The man struggled, but in vain. The thing in his sleeve was still taken out. When the oil paper package was opened, there was spicy chicken inside.
"Huh, this guy wants to secretly take the food out of the restaurant?"
"Oh, someone must be jealous of Yingxianlou's business and wants to get the dish so they can study how to make it."
"That man looks familiar to me. Isn't he one of the waiters at the Imperial Kitchen?"
"So they're from the Imperial Kitchen. Apparently, they saw that Yingxianlou's business was booming and was suppressing theirs, so they resorted to this tactic."
That's why they say the public has sharp eyes. Before Ye Diao even started interrogating, everyone had already figured out the whole story.
Ye Diao smiled and said, "If Master Gao wants to try our Yingxianlou's new dishes, he can just come over. We at Yingxianlou welcome you with open doors. Why would you allow someone to sneak the food out?"
Master Gao is the imperial chef from the Imperial Kitchen who is said to have retired from the palace.
Upon hearing this, the waiter at the Imperial Kitchen panicked and tried to argue, "Master Gao! I don't understand what you're saying! I brought this spicy chicken back home for my wife..."
He was caught smuggling dishes in public and he couldn't deny it, but he certainly couldn't admit that he brought them to Chef Gao, otherwise their Imperial Kitchen would be brought into disgrace.
Ye Diao smiled and said "Oh", "Then why don't you bring your wife over to eat?"
The waiter at the Imperial Kitchen said: "My wife is in confinement after giving birth and cannot come."
"I see. Since you're excusable, I won't hold it against you for secretly packing up our food and trying to take it out. Also, I'll have the kitchen make you another serving of spicy chicken to take home, free of charge. How about that?"
The man was stunned, thinking that Mr. Ye was so gullible that he actually believed what he said. A hint of joy flashed in his eyes.
But since he wanted to deliver it, he just went ahead with it. In this way, although the process had some twists and turns, he finally completed the task assigned by the shopkeeper.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Ye."
Ye Diao waved his hand nonchalantly.
Soon, the kitchen prepared a dish of spicy chicken and sent it out. The waiter from the Imperial Kitchen happily left with the packaged spicy chicken.
A guest nearby asked, "Master Ye, do you really believe what he said?"
Ye Diao smiled slightly, "No matter whether what he said is true or not, it's just a plate of spicy chicken. I, Yingxianlou, don't even care about it."
Of course, the reason why he was so generous in giving away the spicy chicken was because of the contract he signed with Zhao Xiaoxian.
Zhao Xiaoxian is not allowed to sell peppers to anyone else except their Yingxianlou.
So, even if Chef Gao from the Imperial Kitchen tasted the spicy chicken, what would it matter? Regardless of whether he could taste the spicy chicken recipe, even if he could analyze it, it would be useless without chili peppers.
In fact, there is another reason besides this.
That is, although Zhao Xiaoxian was the chili supplier for Yingxianlou, she was extremely cautious and always brought the chili to him personally. He had sent people to investigate her, but still could not figure out her background.
I don't know where her chili peppers come from.
But he could understand her being so cautious.
After all, peppers are more valuable than gold. Even as the young master of the Ye family, he is very tempted by peppers. If he could get peppers and grow them himself, what a huge sum of money it would bring...
But he was just thinking about it and didn't have any bad intentions. After all, the family motto passed down by the Ye family is that one must do business the right way and not use any crooked means.
After many twists and turns, the waiter finally returned to the Imperial Kitchen and handed the spicy chicken to the shopkeeper Cai Fu.
Cai Fu is the son of the steward of the county magistrate Cai Kuo. On the surface, he is the one who runs the Imperial Kitchen, but in fact, the real boss is still Cai Kuo.
As the word "Imperial Kitchen" suggests, this restaurant takes a high-end route, taking advantage of the common people's curiosity about what the emperor eats and the vanity of the rich to attract customers.
With the County Magistrate Cai Kuo operating behind the scenes, Yushanlou rose to prominence in a short period of time and was able to compete with Yingxianlou, a long-established high-end restaurant.
As for the taste of the food, the Imperial Kitchen is indeed not bad, but it is not that great either. However, many people still come here every day. Why?
It's because of face.
Here you can eat the same dishes as the emperor. You will be proud to tell others about it, right?
This is just like the modern internet celebrity restaurants.
But in fact, not many locals go there to eat. Most of the people who go there are wealthy businessmen passing by. These people often come to the Imperial Kitchen to try the fresh food.
However, the six new dishes recently launched by Yingxianlou have been so popular that everyone who has tried them has praised them highly. In just a few days, they spread throughout Fengchi County.
When outsiders heard this, they all went to Yingxian Tower, which caused the business of Yushan Tower to plummet during this period.
It was clearly the peak dining time, but there were only a few tables of guests in the lobby.
What’s infuriating is that while those tables of guests were eating the dishes from the Imperial Kitchen, they were talking about the new dishes from the Yingxian Tower across the street!
The first thing Cai Fu thought of was to copy the new dishes from Yingxianlou.
He has done this kind of thing many times before.
Whenever he took a fancy to a restaurant's dishes, he would send someone to buy the recipe at a very low price, and then make some minor improvements, and it would become the signature dish of the Imperial Kitchen.
In fact, this is still considered a good thing. Some restaurants were forced to close down and had to use their menus to avoid disaster.
It is precisely because of such banditry that Yushanlou has always stood at the top of the Fengchi County restaurant circle.
After getting the spicy chicken from the waiter, Cai Fu asked someone to invite Master Gao over, and the two of them tasted the spicy chicken together.
Even though this dish came from a rival restaurant, they had to admit that it tasted really good!
They were so exhausted that they couldn't even utter the critical words they had prepared.
Master Gao put down his chopsticks and said, "It seems that Ding Er's cooking skills have improved a lot." He spoke in a condescending tone as he was instructing his junior.
Cai Fu asked, "Mr. Gao, now that we've tasted the food, can you cook this?"
Master Gao raised his eyebrows and said, "It's not difficult."
Cai Fu was overjoyed, but then he added another twist: "It's just that without chili peppers, I can't make it either. After all, even the best cook can't cook without rice."
However, Master Gao still had a proud look on his face. He felt that there was nothing special about the spicy chicken dish. It was just that there was an extra seasoning of chili peppers in it.
If he has chili peppers, he can easily cook anything from spicy chicken to spicy shrimp.
It is true that Master Gao had worked as a royal chef in the palace, but he was just a handyman, filling in wherever there was a shortage of people.
He has a talent that others can hardly match, which is his strong ability to imitate. He can imitate almost any dish he has tasted once.
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