Carmen

Carmen is a tall woman with vivid pink hair and large pink eyes. She wears a low-cut dark red flamenco dress trimmed in white frills, cinched by a green sash with a big red rose at the hip, and bright pink shoes. Gold and emerald jewelry completes the look, from a headband to a necklace and diamond-shaped earrings, and she frequently clenches a ladle between her teeth as a dancer might hold a rose. As a girl her pink hair fell more naturally, and she dressed in a white blouse, purple vest, and long red skirt.

Both of her assistants call her a wild exaggerator, and she takes enormous pride in her cooking, bristling at any suggestion that Sanji might outdo her. Her flair spills into the kitchen through showy, theatrical movements. Even so, a streak of fairness runs through her, and she graciously admits defeat once Sanji bests her.

Carmen built a towering reputation by taking on and defeating nearly every renowned chef in the East Blue, with only Zeff, whom she never faced, and Sanji, who beat her, escaping her record. Ten years before the story, while vacationing aboard the Orbit, she overheard a young Sanji telling the cooks of his dream to find the All Blue and came to admire his fierce devotion. Years later in Loguetown she tracked him down with her apprentices Leo and Jose; when Sanji tried to kiss her hand, she flattened him with a frying pan, the same weapon she turned on her assistants for revealing she had exaggerated her ten-year search into ten days. She challenged him to the marketplace Cooking Championship, swept through three opponents, and met him in the final. Realizing she could not match his speed, she halted the judges before they declared Sanji the winner, confessed her foolish hope of equaling him, praised his dishes, and left vowing not to lose at their next meeting.