Chapter 119: The First Group Of Guests
“Good afternoon, everyone.”
Zhu Bingwen’s sudden appearance made the A Bite of China Club members, who were slouching in their seats, instinctively sit up straight. Xiang Chuan was the first to react: Wait, this isn’t class. Then she relaxed a bit and leaned back.
“Teacher Zhu, is there something important that brings you here?”
Ouyang Yating invited Zhu Bingwen to sit on the chair by the dining table surrounded by everyone. Little Star No. 1 detected the guest and, as Zhu Bingwen sat down, served a freshly made fruit milk and a serving of apple yam cake.
“The stock here is pretty complete. Teacher, can I come over this afternoon to mooch some food?” Zhu Bingwen took a delightful sip of fruit milk, in a very pleasant mood.
“Didn’t you already come to mooch afternoon tea?” Xiang Chuan sighed. “Ingredients only started being processed today, so the tea snacks are just these. Please forgive the poor hospitality.”
“Afternoon tea? What is afternoon tea?” Zhu Bingwen touched his chin. “There are mentions of some tea-like things in the fragments of ancient history records, but this is the first time I’ve heard of afternoon tea. Could it be that in ancient times, fruit milk was called afternoon tea?”
“No, that’s just a general term. Tea is made by drying tea leaves… uh…” Unable to open Geegle to check Wikipedia for an explanation, Xiang Chuan got stuck. She always bought ready-made tea leaves and had never seen tea processing, so she could only awkwardly cough twice to change the subject: “So, Teacher Zhu, what are you here for?”
“Oh, look at my memory.” Zhu Bingwen slowly ate the yam cake while slowly opening his terminal, his movements so slow that Xiang Chuan felt that at this screen-swiping speed, he might not even pull up the page by the end of school.
“…Teacher, we’re not rushing you out. You can stay until tomorrow morning, and we won’t mind.” Ouyang Yating rubbed her temples. She had been skeptical about the school teacher gossip she heard from Nancy earlier, but she hadn’t expected to encounter it right now—the gluttonous Teacher Zhu Bingwen.
“Ah, you should have said so earlier.” Zhu Bingwen laughed heartily, his fingers nimbly opening the document on the light screen and sending it with a swipe to Xiang Chuan, who was looking at him speechless.
Xiang Chuan took a close look, then her vision went black—the document title read “Suggestions on Introducing Yue Xiang Restaurant to the Demeter University Affiliated High School Canteen (Draft)”. With over ten years of corporate slave experience in the office, she could already guess the contents. So she directly set the document light screen aside and looked at Zhu Bingwen: “Teacher Zhu, this shouldn’t be my responsibility, right?”
The implication was that he should discuss this with her father, not her.
“We’ll naturally meet with President Xiang Weiguo for formal negotiations. This is just for you, as a related party, to reference.” Zhu Bingwen took a delightful sip of fruit milk. “I went to taste it this morning. It’s really delicious. Your family’s restaurant is right downstairs from where I live—super convenient. It would be even better if delivery service was available.”
“Online reservations are already great, and this is my father’s decision anyway. Complaining to me won’t help.”
“Just help pass along the message and pay attention to consumer voices.”
“…I’ll try.” She couldn’t let on that this idea was hers, Xiang Chuan thought. “But is it okay to directly introduce new food from Yue Xiang? Although meat, fish, eggs, and such are fairly complete right now, staple food… cough, grain-based food is still quite limited—just dough drops, buns, steamed buns, and pancakes. Won’t the students at school get tired of it?”
“Don’t worry about that.” Zhu Bingwen laughed as he spoke. “Humans have eaten liquid food and solid food for tens of thousands of years in history without ever getting tired of them, let alone these appetite-stimulating ancient foods. Rest assured, just this apple yam cake alone, it would take a couple hundred years for everyone to get tired of it.”
Modern people’s sense of time is really puzzling! The 21st century person who couldn’t stand eating the same dishes for a whole week for dinner silently complained in their heart.
“Hello—is the door open here—”
At that moment, several heads poked in from the doorway, full of curiosity as they sized up this Ancient Gourmet Club that had become the talk of the school. Little Star No. 1 immediately went to greet them and led the new guests inside.
“Welcome. Very sorry, we’re still preparing at the moment.”
Ouyang Yating stepped forward. As soon as she said this, disappointment showed on the students’ faces: Sure enough, we came too early?
Immediately after, a light screen appeared in front of them. Flipping left and right revealed several pages. What is this? The group looked up at her.
Although mentally prepared, serving guests as a shop assistant still made Ouyang Yating a bit nervous. She lightly coughed twice to compose herself and continued: “Since the kitchen is preparing and we didn’t prepare new dishes in advance, if you came after seeing the live stream to try new food, you might be disappointed. But besides cake and pastries, we can make and provide other dishes on the spot.”
On the spot? Everyone’s eyes lit up, and they began flipping through the menu that Xiang Chuan had organized while bored at the camp last week. The menu wasn’t in the modern style of pure text that directly lists ingredients and nutritional components in a huge block, but like in the 21st century, it used photos, names, and prices in form, with different layouts by category, and edges decorated with Xiang Chuan’s casual doodles. Though she had no artistic talent, she could still draw kindergarten-level kids’ drawings like five-petal flowers. Little did they know that for modern people lacking artistic exposure, this was already quite novel.
As for the reference photos, they were naturally pulled straight from Xiang Xue’s SNS. Xiang Xue had been smug about it for a while before heading out that morning.
“This… what is egg pancake?” The boy tapped the egg pancake image on the light screen, and unexpectedly, an explanation popped up, listing raw materials and seasonings, as well as various nutritional components.
Xiang Chuan hadn’t originally planned to add it, but when she showed it to everyone after arriving at school that afternoon, the three club members immediately jumped up demanding she add it. Even the usually obedient Liang Gong looked serious. Seeing this, Xiang Chuan could only obediently have the kitchen AI assist in adding nutritional info tables to each dish.
Sometimes it’s really hard to understand modern people’s standards for things. Xiang Chuan thought as she looked at the reorganized menu.
Before long, Little Star No. 1 sent the order to the kitchen and went to the kitchen pickup window to wait. Ouyang Yating chatted briefly with the students before returning to the group.
“Are these your first batch of customers?” Zhu Bingwen propped his chin with one hand as he watched the students. The students noticed the gaze, seemed to recognize him as a teacher, and enthusiastically waved. Zhu Bingwen smiled and waved back.
“If those people from two weeks ago who came at noon every day for buns don’t count as regular customers, then these might really be our first batch.” Xiang Chuan tilted her head and looked at Ouyang Yating. “How is it? Getting used to it?”
“First time greeting people—it’s pretty fresh.” Ouyang Yating sat back in her seat, occasionally glancing at the table not far away where people were curiously looking at the menu. “But after we demonstrate a few more times, we can hand it over to Little Star and the others, right?”
“AI robots need three demonstrations to memorize action logic, then two more and they’re good.” Ainuo explained.
“Frees up our hands—pretty good.” Xiang Chuan made the summary remark.
“Is the door open here—”
The four turned their heads at the sound and saw several more curious peers at the doorway. The four exchanged smiles: Looks like the three demonstrations can be done today.
Grades aren’t great… sigh
