Even if you looked across the entirety of Da Ming, the kitchen of Zhixian Pavilion was second to none.
On the hardware front, there was hardly any need to elaborate: every single piece of equipment was the finest available. The iron of its woks surpassed that used in the weapons of many a penniless jianghu wanderer, while the wood of its chopping boards was pricier than the best furniture in an ordinary household.
As for the ingredients and seasonings, they were fully stocked with everything one could imagine—treasures of mountain and sea from the four corners of the world, including rare goods that could not even be found natively within Da Ming.
Take the fish from a moment ago, for example. One must understand that those times were nothing like the modern era. Today, even if you reside in an inland city, you can readily enjoy seafood flown in fresh under refrigeration. Back then, however, if you lived far from the coast, catching a bite of saltwater fish was—to put it mildly—extraordinarily difficult, if not downright impossible.
In ancient times, a person born in Sichuan who never stepped beyond its borders might easily live an entire life without ever tasting, or even laying eyes on, a single fish from the ocean.
Luoyang was much the same. Bounded to the north by the Yellow River, procuring freshwater fish was nothing special. Yet among the fish Yuan Fangzhi had presented earlier, the monkfish and Spanish mackerel were both ocean-dwellers. Deep-sea creatures like monkfish were tricky enough to catch in the first place, let alone transport inland.
That fact alone showed that the tavern's proprietor was not merely wealthy, but extraordinarily well-connected.
And when it came to the kitchen's "software"—the personnel—the place was even more formidable.
The ground-floor kitchen of Bugui Tower was already vast, bustling with a dozen chefs and assistants during business hours. The second-floor kitchen was nearly identical in size, yet it was run by only three men.
The first was the former imperial chef Yuan Fangzhi, known far and wide as the South Chef King.
The second was his right-hand man, an elderly eunuch named Zhang Ergui, who had left the palace alongside him.
The third was a kitchen helper named You Jing.
Yuan Fangzhi was, without question, the cornerstone of this kitchen. By the age of twenty-five, his fame had already spread far and wide, and high-ranking officials and nobility flocked daily to the restaurant where he presided, showering his culinary artistry with praise. In time, even Li Qian, the eunuch then directing the Directorate for Palace Delicacies, caught wind of Yuan Fangzhi's name.
One day, Li Qian paid a visit in plain clothes to the restaurant where Yuan was employed. He deliberately ordered several rare, exotic dishes that the waiters had never even heard of, aiming to test Master Yuan's capabilities. When Yuan Fangzhi heard the names in the back kitchen, he immediately recognized that his guest was no ordinary patron. His fighting spirit ignited. Not only did he prepare every requested dish to absolute perfection, but he also presented an original creation of his own: "Spring Tide Rushes Late with Rain."
This seasonal delicacy centered on spring bamboo shoots—specifically, shoot tips unearthed less than half a day prior, tender enough to taste exquisitely fresh even when eaten raw. Alongside them were seventeen supplementary ingredients, all fresh fruits and vegetables unique to springtime.
These eighteen items had to be sliced, peeled, and prepped using eighteen distinct knife techniques before being cooked and ultimately infused with rich stock, bringing ingredients of wildly divergent textures and flavors into sublime harmony.
When the finished dish was finally served, its color, aroma, flavor, concept, and presentation had reached the pinnacle of mastery, displaying Yuan Fangzhi's miraculous knife skills in all their glory.
With just a single bite, Li Qian made up his mind: this chef had to be brought into the imperial palace.
That same year, Yuan Fangzhi was naturally elevated into the Imperial Kitchen. Fifteen years later, the previous emperor personally bestowed upon him the title of South Chef King, placing him on equal footing with Chen Jiurong, the North Chef King, also known as the Folk Chef King.
Yet times change, and in the end, age catches up with everyone. Denial changes nothing.
In an era when the average life expectancy barely touched sixty, Yuan Fangzhi, who had performed exhausting manual labor all his life, began to feel his strength waning under the demands of the Imperial Kitchen by the age of fifty-six.
Furthermore, sixteen years had passed since he was crowned Chef King, and his most glorious years were long behind him. The current Yongtai Emperor was hardly particular about his food. The sovereign neither knew nor cared who was who in the Imperial Kitchen.
Realizing there was little point in lingering, Yuan Fangzhi petitioned to retire and return home, and the court granted his request.
As for Zhang Ergui, he was effectively half a disciple to Yuan Fangzhi, having trained under him ever since the chef entered the palace. In truth, Zhang was only two years younger than Yuan. Over several decades of shared work, the two had developed an easy rapport as both teachers and friends. The moment Zhang heard that Yuan was departing, he chose to leave as well.
Some might wonder: could a palace eunuch simply walk away whenever he pleased?
Here, a point of clarification is needed. Not all palace castrates were strictly "grand eunuchs"—taijian. Prior to the Qing dynasty, taijian was an official rank. While both were castrated palace servants and could be collectively referred to as eunuchs, taijian specifically designated those in managerial positions who oversaw the rest.
To use a modern analogy: in a company, a department manager is an employee just like anyone else, but the manager directs the staff. Not every worker can be a manager.
It was only in the Qing dynasty that the terms became completely conflated, giving rise to colloquialisms like "little taijian."
Zhang Ergui was not a ranked taijian; he was merely an ordinary eunuch. When an elderly eunuch of his age had not managed a promotion, no one in the palace would bother to retain him if he wished to leave.
In fact, had he stayed a few years longer, they would have dismissed him anyway, as his aging body was no longer fit for the physically grueling demands of lower-level service.
As for You Jing, the kitchen helper, he shared no deep history with the other two. He had been an employee of Bugui Tower from the beginning, only getting to know Yuan and Zhang when they arrived a few years ago.
There were nights when Zhixian Pavilion saw not a single customer. Under those circumstances, the second-floor kitchen needed only to prepare meals for the proprietor living on the third floor, and You Jing was the one who carried the food upstairs each day.
Beyond a doubt, the dishes produced by this trio were equal to, if not better than, the imperial fare served inside the palace.
And yet... today, Sun Yixie, a fellow from the fish market, was barging in to "teach Yuan Fangzhi how to cook." Was this not the strangest spectacle under heaven?
Sun Yixie swaggered into the kitchen of Zhixian Pavilion, leading the entourage behind him.
Zhang Ergui and You Jing, who had been standing by on duty, froze in bewilderment, unable to fathom what this commotion was all about.
While they were still hesitating, Sun Yixie swept his gaze over the kitchen and strolled over to the washbasin.
Meanwhile, Yuan Fangzhi hurried over to his two colleagues and briefed them in hushed tones about what had just transpired outside. The pair's expressions shifted repeatedly as their eyes darted between Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai, as if they could hardly believe their own ears.
Sun Yixie, on the other hand, spent a few moments gathering his ingredients before setting to work.
His culinary skills were... passable. Roughly the level of someone capable of churning out decent home-cooked meals. In Da Ming, of course, most men outside of professional chefs never touched a kitchen knife, so among amateurs, someone of his caliber was indeed a rarity.
To Yuan Fangzhi's discerning eyes, however, such amateurish work was laughably crude.
"Young Master Sun..." After watching for only a short while, Yuan Fangzhi could no longer hold his tongue and stepped forward to intervene. "The way you're cutting those onions... that isn't right, is it?"
"Mind your own business. I've got my own method," Sun Yixie snapped testingly without even looking up.
Yuan Fangzhi thought to himself, *I gave you a helpful hint out of good will, only to get snubbed for my trouble. Fine then... you didn't nitpick while I was cooking, so I'll keep my mouth shut.*
And so he stood quietly by, watching Sun Yixie fuss and fumble. Yuan could not glean much from the young man's handling of the stove, since heat control varied from dish to dish and he could make no sense of what Sun Yixie was preparing. But when it came to knife skills, Yuan could see right through him: this lad's technique was dreadfully sloppy. With basic fundamentals like that, where did he find the audacity to claim he could make a whitebait dish superior to his own?
The time it took an incense stick to burn soon slipped away.
Sun Yixie worked at a brisk pace. In under half an hour, he emerged carrying a plate of whitebait that was vibrant in color and brimming with an enticing aroma.
Around the outer rim of the plate lay a crimson border composed of diced tomatoes, shallots, capers, and pickled cucumbers. These ingredients were chopped rather haphazardly, uneven and unrefined. In the center rose a small, pale mound of whitebait—which, credit where credit was due, looked quite appetizing. Atop this mound of fish rested a dollop of pale yellow sauce, and just before plating, Sun Yixie had sprinkled a pinch of minced herbs over the entire arrangement.
From top to bottom and inside out, the four colors of green, yellow, white, and red stood in sharp contrast. A distinct, robust fragrance drifted forth, intertwined with the delicate natural sweetness of the fish. Judging by color and aroma alone, the dish genuinely seemed quite remarkable.
What manner of food was this, exactly?
In truth, it was a French dish: marinated beef.
Only Sun Yixie had substituted whitebait for the beef, vegetable oil for the olive oil, and blended chili, onion, garlic, honey, dry mustard powder, oil, salt, and wine into an offbeat, bastardized version of Dijon mustard.
In short, this was a piece of knockoff cuisine, with several authentic ingredients and spices replaced by makeshift substitutes.
Even pulling off this much was no easy feat. It was possible only because Zhixian Pavilion's pantry was stocked with everything under the sun; in any ordinary kitchen, one could not even dream of it. Ingredients like black pepper, yellow mustard, honey, thyme, and onions simply did not exist in typical households. In the Ming era, these were rare commodities, some valued more dearly than silver.
Be that as it may, he had managed to produce the dish.
Sun Yixie took a bite himself. Not bad at all. Naturally, achieving this level of execution was thanks to the fact that this was hardly his first time making it.
In his original world, he had been a devoted foodie. After crossing over, he could still enjoy plenty of Chinese delicacies, but Western and Japanese cuisines were completely out of reach. Faced with a craving that money alone could not satisfy, he had taken matters into his own hands.
Relying on his rudimentary knowledge of foreign cookery, memories of flavors past, and a wealth of idle time and spare silver, he had successfully recreated a fair share of culinary monstrosities.
The dish before them was one of his proudest creations.
If one were to argue whether such a concoction was genuinely divine... well, hardly. But to impress Yuan Fangzhi, it was more than enough.
Novelty can elevate flavor tremendously.
If you present a person who has never tasted curry and has no inkling of its price with a bowl that seasoned eaters would deem merely average, they will still marvel at it as though it were food from heaven.
Conversely, if you serve someone who eats steak every day a mediocre cut, their reaction will naturally be lukewarm.
Instant noodles, which took the world by storm in the 1990s, operated on a similar principle. Something you regarded as a supreme delicacy in childhood might hold little appeal today.
The flavor hasn't deteriorated—if anything, it has improved. What changed was you.
Yuan Fangzhi was just like a child who had never tasted instant noodles; that single mouthful of "French marinated whitebait" sent his senses into sheer ecstasy.
In all his long years, no one had ever explained Dijon mustard to him. The technique of simmering those "Western Regions spices" together with vegetables and fish was also something he had never witnessed before, and savoring flavors born of foreign seasonings was an experience he had never encountered.
The moment he finished eating, he was thoroughly convinced.
"Splendid! Magnificent, truly magnificent!" Before he had even laid down his chopsticks, Yuan Fangzhi blurted out praise four times in a row. "Youth breeds heroes indeed. This old man admits complete defeat!"
A true master naturally possessed a master's magnanimity. When Sun Yixie had spouted arrogant boasts earlier, Yuan Fangzhi had naturally been skeptical. But now that the young man had served up a delicacy he had never tasted and could never replicate, Yuan gave credit where credit was due.
As the saying went, learning knows no end and the pursuit of skill is boundless. Those who possessed genuine mastery never feared acknowledging that someone excelled beyond them in a particular area; such was the way of things. Only frauds who chased empty prestige clung to vanity over truth, forever resting on their laurels, their talents stunted.
"Haha... You flatter me, Master Yuan. I was merely showing off my meager skills before an expert," Sun Yixie replied. Though he had walked into the kitchen with eighty percent confidence, that lingering uncertainty had weighed on him. Seeing that the old chef was utterly dazzled, he finally let out a sigh of relief and offered a polite pleasantry.
This was social finesse. Without such grace and the knack for winning over hearts, how could he have ever become the big boss of the fish market?
"Mmh... not bad at all," Huang Donglai remarked from the side, stepping forward to sample a few bites of Sun Yixie's handiwork.
His reaction was comparatively subdued. To him, these flavors were not entirely foreign; watching Sun Yixie prepare the dish and observing the ingredients had given him a fair idea of what to expect.
In the end, everyone present took a taste, and the plate was cleaned out before Sun and Huang could even pick up a few more bites.
The more Yuan Fangzhi ate, the more he felt the dish was flawless in every respect. He even rationalized his earlier skepticism: *Perhaps Young Master Sun's knife work isn't sloppy at all. Maybe he cut the vegetables unevenly on purpose! Since the whitebait vary in size, cutting the garnishes unevenly creates a far richer layering of textures.* That, he decided, explained why he had misjudged the young man's technique.
Unfortunately, no matter how much Old Master Yuan admired Sun Yixie, he could not simply usher them into a private dining room on the spot. Rules were rules; there were still two trials left to pass.
"Young Masters..." Having tasted Sun Yixie's dish and witnessed Yuan Fangzhi's reaction, Xue Tui's demeanor toward the pair grew noticeably more deferential. "...You truly are extraordinary." He paused, then continued, "Not only did Young Master Sun breeze through the One Taste trial, but he also earned such lavish praise from Master Yuan with his culinary craft. It is truly astounding." After offering this flattery, he shifted the topic and deftly set his hook. "Presumably... the second trial, One Glance, will be just as effortless for the two of you?"
Chapter 35