere by showing off various stylings.

‘Black and White Chef’ is a Netflix original entertainment program that depicts a cooking competition between 20 famous chefs ‘White Spoons’ and 80 amateur ‘Black Spoons’. ‘Black and White Chef’ gained huge popularity, ranking first in the Netflix Global Top 10 Non-English TV category in just the first week of its release.

I asked if he expected this popularity. Ahn Sung-jae said, “I didn‘t expect or intend this boom from the beginning. Nana said, “When I looked around the chefs and businesses around me, I felt that a new kind of vitality was needed.”

He also said, “As someone who takes food very seriously, I wish chefs would show their strong pride and tenacity in their work instead of making people laugh. I hoped that a great program would be created that could actually help the restaurant industry through that raw image. Thankfully, the production team understood and accepted my opinions well.”

In ’Black and White Chef,‘ Ahn Sung-jae asked the chefs about the intentions behind their food. I asked Ahn why. “They all probably came out with their special skills, so it should be delicious, and I asked about the intentions in order to have more discrimination.”

He also said, “No matter how much I’m an expert, it‘s dangerous to believe that my evaluation is absolute. I thought that if I judged it as delicious or not after taking a bite without even hearing the chef’s intention, that would not be a fair opportunity for the chef. A chef is someone who puts things they imagine into a series of tasks and turns them into a final product, so it was only natural for me to ask about their intentions,” he said, showing his respect for the chefs.

I also asked if they had seen the edited memes of Chef Ahn in ‘Black and White Chef’. Chef Ahn looked at them with a suspicious look, saying, “I didn‘t want to see them, but so many people around me sent them to me. What are you trying to say?”

When the editor answered, “A meme of Chef Ahn Sung-jae getting excited about knocking off Chef Choi Hyun-seok?” Ahn Sung-jae said, “But that’s the most frustrating. I didn‘t really do it with that in mind. It was just my way of expressing my affection for the many different flavors. (Taking it a step further) And wasn’t there a picture of you smiling while looking at Chef Choi Hyun-seok‘s back? That was really in my heart, the chef was really passionate, he was amazing, he was cool, that’s what I thought. But he just carried on like that,” he explained.

The behind-the-scenes story of ‘Black and White Chef’ and Ahn Sung-jae‘s visual pictorial can be found in the November issue of Singles and on the website.

Jeon Hyo-jin, Donga.com reporter jhj@donga.com