Chapter 728: Chapter 727: Gone Viral
After the Taishi Snake Soup ca the Baiwei Soup. The Baiwei Soup had no fixed ingredients, recipes, or even thods of preparation. How it was made and which ingredients were used depended entirely on the chef’s mood and whether the chef felt suited for the task at hand.
In a sense, Baiwei Soup was Schrödinger’s Soup. Even the chef might not be clear on the flavor of the soup until the lid was lifted.
Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty, all possibilities were open.
This final dish was also the closing dish, ant to leave an impression fitting for the climax of the Midsumr Feast, yet lingering and unforgettable. Jiang Weiming’s Baiwei Soup was made with ingredients left over from previous dishes.
Half a pot of stock, a few stalks of choy sum, excess minced chicken, stray pieces of snake at, fresh vegetables left from the Ding Lake vegetarian dishes, and, of course, a bit of the marinade used by Sir for the Dezhou Braised Chicken.
This pot of Baiwei Soup didn’t taste particularly light, nor did it taste extrely heavy. Due to the marinade, the color of the soup leaned toward brown. With a light thickening, it looked a lot like Jiang Weisheng’s signature Hodgepodge Soup from a distance, but a gentle stir with a spoon revealed that this soup was entirely different.
The ingredients in the soup didn’t seem to match a typical dish.
Before the soup was served, Jiang Feng tasted it with so trepidation. The flavor was okay, without the weird taste he had feared. The aftertaste of snake at was recognizable. Overall, it was a bit salty, with a fresh undertone from the stock.
But no matter how you looked at it, it was just an ordinary hodgepodge.
Jiang Feng even felt that this Baiwei Soup was not as delicious as the one Jiang Weiming had casually made at Jiang Yong’s ho previously.
“Granduncle Weiming, I feel that this Baiwei Soup tastes a bit ordinary,” Jiang Feng said tactfully.
He didn’t just find it ordinary, he even thought that instead of serving this soup, it would be better to have Jiang Weisheng make a pot of his Hodgepodge Soup to serve, at least it would be characteristic of the Taifeng Building.
“This pot of soup is the most suitable,” Jiang Weiming said with a smile.
Jiang Feng: ?
After the Baiwei Soup was served, only the dregs remained at the bottom of the pot. Sun Maochai, who had never tasted Baiwei Soup before and was curious, scooped up so dregs to taste. He was still chewing when he heard the conversation between Jiang Feng and Jiang Weiming, and quickly swallowed the dregs to help explain for Jiang Weiming.
“The final dish doesn’t need to have an astonishing flavor, it just needs to be suitable,” Sun Maochai said.
“Since we chose Taishi Snake Soup as the highlight dish when we arranged the nu, it’s destined that the grand finale can’t be too stunning to prevent it from overshadowing the main attraction. It’s like the old tis when opera troupes perford Peking Opera. We all know that the climactic act is the penultimate one, usually perford by the main actor. The last act is generally a full martial arts show, a bit like a curtain call, a farewell play. Many of the audience would begin to leave when they see the last act starting, and our banquet courses work similarly.”
“If it’s a very lavish feast, they may choose to place the best dishes at the beginning since there are so many dishes that guests may feel tired and unable to eat more towards the end. At the Midsumr Feast, with fewer dishes, this isn’t an issue. But since we’ve set the highlight dish, we need an opening, continuation, turn, and conclusion. The Baiwei Soup that wraps it up is that conclusion. It doesn’t need to taste extraordinary; as long as it ensures a solid ending, not falling flat, with everyone having a bowl, making the guests feel that the banquet has ended, wrapped up neatly, finished satisfactorily—that’s enough.”
Jiang Feng nodded, sowhat understanding.
Sun Maochai was right; Jiang Weiming’s Baiwei Soup indeed provided a fitting close to the Midsumr Feast.
The beauty of this Baiwei Soup was that all its ingredients were taken from the previous dishes, and its overall flavor resonated with the entire banquet’s offerings.
After a bowl of soup, a small, unnoticeable belch would occur, and the joy of having enjoyed delicious food, along with the satiety signals from the stomach to the brain, would leave one feeling relaxed and happy.
The ordinary lucky diners who won the lottery and had never enjoyed such a grand feast were pleased, as was Xu Cheng, who could eat top-notch delicacies like everyday als.
If you were to debate which dish from the Midsumr Feast was the second best, there might be disputes. So might say it was Ding Lake Vegetarian Dishes, others would argue for Stead Green Eel, and there are those who believed Taishi Snake Soup was excellent, with even a minority with unique tastes considering the Texas Braised Chicken quite good.
But if you were to ask which dish of the Midsumr Feast was the best, it was unquestionably the Chicken Bean Curd Pudding—indisputably, unanimously.
The dishes were all finished, and the final fruit platter was served. Many patrons were still savoring the earlier dishes and reluctant to leave.
The diner sitting to the right of Peng Changping, who had overheard much of Peng’s conversation with Xu Cheng, finally guessed who Peng might be.
It wasn’t his fault that he spent the whole al guessing only to figure it out afterwards; Peng Changping was really hard to recognize.
Many people knew that Peng Changping had returned to the country and that he stayed year-round at Yonghe House. Many others, misled by rumors, thought that Peng Changping had taken Jiang Feng as his closing disciple after coming back. So regulars at Yonghe House perhaps had even bumped into Peng Changping without realizing.
But they definitely wouldn’t recognize who this elderly man was.
Peng Changping, although permanently stationed at Yonghe House, rarely took action personally, usually providing verbal guidance. If he passed by and saw sothing, he’d just say a few words, even when instructing Jiang Feng, he had only demonstrated hands-on twice.
Jiang Feng had complained before that due to Lu Sheng’s personal tastes, Yonghe House boasted the best tea water quality among Beiping’s major restaurants, selling more tea during the late afternoon than the average teahouse. Many seniors liked to visit Yonghe House in the afternoon for tea, or they’d arrive in the morning and stay for lunch after their tea, occupying the tables, making early custors feel as though they had entered a teahouse — all the elders with thermoses filled with tea leaves and water.
Peng Changping’s hobby was to dress in his favorite loose and casual clothes, mobilizing with a thermos of tea leaves and water throughout Yonghe House. Having beco familiar over this period, he often chatted with the seniors in the afternoon, leading many to believe he was a newly arrived elder.
For average custors to recognize Peng Changping among so many seniors at Yonghe House would require stalker-like behavior, secretly observing the place every day. After 10 to 15 days of observation, they might be able to deduce which one was Peng Changping through process of elimination — but it would cost a fortune, having to dine there every ti, making quite a hefty expense.
The diner seated to the right of Peng Changping, upon suspecting that it might indeed be Peng Changping, couldn’t help being a bit excited and asked in a low voice, “Excuse , are you Master Peng, Peng Changping?”
Peng Changping nodded with a smile without saying a word, which was taken as acknowledgnt.
The person was extrely excited, hurriedly sending a WeChat ssage to a friend to tell them that they were sitting next to Peng Changping at a al, and that Peng Changping was also attending Taifeng Building’s Midsumr Banquet.
In the midst of everyone’s lively discussions, the Midsumr Banquet ca to an end.
As usual, Fan i and Ji Yue asked every guest invited to the Midsumr Banquet for their opinions on the banquet and whether they had any particular comnts on the dishes. Everyone cooperated in the inquiries, mostly giving five-star rave reviews with no criticism, the only comnt being that there was too little of the chicken beancurd.
It would have been better served in the bowl used for snake soup.
At 9:13 AM on August 6, the Midsumr Banquet ended successfully.
Beyond feeling a little panicked and worried after the chicken beancurd was served, Jiang Feng didn’t have many other emotions. Although he sat at the serving window in a very twisted and peculiar posture, attempting to gauge the custors’ reactions, he couldn’t see anything clearly due to the lack of binoculars.
He only learned about the custors’ feedback after they left and he asked Ji Yue and Fan i.
Jiang Feng was pleasantly surprised by the high praise for the chicken beancurd. Reading the comnts, it seed that many wrote at length about it, but what Jiang Feng didn’t know was that their reviews didn’t fully convey their genuine feelings about the dish.
Many people felt that the chicken beancurd was truly delicious, superb, perhaps the best dish they had ever had in their lives, but they lanted their poor writing skills and lack of elegant vocabulary. Unable to call their company’s employee responsible for writing product descriptions to work overti and draft a promotional piece for the chicken beancurd at such a critical ti, they struggled to describe the dish’s deliciousness with words, so they simply chose not to write or to leave comnts such as “very delicious, I am satisfied,” which were faultless but lacked distinctive traits.
Like always, Jiang Feng went ho with Wu Minqi after work to take a bath and sleep, ready to face another monotonous day ahead.
Then, when Jiang Feng woke up, he found that his QQ and WeChat were blowing up.
A deluge of congratulations.
Jiang Feng: ?
Congratulations for what? He wasn’t even married yet.
Jiang Feng casually opened a ssage from an elentary school classmate he had forgotten the face of and hadn’t contacted in nearly 10 years, only to be further perplexed by the words.
‘Congratulations man, I only found out from Weibo this morning that you’ve beco so amazing. Really, congratulations, and let’s get together soti when we are free, it’s been many years since we had a gathering of our elentary school classmates.’
A ssage from a junior high classmate went sothing like —
‘Congrats, I saw the Weibo posts this morning. I never thought I’d have such an impressive classmate. It’s been years since our junior high classmates gathered, let’s arrange a reunion if we get the chance.’
Jiang Feng hadn’t yet looked at his high school classmates’ ssages, but he already sensed that sothing was slightly amiss.
He didn’t use Weibo, having uninstalled it previously during a cleanup because it was taking up too much mory. In his mory, Ji Yue was likely the most frequent Weibo user. So without even getting out of bed, Jiang Feng imdiately called Ji Yue.
“Hello, Ji Gezi, do you know what today’s Weibo…” Before Jiang Feng could finish, Ji Yue’s extrely excited and exuberant voice drowned him out.
“Jiang Feng, you’ve gone viral! Your na’s even trending on Weibo, and Taifeng is up there too. Our sales for this month are going to explode, Mrs. Wang got up early to change the prices of your dishes. My bonus is going to be huge this month, I’m going to be rich, ha ha ha ha ha!”
Jiang Feng: ???
????????
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