Chapter 41

Chapter 41: The Delicacies in the KTV, This Kind of Violation...

When Wu Kang smelled the familiar scent of the lion’s head meatballs, he almost jumped up from the sofa!

This smell left a deep impression on him.

Back when he attended the opening event at Qimingxing Kindergarten, he had eaten one-eighth of the lion’s head meatballs, and the other half was shared with his wife, Teacher Deng.

Although the couple was very loving, he had to admit… that decision made him feel a little regretful.

Especially since that time, he had never eaten those lion’s head meatballs again!

“Wait, I’ll call the waiter again.”

When he first entered this KTV, Wu Kang felt everything was a bit strange:

The overly bright lights, the folding tables in the private rooms, and the transparent face shields on the waiters looked somewhat out of place. He thought he had only seen such face shields in food factory livestreams.

If it weren’t for his friend insisting on coming after seeing the WeChat Moments, he would have definitely chosen the other place nearby where people were handing out discount coupons at the entrance.

However, after smelling this lion’s head meatball, all those thoughts quickly disappeared from his mind.

When he first came in, he complained to his friend about the messy takeout boxes scattered at the front desk.

Now he thought it was because he had spoken too loudly! A KTV should definitely stock plenty of takeout boxes! Not to mention, these boxes looked exquisite and were just the right size for packing lion’s head meatballs!

“Hello sir, may I help you?”

At this moment, the transparent face shield on the waiter’s face looked especially pleasing to Wu Kang’s eyes.

“Give me ten lion’s head meatballs! Pack eight… no, pack seven!”

Wu Kang measured his appetite—if he ate a bit less rice later, four meatballs shouldn’t be a problem.

Seeing him confidently ordering, his friend grew curious.

He cautiously tried a bite of the lion’s head meatball and suddenly recalled a short video Wu Kang had once shared with him: “Could these be the same lion’s head meatballs you showed me from that kindergarten?”

“Add two more for me… no, four!” Once he took a bite, he couldn’t stop after the second one. He couldn’t help but eat half a meatball in one bite. “Can your place pack these for takeout?”

“Yes, definitely,” Shunzi answered first about takeout, then apologized, “but the lion’s head meatballs are sold out; these are the last four…”

“Ah? The last four?”

Wu Kang’s friend had just dug out a quarter of a meatball, about to put it in his mouth, but hearing this, he reluctantly withdrew the spoon and, after hesitation, took just a small bite instead.

“We’ll order for tomorrow! We’ll come back again tomorrow!”

Shunzi apologized a bit: “Sorry, due to supply issues and order rates, this dish was just removed from the menu. Please take a look at our other snacks; they’re all delicious.”

Order rates?

Wu Kang nearly popped his eyes out.

Isn’t this place not far from Xinhua City? So truly, ‘a hundred miles, different winds; a thousand miles, different customs’?

During the period when these lion’s head meatballs were supplied to Qimingxing Kindergarten, almost all the city’s children of appropriate age were taken there for a visit, just to taste these lion’s head meatballs.It turned out that these lion’s head meatballs were brought here, but no one ordered them?

He felt a bit indignant and wanted to see what kind of divine dishes the Bai Tian’e KTV had on its menu!

Then, Wu Kang spectacularly knelt down...

The deliciousness of several small dishes was almost on par with the lion’s head meatballs, and in a place like a KTV for singing and drinking, these small dishes seemed to have an added bonus.

Moreover, these fried items were all authentic traditional recipes, which made them especially precious nowadays when fried foods are mostly dominated by various Western styles.

It definitely had to be the cook from that kindergarten!

Wu Kang quickly messaged Teacher Deng. This time, he went fishing with friends but tried several times to persuade his wife to come along—she refused. There wasn’t even a single check-in call...

How embarrassing!

This group of fishing friends didn’t do pond betting or anything like that, and there was no big shot among them—catching fish was always the same disappointing empty-handed experience.

For middle-aged men, their pride ultimately relied on their wives to maintain. Other wives checked in several times a day and even did video calls, but only his wife stayed calm and didn’t make any calls.

Teacher Deng answered the video call with a somewhat impatient expression; the background variety show was loud: “Wu Kang, what is it again? Didn’t I give you 500 yuan pocket money for this trip?”

His friend chuckled beside him.

Wu Kang, having been tested many times, didn’t blush at all and eagerly showed his wife the food.

“You’re at a KTV? Show me who’s around, wait…”

Teacher Deng immediately saw the lion’s head meatballs on the table!

Although the appearance of lion’s head meatballs usually didn’t vary much, her husband wouldn’t just randomly show her a portion.

“Honey, these are the lion’s head meatballs from the kindergarten. I’ve tasted them!”

He proudly showed Teacher Deng the other dishes: “These small dishes are also really delicious. Didn’t you say you dislike fried chicken with breadcrumbs the most? This old-style fried chicken leg—just one bite and I knew it was the kind we had as kids, first marinated then fried!”

Wu Kang fell into memories: “The first time I saw you was at that wedding banquet...”

Before he could finish, the video was hung up. Soon after, a message from “Wife” came with the note: “Location sharing.”

Teacher Deng was very anxious!

When Chen Ran was selling rolled pancakes at the police station, she and Wu Kang had missed the trip; later, when the braised pork shank was trending because of the film star, she also missed it.

No choice—the queue at Yanglianshan small restaurant was just too long!

Putting on her clothes and heading downstairs, before starting the car, Teacher Deng paused her hand about to share in the group chat.

Sharing one day late wasn’t really betraying the group, right?

At this moment, the group was flooded with fans spamming messages.

“Wonder what new delicious dishes Chef Chen will develop at the new restaurant…”

“Even if no new dishes, at least let me eat a couple more slices of pork shank.”

“You all are fickle, only my love for lion’s head meatballs remains unwavering!”

Seeing the film star panda-head emojis popping up now and then in the group, Teacher Deng inexplicably felt a little guilty.But if she posted Chen Ran’s news in the group now, those people could rush over just like her.

Only two days!

After she and Wu Kang ate a few more meals, she would announce Chen Ran’s current address in the group!

However, by the time she finally arrived at Bai Tian’e the next day, the feeling of guilt had long been outweighed by hunger and craving.

“What time do they open? Did you ask clearly?”

“They open at 2 p.m., asked yesterday!”

Almost all the shops on this street were various KTVs, with a few small supermarkets scattered between them. Due to the special nature of KTV operations, there were few people during the day.

But today was different—there was actually a queue at the entrance of Bai Tian’e KTV!

Besides Teacher Deng’s family, several customers who had tasted the food yesterday were anxiously waiting for Bai Tian’e to open.

“Even for a KTV, opening at 2 p.m. is too late, right? If they opened at noon, we could have had more lunch.”

“When it opens, remind the boss—these days, they don’t really seem like a proper KTV anymore…”

The waiting customers all nodded at this.

Last night, by the end, even the coffee table was replaced by an ordinary table—what kind of KTV was that? In a few days, they might even replace the sofas!

“I actually feel that, aside from a small room fee, eating here is even better than at a normal restaurant.”

“After all, it’s a professional KTV. Although the dish variety is a bit limited, everything tastes good—that’s better than others.”

Since Chen Ran’s snack set became a big hit, Gao Shuxian immediately got a new menu custom-made. After all, most customers now came mainly for these snacks.

At this moment in the kitchen, Chen Ran was prepping ingredients.

Small crucian carp needed a cut on the back and then marinated. Chicken legs were to be braised in advance, cooled, then fried. The newly obtained meatball recipe also required frying a batch for backup.

This made her look forward to the last dish of the snack set.

The entire snack set was relatively traditional, but each dish was a classic. Fried chicken, fried small fish, and finally fried meatballs filled with fresh vegetable sweetness.

What would the last classic snack be to finish the set?

However, the system’s task this time was a bit hard to achieve—Bai Tian’e KTV had to reach a single-day revenue of over fifteen thousand to unlock the last snack.

Such revenue was easy for an ordinary KTV since some private rooms could generate over ten thousand just by selling a few bottles of alcohol.

But for Bai Tian’e KTV now, most customers came to eat snacks, and the alcohol they drank was mostly beer, making it hard to reach extremely high sales in a single room.

Chen Ran turned to look at Gao Shuxian, who today wore a tracksuit and was helping shred radish, already shedding her initial young lady image.

“You’re still far from the revenue you bet with your family, right?”

Gao Shuxian nodded.

At first, she was a bit arrogant and confident she could succeed, which made her say such a high number.

But after so many days, her arrogance had mostly been worn down.

Before Chen Ran came, she even thought maybe, just like her mother, she would only ever marry and have children in her life.But now, her small flame of hope was blazing up again.

Maybe with Chen Ran here, she could really reach that number?

“The combined revenue of these two days is over seven thousand,” although it still sounded far from enough, the growth in customers was quite impressive. “But yesterday it was already full, and the waiters said people were even lining up outside to get in. Today will definitely be more!”

“But seven thousand compared to one hundred fifty thousand is still a big gap. Should we try harder in some other way?”

Over two days, the revenue of just over seven thousand was not only far from the monthly goal of one hundred fifty thousand but also far from the task requirement of fifteen thousand in a single day.

Gao Shuxian now almost obeyed Chen Ran’s every word and couldn’t help but ask, “What do you think we should do to try harder?”

Chen Ran wasn’t too sure either, but since she came from a chef background, she felt it was a pity to miss out on the classic lunchtime rush.

“How about opening earlier tomorrow, at least including the lunch period?”

Gao Shuxian was agreeable. The KTV had even changed tables; opening earlier wouldn’t hurt.

Coincidentally, people were already lining up outside, so why not open early?

So, Teacher Deng, who was originally waiting for two o’clock, was pleasantly surprised to find that Bai Tian’e opened early at just half past one!

At first, only a few people were waiting outside for the doors to open. But having so many people waiting at a closed KTV always made people curious. During this wait, more groups mysteriously joined the queue.

Wu Kang was very pleased his wife could accompany him for the meal, which lifted his mood. He confidently assured the others who followed to line up: “Don’t worry, this place’s food is super delicious! The fried chicken and fried small fish are insanely good. Yesterday, they said they would add a new fried meatball today…”

The only regret was that the lion’s head meatball was surprisingly off the menu!

The people lining up were initially skeptical but after thinking it over, chose to flood in as soon as the doors opened.

After all, even if it was a fake lineup for hype, a normal KTV would hype things up in the evening, not at lunchtime, right?

It was the first time Wu Kang’s fishing buddies had a meal with Teacher Deng, and they all expressed admiration for how well Teacher Deng handled things before they started ordering.

After some discussion, only Teacher Deng waved her hand and ordered one portion of everything!

She asked the waiter regretfully, “Is the lion’s head really gone?”

The waiter also looked sorry. Because business had been booming these days, Chen Ran no longer made special employee meals. Employee meals basically consisted of the same snacks sold in the store, plus main courses.

But since the lion’s head was no longer sold, it was also gone from the employee meals.

“Sorry, it’s indeed been removed from the menu. But I will note your suggestion and report it to the boss.”

Teacher Deng watched the waiter leave regretfully, but at the moment the door opened, she saw a familiar face!

It was Zhu Nan!

All the lion’s head fans from the kindergarten days knew that since then, Zhu Nan had become a loyal fan of Chen Ran.

He even made an exception to film a video criticizing the lion’s head. Since then, Zhu Nan’s account had almost become an unofficial gathering spot for Chen Ran’s fan club.

Moreover, in some of Zhu Nan’s newer store-visit videos, fans had developed “0.1 lion” into a kind of unofficial rating standard.

Every video had comments with extremely high lion’s head content.

“Today’s dish looks very appetizing! I give it a high score of 0.3 lions!”

“Looks like it fulfills both color and taste, but Zhu Nan’s other videos always comment on aroma; this one didn’t, probably smells just average. Missing one of the three—color, aroma, taste—I can only give 0.2 lions!”Of course, as a mid-level blogger, Zhu Nan wouldn’t dare use such obviously disparaging terms. However, that didn’t stop every one of his videos from having related searches like “What does 0.1 lion mean?”

Under this subtle influence, and with the prior planned promotion by Ji You and Wan Jiaxin, Zhu Nan’s fans were very familiar with the legend of Chen Ran.

At Yang Lianshan’s small restaurant, the long queues originally had at least a third of the customers coming from Zhu Nan’s videos!

In this situation, when Teacher Deng saw Zhu Nan here, her heartbeat even skipped a beat.

She had originally planned to eat nicely for two days before reporting back in the group!

But if even Zhu Nan came…

Teacher Deng couldn’t hold back. She stood up from her seat and rushed straight to Zhu Nan’s private room as soon as the door opened.

At that moment, Zhu Nan had just sat down. The photographer who traveled with him everywhere was adjusting equipment.

The two couldn’t help but laugh: “Our store-visit business is getting more and more extensive, huh? Even KTVs now!”

“Hey, we’ve even been to kindergartens. At least KTVs don’t require borrowing kids.”

Zhu Nan’s timing to visit this KTV was actually quite accidental.

He and Liang Xingzhao were cousins. This time, he came to help his uncle deliver something to Liang Xingzhao, and during their chat, Liang strongly recommended this KTV.

“Go try it, you definitely won’t be disappointed! Their crispy fried small crucian carp tastes about the same as the place my uncle used to always take us to.”

Liang Xingzhao’s uncle, who was also Zhu Nan’s father, had always liked this kind of fried small fish. Hearing this, Zhu Nan was tempted and came over to shoot a video, taking some food to bring back to honor his father.

For the sake of the video, the two ordered three portions of crispy fried small crucian carp and also ordered one portion each of the other two fried dishes, ready to start filming once the food arrived.

At that moment, there was a knock at the private room door.

The photographer went to open it and immediately saw Teacher Deng. They were all in the lion’s head group; although they had never met in person, they recognized each other through occasional likes on social media.

Teacher Deng nodded to the photographer and, seeing the filming equipment already set up inside, was glad she hadn’t waited another day to come.

If Zhu Nan’s video got posted, she wouldn’t just be waiting in line for half an hour—she might have to queue for a whole day!

“Is… Teacher Deng?”

Teacher Deng wasn’t very active in the group, usually only speaking briefly after Ms. Wang. But the lion’s head group was small, with few people, so she could barely match faces to names.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Since she was a math teacher, Teacher Deng was quite sharp. Seeing Zhu Nan take a moment to recognize her, she suddenly thought of a possibility: Could it be that he didn’t know Chen Ran was here?

If so, that would be great!

Although she had been delaying exposing Chen Ran’s latest workplace in the group, she didn’t want to miss the advantage of being the first to report it.

Ji You had long anticipated that someone might want to monopolize Chen Ran’s cooking skills. So, after discussion, they offered some compensation: the first person to discover and report Chen Ran’s whereabouts would get two queue-skipping passes.

Two queue-skipping passes! Plus a little favor in front of Ms. Wang…

Teacher Deng pretended it was a casual discovery, politely and somewhat awkwardly chatted with Zhu Nan, then returned to her private room.

Back in the room, seeing the neatly arranged snacks on the table, she quickly took a photo and sent it to Ms. Wang.

“Ms. Wang, guess what I found? I found out where Chen Ran is working now!”She quickly copied and pasted the same message, sending it rapidly in several of her groups.

After sending them all, she finally took a vegetarian meatball and popped it into her mouth.

Sure enough, Chef Chen’s skills— even a single vegetarian meatball was fried to perfection!

“This meatball is really something. It doesn’t taste like it’s made from flour... is this tofu?”

“This tofu meatball is brilliantly conceived!”

At the same time, in Zhu Nan’s private room, tasting the meatball in front of the camera, he expressed the same amazement as Teacher Deng.

Although the official video couldn’t mention the “0.1 lion” rating system to avoid bringing trouble to Chen Ran, during filming he used that standard quite a bit.

“This little crucian carp is really good. Your cousin sure knows how to find places. Try it!”

The food blogger’s tasting process was quite particular. He first smelled the small crucian carp, confirming there wasn’t even a hint of fishy odor, then gently broke it apart.

Under the specially used high-speed camera, the process of breaking the small fish made the photographer almost swallow his saliva.

He couldn’t help but urge Zhu Nan, “Try it quickly. How is it? Good?”

Zhu Nan bit gently and nodded involuntarily.

“How many lions would you give?”

With one bite, the crispy small crucian carp crumbled in his mouth, spreading rich aroma to every corner of his palate.

He took another bite to savor it before slowly giving his evaluation.

“At least 0.8 lions!”

“So strong?”

Even the cameraman filming close-ups couldn’t hold back. He quickly grabbed a small fish and stuffed it in his mouth, nodding repeatedly while eating: “Delicious! This is really the best small fried fish I’ve eaten in the past couple of years!”

“It’s just a bit strange that it’s in a place like a KTV... lately, I feel like I keep eating delicious food in weird and unexpected places.”

When he said this, both of them suddenly stopped chewing.

This situation… seemed kind of familiar?

“Weird places, especially delicious food…”

Zhu Nan recalled the title he gave to the lion’s head video: “The best lion’s head is in a kindergarten, which makes sense.”

Could it be that they caught Chen Ran again this time?

The photographer also remembered Teacher Deng’s sneaky behavior just now…

No, she was trying to grab the first-spot privilege to skip the queue for discovering Chen Ran!

Both of them simultaneously pulled out their phones to quickly check messages in various groups.

Sure enough, the group chat was flooded with so many messages that it was hard to see clearly. Among those blurred messages, one term kept appearing.

Bai Tian’e (White Swan)!

“That’s it, no hope. This time the queue-skipping privilege is definitely lost.”At the speed that the foodies in these groups were sending messages, it was already imaginable that tomorrow... no, probably tonight, business here was going to explode.

“What should we do then...”

The photographer looked a bit regretfully at the few small dishes on the table. To him, these kinds of snacks that go well with drinks, while not as good as the pork knuckle he had before, were even more tempting than the lion’s head.

“What else can we do? Enjoy it while we still can, then get up early tomorrow to queue, trying to enjoy a few more days before the crowd arrives.”

Zhu Nan kept pressing the call button for the waiter, and as soon as someone quickly came over, he slapped the table loudly.

“For these three dishes, give me five orders of each! Hurry up, if I can’t finish, I’ll pack it to go!”