Gourmet: From a Stall in Northern Europe

Monday morning.

Nagishiro Sho packed a few pieces of clothing and luggage, and after freshening up, went down to the hotel front desk to check out.

After completing the procedures, he was just about to leave when the front desk phone rang.

Elise answered with a couple of nods, her expression suddenly becoming serious, and hurriedly called out to Nagishiro Sho.

"Chef, please wait a moment, there’s been a bit of an incident here."

"Hmm?"

He thought there might be some issue with the hotel room, so he stopped and returned to the counter, waiting quietly.

Elise hung up the phone, looked up at him, and said, "It’s like this, Chef. The police just called and said that our General Manager Mr. Wang and his wife were victims of a home robbery last night. There were five Sakura people involved."

"What?????"

Nagishiro Sho opened his mouth wide, utterly shocked.

Elise quickly waved her hand, "Don’t misunderstand, don’t misunderstand, it’s not related to you, Chef. It’s just that the police found that the other party’s language skills are extremely limited, making normal communication impossible, and they couldn’t find a Japanese translator on short notice."

"Then they just called over to ask if our hotel has a Japanese-speaking translator, since we have quite a large operation here, we definitely have multilingual staff."

"Of course we have Japanese-speaking employees, but... none as proficient as someone from Sakura Country. If you’re not in a hurry, Mr. Nagishiro, could you possibly run to the police station? Our General Manager Wang is also there giving a statement."

Upon hearing this situation, Nagishiro Sho immediately agreed without hesitation. After asking for the specific address, he was directly driven to the scene by the logistics staff.

Upon entering the police station, he immediately saw two familiar figures sitting at the desk.

He quickly stepped forward, bowed deeply, and apologized in one swift motion.

"Sumimasai!!"

"Mr. Wang, Mrs. Wang, I offer my sincerest apologies to both of you on behalf of the people of Sakura Country!"

He spoke in Chinese, having learned it on the drive using a translation app.

Wang Ziqin waved it off indifferently, "It’s okay, it’s okay, every country has good people and bad people. I hope this incident doesn’t affect the relationship between us."

After everything wrapped up at the police station, Nagishiro Sho still felt uneasy at heart.

He never expected to encounter countrymen in a foreign land, let alone ones who would blatantly commit home invasion and even attempt to assault the lady of the house.

It’s simply tarnishing the international reputation of Sakura people!

"I’m truly sorry, please let me do something to make amends, or I won’t be able to sleep!"

Facing Chef Sakura’s ninety-degree bow once again, Wang Ziqin and Chu Yueyue exchanged glances, their eyes flickering as they instantly reached a consensus.

"In that case, why don’t we have Mr. Nagishiro cook us a meal?"

Wang Ziqin didn’t hold back with him.

"Just make that spicy garlic crawfish from yesterday. Mr. Nagishiro should have learned it by now, right?"

"Hmm?"

Nagishiro Sho looked up in confusion, "I’ve learned it, but... is that all?"

"How about this, whenever you two are free, please come to my restaurant, and I’ll personally prepare the most exquisite omakase for you two as a token of apology. My treat."

"It’s settled then, we won’t be polite with you~"

Wang Ziqin took out his phone, swiped a few times to check his schedule, and continued.

"We don’t have much going on these next few days, so let’s not look for a better day, how about tonight or tomorrow night?"

"Then tonight it is. I’ll prepare a lunch for you two first, but I might not be able to do knife-cut noodles at the moment. Save some room for the dinner feast, okay?"

"No problem."

He wasn’t in a hurry to go back anyway; the restaurant operated just fine without him. However, if he were to personally prepare the omakase as an apology, he definitely couldn’t use ordinary ingredients; the standard must be top-notch.

On the way to the farm, he gave the restaurant’s sous-chef a call to reserve some expensive ingredients in advance to avoid any mishaps.

During the long-awaited break, Lucas kept busy, holed up in the hotel room editing footage.

He needed to capitalize on the popularity of the kite festival and food festival by getting all the videos he could post out there.

If he could ride this wave of traffic, his follower count might even multiply several times over.

Not only him, but Jiang Shuqi also holed up in the room working overtime like crazy; she was the one who informed him about the traffic boom, or he might have just slept through the day with his empty mind.

Dais hopped into Helena’s car last night and hurried back to Amiens. Seeing the harmonious family scenes made her miss her two kids a little.

Taking advantage of this break, she wanted to play the role of mother well and also cook some new dishes she learned from Lin Chen to give the kids a change of taste.

Elsa and Lucinda, who usually help out, seemed to have paired up at some point. Feeling bored, they decided to hit the streets for some retail therapy.

Jonathan, as usual during his breaks, disappeared from the world. Heaven knows where he went to enjoy life this time.

Lin Chen woke up to find that it was already noon.

Skipping breakfast didn’t leave him feeling hungry at all, so he simply decided to skip lunch, planning to eat whenever he felt hungry.

Although he couldn’t set up the stall today, it didn’t mean he had nothing to do.

He was planning to tinker with the challenge tasks of the national banquet series to see what the fuss was all about.

"Wait a minute!"

Just as he was about to take out the Challenge Card with a thought, he suddenly remembered something and jumped out of bed, rushing to the door.

In the parking spot by the roadside, his big red food truck was still quietly standing there, but the entire body had noticeably gotten bigger.

If the original food truck looked about the size of a van, now it had expanded to the size of a small school bus, roughly estimated to be over five meters long and more than two meters wide.

The interior space felt nearly doubled, but it was just an illusion because the extra space was still empty, resulting in a visual effect that made it look larger.

Not only the area, but even some of the original equipment changed shape and position, adjusted to better fit the current vehicle structure.

The original refrigerator under the workbench that required crouching or bending to open had evolved into a stand-up double-door fridge occupying a separate spot.

Looking inside, perhaps because the height had doubled, the internal space seemed much more normal, unlike before where the fridge seemed bigger than the food truck structure itself.

The window configuration changed from two pieces to three, switching from sliding to folding style, capable of folding left and right or flipping up outward.

In short, the entire style of the food truck became more modernized, resembling the minimalist decor of domestic internet-famous coffee shops.

Minimalist didn’t mean cheap; rather, it required more money to achieve this effect.

He nodded in satisfaction and carefully examined the inside and outside of the truck.

"Not bad, not bad, as expected from a reward obtained after fifteen upgrades. Considering this trend, the next expansion will probably require at least another fifteen upgrades, maybe even over twenty?"

While it sounded like a lot, actually it wasn’t too bad.

Unlike the early days of setting up the stall, when he didn’t know how to handle challenge tasks, now the situation was that he couldn’t complete them quickly enough.

With the restaurant as a backup, the space of a medium-sized food truck was already sufficient.

Once the internal equipment is upgraded several more times, filling the empty space should allow the combination with Lucas’s pickup truck to provide meals for a thousand people simultaneously.

However, that would be too exhausting, and there wouldn’t be enough time for setting up the stall; it’s imperative to first consider the restaurant’s business model.

Back indoors, there were now two issues to address.

The restaurant’s operating model and the national banquet challenge.

The current buffet mode of the restaurant was convenient, but it also limited the diversity of dishes unless he recruited chefs to help.

Training foreign chefs to cook Chinese dishes was clearly unrealistic, so it would be better to recruit ready chefs domestically.

With the high salary package offered abroad, he wasn’t worried about being unable to recruit people.

But the issue was, as one of the restaurant’s head chefs, he couldn’t just act as a hands-off manager and escape to set up the stall, right?

Even if Chef Marchello didn’t mind, he couldn’t get over his own moral hurdle of being an idle salary thief.

However, trying to balance both the stall and restaurant would surely leave no time for the national banquet challenge.

That thing certainly required a lot of time.

"Is there any way to let me escape the kitchen work while also allowing the stall to bring traffic to the restaurant?"

The compromise he thought of was using the stall to increase the restaurant’s revenue, allowing him to say he was promoting the restaurant, thus contributing.

"Promotion... promotion..."

"Got it!"

Mumbling the word over and over, a bright idea suddenly struck him.

The restaurant had already accumulated a substantial clientele base, removing the need for him to deliberately promote further; regulars knew he mainly did Great Xia Cuisine.

If he organized a Great Xia Food Culture event, listing famous dishes or internationally renowned plates on the website for voting, letting netizens choose the food or dish they most wanted to eat.

Based on this voting activity, corresponding stall events could be launched, attracting hordes of netizens to try the popular picks.

"But focusing solely on Great Xia Cuisine voting is not enough; culinary events from other countries are necessary too, catering to the tastes of all food enthusiast groups."

Focusing only on Great Xia Cuisine might discourage many foreigners who haven’t tried it from taking the plunge; Southeast Asian cuisine, more familiar to them, could serve as a temptation.

Once people are drawn to the scene, the rest becomes easy.

After roughly outlining the short-term plan, the next steps involve publishing recruitment information, recruiting personnel, and then subtly adjusting the operating model.

He always felt that since it was Great Xia Cuisine, breakfast should be made of typical breakfast foods.

Things like soymilk, deep-fried dough sticks, porridge, buns, or breakfast items with regional characteristics, such as Fried Dumplings, hot dry noodles, dim sum, soup noodles, wontons, etc.