Chapter 73 Antique Soup Becomes a Hit in the Town
In this small town called Jiyang Town, there are a total of three restaurants.
The person who hired Bo Yiyan as a chef was the owner of the Sifangkelai Restaurant, named Wu Daming.
Boss Wu is a man of great generosity and shrewdness, much better than those bosses who like to haggle over every penny and cut employee wages.
Bo Yiyan and Xi'er followed Boss Wu into the Sifangkelai Restaurant. The sun was already setting, and the kitchen was busy preparing dinner.
The restaurant was rather quiet; there were only two tables of customers in the large dining hall.
At Boss Wu's instruction, the kitchen staff quickly cleared out a stove for Bo Yiyan, the newly appointed chef.
Bo Yiyan took out a hot pot he had brought with him and started working in the kitchen.
"Chef Bo, the customers haven't ordered your dishes yet. What are you planning to do?" Boss Wu asked curiously.
"Since there are fewer customers right now, I plan to make a dish first and invite everyone in the kitchen to try it and give me feedback so I can make improvements in time," Bo Yi said.
Boss Wu was unhappy; he felt that Chef Bo was a bit arrogant and didn't know his place.
You're a new chef, and you haven't even earned a single spirit stone for the restaurant yet, and you're already squandering money?
That's right, it's just being wasteful!
For Mr. Wu, although he provides meals for the kitchen staff, they usually just eat leftovers from the customers and make do with whatever they can find to fill their stomachs.
How can you waste fresh ingredients in a restaurant before the customers have even eaten them?
The original inhabitants of Jiyang Town were not many, only about 500 households, with a total population of no more than 3,000. Among them, cultivators accounted for 10%, and the rest were ordinary people.
Jiyang Town is economically underdeveloped, and ordinary families rarely eat out, so these three restaurants are not doing very well. Their main customers are cultivators with spirit stones in their pockets.
The reason Boss Wu valued Bo Yiyan was because he was a cultivator, and only cultivators could produce spiritual materials that cultivators preferred.
Of course, the most important point is that the food they brought was very delicious.
Although Boss Wu was unhappy, he thought that Chef Bo was only working there for the first time, so he decided to be patient for the time being.
If he wastes money like this again tomorrow, he will definitely have a good talk with him.
Bo Yiyan was not stupid, of course. The reason he started making hot pot in the kitchen as soon as he arrived was to shut up the people in the kitchen with this dish, so that after they tasted this delicacy, they would not dare to cause him any trouble again.
Secondly, it's to let the aroma of the hot pot from the kitchen reach every diner in the dining room, encouraging them to come over on their own initiative—essentially, it's free advertising.
After all, it's better to let customers come to you by the scent than to actively promote the product.
It turned out that coming to work in the kitchen to make hot pot on the first day was a very wise decision.
Just one hour later, the people in the kitchen were able to taste the delicious hot pot.
Before they could taste the delicious food, their noses suffered for a full half hour, the torment of being able to smell the aroma but not be able to taste it.
If the people in the kitchen are like this, then the diners in the front of the restaurant are even more so.
Some diners smelled the delicious aroma wafting from the kitchen and went there to find it. They then saw the kitchen staff, each with a dipping sauce bowl, sneaking in bites of food from the steaming hot pot.
Those who come to restaurants are either food lovers or people who have plenty of money and want convenience.
Most of them don't care about money; they just want to satisfy their appetites.
The diners rushed to the kitchen, only to be told that this mouthwatering dish could not be served to the customers today; it was only for the kitchen staff to taste and make improvements.
The reason it cannot be served directly to guests is that the cooking utensils required to make this dish are quite special; it must be placed on a specific table and served fresh each time.
These cooking utensils can only be ordered in three or five pieces by tomorrow night at the earliest, since this is just a small town with only one blacksmith shop and one weapon-refining shop.
The diners were drawn in by the aroma, but couldn't get a taste. They were all eagerly anticipating the dish and said they would definitely come early the next night to order this delicacy called "Antique Soup".
"Antique soup" is another name for hot pot. Compared to the simple name "hot pot," "antique soup" sounds more sophisticated.
The kitchen staff were all incredibly motivated because of this antique soup.
In the past, the food served in the kitchen consisted of leftover ingredients. Since there were varying amounts of leftover ingredients, they were often mixed together to make a hodgepodge, and the taste was naturally not very appealing.
But today I tried this antique soup, and it was not only delicious, fragrant, spicy and numbing, but also very satisfying to eat.
Most importantly, if we use leftover ingredients to cook in the future, it will be perfect for making this antique soup. It will never be forced into a hodgepodge because of the variety of ingredients.
Boss Wu himself also tried the antique soup and ate it to his heart's content, which greatly reduced his dissatisfaction with Chef Bo's waste of ingredients.
Seeing more and more customers coming to the kitchen to inquire about the dish, Mr. Wu couldn't hide his joy.
In the past, they would take the initiative to introduce and promote the restaurant's new dishes to customers, but today it's the other way around; the customers are taking the initiative to come and ask.
This situation means that once this antique soup is launched, many customers will definitely order it.
Boss Wu gained a deeper understanding of Chef Bo. Look at him, he has already made a dish famous without even leaving his home.
In fact, many restaurants may sound like they can cook a wide variety of dishes, but in reality, they only have a few main dishes that make them money.
Some restaurants can attract customers by relying on just one signature dish.
Boss Wu had a premonition that this antique soup would soon become famous throughout Jiyang Town.
On his first day at work, Bo Yiyan won over the boss and all the kitchen staff with this antique soup, and then won over the noses of many diners.
The following evening, the five hot pots that Boss Wu had ordered overnight were placed in the restaurant's lobby.
Five hot pots were cooking at the same time, and the aroma filled the entire hall, even wafting out of the restaurant and onto the street.
The aroma of hot pot filled half the street, so much so that several nearby residents were forced to come to the restaurant by their children's persistent pleas.
Gossip spreads fastest in small towns. Previously, when Xi'er and Boyiyan were eating, they were surrounded by people who shared a dish that Xi'er had given them.
Just two hours later, news spread that a stranger had arrived in Jiyang Town, and that this stranger's cooking was so delicious that he had been hired by Boss Wu as the head chef.
With the introduction of the antique soup, by the third day, every wealthy family in the town had decided to have a meal at the Sifangkelai Restaurant.
They wanted to taste for themselves just how delicious that antique soup made by outsiders really was!
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