Chapter 30: A Pleasant Surprise
Translator: Xiong Guoqi Editor: DesTheSloth
“What kind of emergency happened for Boss Yuan to close the restaurant at noon?” the young man in a suit asked Wu Hai while looking eagerly at the tightly closed door.
“How do I know? I didn’t even have breakfast.” As soon as he saw those that had tasted the new dish, Wu Hai felt irritated. His usual gentle manner had vanished completely, replaced by a disgruntled attitude.
“Don’t you live nearby? That’s why I asked you.” The man in a suit cared little about Wu Hai’s manner. As one of the first people who tasted the new dish, he didn’t mind the jealousy of others.
“I live so near that I couldn’t even make it for breakfast.”
Seems like the quote by a famous philosopher was right. Hunger will make people lose their temper. Wu Hai turned and left unhappily after spitting out those words.
While the rest were still complaining about Yuan Zhou, the old grandpa eventually gave up after having waited for a long while. He could no longer let his wife stay hungry, thus opened his mouth and said, “Everybody please go back. The young master is not likely to open during noontime.”
The old grandpa’s words were what everyone was thinking. Actually, just from the paper, they already knew that Yuan Zhou would not open the restaurant at noon. Their waiting was merely hoping for a miracle, which did not come true.”
The crowd started to disperse gradually. Many were complaining while walking away.
“This thriving business was abandoned with just a word. God knows what the boss is thinking,” A middle-aged man said while looking at the restaurant without a shop sign.
Immediately, others refuted.
“What do you mean abandoned? It will be open tonight. Don’t say something so frightening.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Well, if it were other restaurants, I would have left already. After all, customers are always right. But here in this restaurant, I can’t live without the Eggs Fried Rice!”
“Agreed. The boss’s culinary skills are far too excellent. God, Eggs Fried Rice cooked by others is as terrible as pig feed now.”
“I think my life is over. I’m going to have to rely on Boss Yuan to feed me.”
The crowd gradually dispersed while echoing each other.
Having watched the entire scene from her nearby dry cleaning shop, Boss Tong sighed with emotion, “I never expected Yuan Zhou to have such excellent culinary skill. Surprisingly, he had gotten so many loyal customers in such a short time.”
However, Boss Tong had never thought of going there for a taste. She had entered Yuan Zhou’s restaurant once and prepared to eat there, as a neighbor, to support his business. The price, nevertheless, made Boss Tong so frightened that she didn’t dare to order anything.
At that time, she thought Yuan Zhou must have been sick in the head. Who would spend almost 200RMB for Eggs Fried Rice? For the first two days, it was indeed cold and cheerless in Yuan Zhou’s restaurant. But after that, Boss Tong saw it got more and more crowded, with customers entering and leaving one after another. She even assumed that there were just many idiots nowadays with money.
Judging from the situation just now, she knew all these people came because of Yuan Zhou’s culinary skills.
“Maybe I also need to try his 200 RMB Eggs Fried Rice someday.” Boss Tong couldn’t help murmuring.
The chaos in front of Yuan Zhou’s restaurant was unknown to our dear chef who was enjoying his meal. He carefully sampled all the dishes since he had paid the price, which was twice as expensive as those served in ordinary restaurants outside.
“The bullfrog is overcooked. And the strong piquancy completely covered the fresh taste.” Yuan Zhou commented after he tasted the Boiled Bullfrog.
“The beef is too tough to bite.”
“The fragrance of the egg isn’t properly utilized.”
Yuan Zhou commented on every bite of the dishes. Finally, only the Turtle Soup cooked by the head chef was left untasted.
It was served in a big celadon bowl with lotus design. The soup was a snow white color and was free from excess oil and fats on the surface. The soup did not smell at all, with dark green chopped green onion floating on it. The turtle emerged from the bottom of the soup when Yuan Zhou stirred it.
“It looks fairly tasty.”
Muttering to himself, Yuan Zhou started to scoop the soup and taste it.
This mouthful of soup made Yuan Zhou feel he had better just eat his own dishes. The soup itself didn’t have any problems. It was pretty good, but with his sharp sense of taste, he could still taste a slight odd taste from the soup, along with the taste of sterilized water and the taste of soil from the green onions.
After finish tasting all the dishes on the table, Yuan Zhou did a thorough comparison through his sensitive senses. The ingredients provided by the system were indeed the best of the best.
When Yuan Zhou found that he merely took a mouthful from every dish, the corner of his mouth couldn’t help twitching.
“If I have known about the taste beforehand, I would have never ordered so many dishes. What a waste!!!”
Yuan Zhou blamed himself ceaselessly because there were still so many children in Africa who could not eat their fill. It definitely wasn’t because of the heartache he felt due to wasting money.
About five minutes later, Yuan Zhou called the waiter calmly.
“Bill please.”
“Hello, sir. It is 2986RMB in total. Would you like to pay by cash or by card?” a waiter said in a calm manner as he came up with the bill, glancing at the almost untouched dishes on the table.
While thinking of the 100RMB notes in the thick wallet, Yuan Zhou answered lavishly, “By cash”.
“Ok. This way, please. The cash register is over here.” The waiter led Yuan Zhou to the counter.
Yuan Zhou took his wallet out readily and drew out 3000RMB, giving it to the waiter. Then with the change of 14RMB, he left the hotel carefreely while the waiter cleared the dishes and sent for the head waiter.
“Look. That customer ordered all the specialties but didn’t even eat much,” the waiter said while pointing to the almost untouched dishes.
“Make a list of the dishes and give it to me. Let me report this to the higher-ups.” The head waiter thought for a moment and ordered the waiter to handle this matter without a fuss.
Then he got several of his subordinates to carry all the dishes to the kitchen.
The list of the dishes was soon passed to the manager on duty. Considering the kitchen was involved in this matter, the manager had to hand this matter over to the Administrative Department.
Eventually, the head chef was summoned into the General Manager’s office.
“Chef Liao, do you think this person was a gourmet reviewer?”
Seeing the head chef approaching, the general manager pointed at Yuan Zhou in the monitor screen and asked.
The surname of the head chef was Liao. Unlike other cooks that were usually fat, he was a spirited and sharp looking middle-aged man. He walked up and looked at the monitor screen.
“Judging from his appearance and attire, he doesn’t looks like a reviewer. But I’m not sure. Do you receive any news about someone coming to do a taste test?” In the monitor screen, Yuan Zhou was dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans. But the manner he was eating the dishes looked like those gourmet reviewers, thus the head chef did not dared make the final conclusion.
The general manager looked at him again in the monitor screen. As he couldn’t get any useful information from the screen, he turned and said to the head chef, “Let’s do this. You cook some extra nice dishes these few days. Let me see if there’s any magazine that will write about our dishes.”
“No problem.”
The head chef agreed. He also got a little discontented when he saw the young man’s dissatisfied appearance after tasting his turtle soup on the monitor. He was pretty confident in his culinary skills.
Yuan Zhou never expected that his visit would cause a large disturbance in the hotel.
He walked out of the entrance of the hotel and entered a taxi which had been summoned by the doorman.
“Where are we going?” The driver asked.
“No . 14 of Taoxi Road.”
After saying that, Yuan Zhou closed his eyes and started to have a rest.
The car ran on steadily. The driver didn’t play tricks with Yuan Zhou like taking a longer route. He sent Yuan Zhou to his destination directly.
He paid the taxi fare and went directly into his restaurant from the rear door.
The mustache man Wu Hai had been constantly watching the entrance of Yuan Zhou’s restaurant .He was still stuck with the question, whether he was going to have to stay hungry for the whole day if Yuan Zhou’s restaurant was still closed in the evening.
This was not a problem for him. When he was busy previously, it was very common that he didn’t have meals all day long. However, he gotten into the habit of having three meals on time every day after Yuan Zhou started serving dishes that he was satisfied with.
After getting home, Yuan Zhou first kept his old computer and mobile phone, then unpacked the new computer and mobile phone and placed it on the table.
Yuan Zhou didn’t take a nap the whole afternoon, but gamed it the only game he had instead, Spider Solitaire. But even when the time showed 4:00 p.m, he hadn’t won a single time.
Yuan Zhou was so angry that he turned off the computer. He then went downstairs and prepared to open his door for business. Of course, there would be a pleasant surprise waiting for him...