The Cheat Emperor of the Culinary World

Chapter 225: Chapter 224: You Can Only Rely on Yourself

As long as it’s past four in the afternoon, the evening dinner rush time begins.

Fu Yu starts cooking, and within just an hour, he’s already piled up six or seven order tickets in his hands, mostly small banquets, and two large ones.

During this month, most of the customers coming to the restaurant are here for seafood, while Zhao Meng’s old customers mostly order stir-fry dishes.

Since they all come during dinner rush hour, the customers are quite anxious, and usually, because the dishes are slow to serve, there’s no shortage of customers urging their orders.

After all, they come here to eat, and nobody wants to wait around for half an hour without getting any food.

But tonight’s not bad, the customers taking orders from Fu Yu’s side are pretty easy-going, and so far, no one has urged their order.

The dish carriers seem calm too, waiting beside the serving counter.

Fu Yu and Sun Qingning work together and finally complete the three small banquets. While they are cooking the remaining large banquet, another order bearer comes by with slips.

Fu Yu takes a look and is a bit surprised.

This table ordered five dishes and a soup, plus some pork skin potstickers from the pastry side.

Special pot-wrapped meat, chicken oil fried mushrooms, signature braised pig trotters, classic sautéed intestines, large bone turnip soup.

The other dishes are common, often ordered by customers.

But the chicken oil fried mushrooms and the large bone turnip soup, since Fu Yu started in the kitchen nearly a year ago, have never been ordered by any customer.

Mainly because these dishes are too homely and lack any distinguishing feature.

Under normal circumstances, no customer would deliberately come to a restaurant and pay to taste them.

If no one orders, then naturally no one makes them.

Fu Yu hadn’t seen Zhao Meng make these dishes, so he turned around to ask for advice: ”Chef Zhao! A customer ordered chicken oil fried mushrooms and a large bone turnip soup!”

Zhao Meng was watching Sun Qingning handling the wok, and absentmindedly responded: ”Okay, you do it!”

Fu Yu: ”...”

He wanted to make them, but he had to know how!

Just as Fu Yu was about to speak, Zhao Meng started yelling at someone: ”Get it out of the wok quickly! If you keep cooking, it’ll be overdone! Plate it! Don’t dump it all together!!”

Sun Qingning, looking like a startled quail, quickly corrected his actions while agreeing.

Fu Yu figured, well!

He’ll have to rely on himself!

The meat slices for the pot-wrapped meat were pre-fried and just needed some thickening sauce.

The braised pig trotters were also ready-made and could be served after a bit of preparation.

Qianlima’s braised pig trotters are quite distinctive, made from pig front trotters rich in collagen.

Fu Yu was heating the pig trotters and just about to portion them when the order taker suddenly returned.

”Hey! Chef Fu! You haven’t made the order for room 212 yet, right?”

Fu Yu turned his head and asked, ”What’s up?”

The order taker looked apologetic and said, ”The customer requested not to portion the braised pig trotters, to serve them whole, and I forgot to note it!”

Fu Yu was surprised, ”Not portion them? Serve them whole?”

The order taker actually felt helpless too; mainly because the group of customers had a somewhat special identity.

The three of them looked clean, but their clothes were clearly from working on a construction site, and up close, there was a smell!

The combination of sweat and an indescribable odor was quite pungent.

When these three came to order, they looked at the various types of fresh seafood, discussed for a long time, and ended up ordering from the menu instead.

The order taker didn’t look down on them because of their identities.

She herself is also a worker in the service industry, doing a tough job, and can really understand these people.

So while taking their order, she deliberately recommended this signature braised pig trotter.

Mainly because this dish is affordable, and the pig trotters in their store are particularly good, large, fragrant, delicious, not expensive, and cost-effective.

But she didn’t expect that after the three inquired carefully about the preparation of the pig trotters, upon hearing they would be portioned, they immediately requested to serve them whole.

The order taker said helplessly, ”Yes, specifically requested!”

Fu Yu didn’t mind; serving the whole pig trotter actually saved him some trouble.

The braised pig trotters consisted of three per plate when delivered to room 212.

The three men in the room didn’t look very old; the one organizing the order seemed to be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the other two seemed just over twenty.

When the dish carrier went over, the three had almost finished the plate of pot-wrapped meat in front of them.

Seeing the pig trotters on the table, all three showed smiles.

As the dish carrier placed the plate on the table and turned to leave, he overheard the slightly older man saying to his companions, ”Many people don’t know how to eat pig trotters; portioning them loses that mouthful feel!”

Someone next to him chimed in, ”Indeed! You need to chew them whole to enjoy them!”

Another person said, ”Hey! Don’t go straight at it, these things are sticky! They even provide gloves!”

Then the slightly older man mumbled, ”Their pig trotters are delicious! Chewing them, you almost taste sweetness, indeed fragrant!”

The room was filled with chatter and laughter, and as the dish carrier left the room, he took a deep breath.

The smell in that room was quite something!

Sweat mixed with the aroma of food...

Fu Yu, equally sweaty, tilted his neck and wiped the sweat from his chin onto his chef’s clothes.

Anyway, these clothes weren’t afraid of getting dirty, so he wiped it off without pressure.

All the other dishes were fine to handle, except for the chicken oil fried mushrooms. Fu Yu truly didn’t know how to make them and was at a loss.

While no one was watching, he quickly flipped through the classic old taste recipes.

And sure enough, he found it.

But the ingredients had special requirements: the chicken had to be an old hen raised for several years; only then would it be fatty enough, and the rendered oil would be golden and beautiful, looking clean and pleasing.

They had old hens in the back kitchen, since chicken soup was always being made.

But they never saved chicken oil here in the kitchen, mainly because it wasn’t needed!

How could you make chicken oil fried mushrooms without chicken oil!

It was definitely too late to render it now!

And it needed to cool afterwards!

Fu Yu couldn’t figure it out himself, so he turned to ask Zhao Meng: ”Chef Zhao! What do we do without chicken oil?”

Zhao Meng was busy guiding Sun Qingning and responded offhandedly: ”Go check with the pastry side, they have everything over there!”

Fu Yu’s eyes lit up, of course!

The pastry side makes all sorts of things. They might just have chicken oil.

Fu Yu turned to instruct Zhang Jinyu: ”Quick, go ask over on the pastry side if they have chicken oil, and bring some back if they do!”

Zhao Meng was working with Sun Qingning now, using the same cooking station.

Fu Yu’s assistant for now was Zhang Jinyu.

After giving instructions, Zhang Jinyu asked: ”How much should I get?”

Fu Yu casually said: ”10 grams.”

Zhang Jinyu: ”...”

How am I supposed to measure that?