Chapter 96
Cheng Yu rode a bicycle to the restaurant with Jian Li.
As the weather got colder, Wang Mengmei had already hung up the thick door curtains. So the small restaurant, which originally looked quite bright, now looked particularly shabby with the door curtains blocking the view.
Cheng Yu stopped the car hesitantly and asked, "Is this your hotel?"
Jian Li got out of the car skillfully: "Yes, this is the shop my mother opened."
Cheng Yu hesitated to speak, she thought that when Jian Li said her family opened a restaurant, they meant a large hotel covering several hundred square meters!
It turned out to be just a small hotel like this.
Not even as big as her bedroom.
Jian Li opened the door curtain: "Come in."
Cheng Yu walked in obediently.
Jian Li followed closely behind and called "Mom" the first thing she did when she entered the room.
Wang Mengmei came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands: "Why are you back so late today...what's this?"
Jian Li introduced: "This is my deskmate, her name is Cheng Yu."
Cheng Yu greeted her obediently: "Hello, Auntie~"
Wang Mengmei said happily: "Hello, hello, when you come here, just treat it as your own home. Tell auntie what you want to eat and auntie will make it for you!"
Cheng Yu didn't know how to deal with such concern. The elders she came into contact with were either her family relatives or her parents' business partners. The former always gave her money, and the latter also always gave her money.
But no one would tell her what to cook.
Jian Li brought a menu: "Here, take a look at what you like to eat."
Cheng Yu is a very picky eater. She doesn't like onions, ginger, garlic, radishes, cabbage, or any other vegetables.
But she didn't want her mother, Jane Li, to think she was difficult to deal with.
"It will be all right."
Jian Li asked twice, but Cheng Yu couldn't choose.
Jian Li simply called her mother: "Mom, I want to eat a bowl of fragrant and spicy noodles!"
Wang Mengmei: "What nonsense! A bowl of fragrant rice should be served with it, so why don't you serve a bowl of spicy and sour noodles?"
"I can share it with Cheng Yu!"
She wanted to eat rice and hot and sour noodles today. Fortunately, Cheng Yu was there so she could try each of them.
Wang Mengmei: "Why don't you ask your classmates if they can eat spicy food?"
Cheng Yu quickly said, "Auntie, I'm fine with anything."
Wang Mengmei: "That won't work either. There are too few vegetables. I'll stir-fry some broccoli with oyster sauce. Wait, it'll be ready soon."
Soon, Wang Mengmei prepared two dishes. As she didn't want Jian Li to eat too much of the hot and sour noodles, she gave each of them a small bowl.
Jian Li was not picky. She put a bowl of fragrant noodles on the rice and ate a mouthful of rice and a mouthful of hot and sour noodles.
The so-called hot and sour noodles were what she insisted on eating, and she asked Wang Mengmei to make the noodles according to the taste in her memory.
The coarse noodles made of sweet potato flour are cooked in a soup pot. When there is no white core inside, they are scooped out. Hot oil is poured on the minced garlic, sesame, chopped green onion, and peanuts at the bottom of the bowl. Then five-spice powder, chicken essence, aged vinegar, pickled mustard and sour beans are added. Two tablespoons of soup for cooking noodles are used to dissolve the seasoning. The vermicelli is placed in the soup bowl, sprinkled with chopped coriander and fried peanuts, and a spoonful of fried dried meat sauce is added.
Jian Li's appetite grew whetted just by smelling the spicy and sour taste.
When Cheng Yu saw hot and sour noodles for the first time, he was hesitant and didn’t want to eat.
Jian Li: "Eat, what are you waiting for?"
Cheng Yu pouted and looked at the small bowl of hot and sour noodles, which contained coriander, minced garlic, sesame seeds, and crushed peanuts...
There is nothing she likes to eat!
But Jian Li ate it so deliciously. Cheng Yu looked at Jian Li's red mouth and wondered, could this thing really be delicious?
With red chili oil floating on top, Cheng Yu finally mustered up the courage to pick up a noodle.
The moment Cheng Yu took the bite of the coarse noodles coated with red oil, he felt as if he was hit by something. The sour and spicy taste rushed straight to his head, but it was not disgusting at all.
Before he even finished a stick of noodles, Cheng Yu no longer cared about the things he didn't like to eat, and simply picked up the bowl and started eating.
After eating the hot and sour noodles, I ate another bowl of delicious food.
Cheng Yu didn't know what a bowl of delicious food meant before. But when he saw Jian Li put a plate of mixed dishes into rice and ate it, he realized that a bowl of delicious food meant fried pork belly with chili peppers. The strange thing was that it also contained eggs.
Jian Li: "Try it, this is best mixed with rice."
Cheng Yu hates eating green peppers the most, but she fell in love with the peppers that Wang Mengmei cut into shreds and stir-fried after taking one bite.
"fragrant!"
Cheng Yu ate a large bowl of rice with the dish of oyster sauce and Chinese cabbage.
After finishing the meal, she touched her belly and said, "Jian Li, your mother is amazing at cooking."
Cheng Yu really wanted to bring her parents over to taste this dish!
What did she eat before?
"Jian Li, this hot and sour rice noodle, is it your mother who came up with it?"
Cheng Yu asked Jian Li: "This thing is so delicious, why is it not sold around our school?"
If the school had it, she would go there to eat it every day!
Jian Li: "That's delicious, made by my mom."
That's true. Based on her memory, she can only give a rough idea of what it tastes like. Wang Mengmei had to taste it herself to figure out the specific flavor.
As the weather was getting colder, Jian Feng bought a batch of high-quality sweet potato noodles from the countryside, which reminded Jian Li of eating hot and sour noodles.
After Wang Mengmei tried making it a few times, she started selling it in her store. Although not many people came to try it, all of them fell in love with the taste after eating it.
Cheng Yu: "Jian Li, why don't you ask your mother to open a store in front of our school? The business will definitely be better than here."
Jian Li didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "It's not as easy as you say."
Cheng Yu finished his meal and left reluctantly.
Jian Li told Wang Mengmei what Cheng Yu said, and Wang Mengmei seemed to be thinking about it.
A few days ago, Ni Hao's mother did introduce her to a place. Although it was not directly opposite the Provincial Experimental School, it was just across the street from it.
Maybe...
Wang Mengmei decided to go there again in the next few days to see the flow of people there.
…
Cheng Yu rode his bike back home, and the house was empty as expected.
The aunt who was taking care of her was just putting on her shoes and preparing to leave, and was a little embarrassed to see her come back.
"Xiao Yu, why did you come back so late today? I just prepared the dishes, but since you haven't come back yet, I threw them away. Look at you, you are already such a big kid, but you didn't even call me to say hello... I was so late that I wanted to go out and look for you."
Cheng Yu saw the lunch box she hid behind her and knew she was lying.
This is not the first time this has happened. This aunt was hired by her parents two years ago. She took good care of her during the first month of her trial period, but later on, she gradually started to get used to it.
I would either simply heat up a bottle of milk or make some pickled vegetable and millet porridge for her, or deliberately cook some dishes she didn't like, wait until she left a lot of them, then scold her for being picky about food, and then take the cooked dishes home.
Cheng Yu used to think that eating was not a big deal. She had eaten so many delicious foods, so it was just that.
So she was too lazy to complain about her aunt's negligence. But after having dinner at Jian Li's house today, Cheng Yu suddenly wanted to eat something.
She told her aunt: "Aunt, I want to eat hot and sour noodles tomorrow."
The aunt looked at her in surprise, then frowned and said, "Hot and sour rice noodles? What is that? Didn't I tell you not to eat anything from food stalls outside? Those are all junk food and unhealthy. If your mother knew about this, she would definitely say that I didn't take good care of you and made you eat something that upset your stomach."
Cheng Yu patiently explained: "I didn't eat it randomly outside. My classmate's mother made it for me. It's a very simple method. I'll tell you and you'll understand."
The aunt refused again and again: "I can't cook! Besides, can't you just eat the food at home? Nothing can beat simple food. I think you have eaten too much good food and always want to eat something messy. Don't you think about how difficult life is for some people? Their children can't even have a few meals a day, but you are so greedy at such a age..."
Cheng Yu was scolded by his aunt and was in a bad mood.
After saying this, the aunt hurriedly put on her shoes and went home.
She has a grandson, and during the interview she was told that she didn't need to take care of him, but now she is still taking care of him. She sends him to the nursery during the day and is busy picking him up at night.
Cheng Yu didn’t know why her parents would hire such an aunt for her, or maybe it was just like what the aunt said, because she was a girl, her parents didn’t care about her at all…
The good mood that had accumulated at Jian Li's house quickly disappeared.
Cheng Yu wanted to flip through some books, but when she saw the various honors that belonged to her brother nailed to the wall, she found it boring.
So what if you learn well?
Anyway, mom and dad won’t care about her.
*****
Wang Mengmei went to the store several times, but she still felt unsure, so she asked Lin Hui to help her check.
"Sister Lin, look, there aren't many stores or houses around here. If people want to come, they have to come from the school. But if we only do business with students, I'm worried..."
Wang Mengmei was very worried. Moving to a new place was not as simple as changing the sign and decoration, it was almost like starting from scratch.
We don’t know whether we can retain our old customers. If our new customers are students, wouldn’t our winter and summer vacations every year be wasted?
Lin Hui accompanied Wang Mengmei on a tour around the area and immediately urged Wang Mengmei to make a decision, saying it would be best to buy it directly instead of renting it.
Wang Mengmei couldn't figure it out.
Lin Hui looked at her like she was a fool: "You only care about the school, why don't you look at the other side?"
The other side?
Lin Hui pointed to a row of houses in the opposite direction and said, "There's construction going on behind that."
There was a layer of hazy consciousness in Wang Mengmei's mind.
Lin Hui simply reminded her: "There is a sign hanging over there saying there is construction going on. What does it say?"
Wang Mengmei's eyes gradually widened: "It's a hospital!"
Lin Hui nodded: "The hospital is open, with four doors, and three sides are narrow alleys. Unless roads are built in the short term, it is impossible to use those three sides as the main entrance. Only the road here is wide enough to be used as the main entrance."
Lin Hui gestured and said, "When the time comes... this row of houses will most likely have to be demolished. Only after they are demolished can the hospital face the main road and vehicles can enter and exit more easily."
Lin Hui drew a route: "From the main entrance of the hospital... less than 500 meters."
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