The Gourmet Customizer

Moreover, after sending over the registration form, Su Chen issued a new order.

From now on, barring any special circumstances, everyone was to remain on the second floor and assist Liu Ahbao.

Bai Xiaobo would continue to handle all the custom orders, while any order under a thousand yuan would be passed to Liu Ahbao.

If a special situation arose where Liu Ahbao couldn’t complete a dish, he was to ask Su Chen for help.

Liu Shengnan remained in charge of the company’s finances. He Shuting and Zhang Li were responsible for serving the children their lunch each day. Ling Shuyu, meanwhile, took on full responsibility for the small diner, acting as its general manager.

However, whenever they weren’t busy, everyone was required to go to the kitchen and help Liu Ahbao prep ingredients.

This even included Su Chen himself, who had recently decided to shift his focus to the small diner as well.

As for Aunt Fang...

Now that she was responsible for cleaning two floors, Su Chen had spoken to her privately, asking if she wanted him to hire another person.

Aunt Fang flatly rejected the offer.

She said she could handle the second floor on her own. As for the nineteenth floor, there was hardly anyone there most of the time, so a simple daily tidying-up was sufficient. The workload was still well within an acceptable range.

Su Chen had also offered Aunt Fang a raise, but to his surprise, she turned that down too!

She told him that if he ever expanded the company to a few more floors, all he had to do was remember to make her the head of the cleaning department.

Su Chen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If that day ever came, the head of the cleaning department would undoubtedly be Aunt Fang!

There was another piece of good news: Wang Xiaoyi had come to the cafeteria again the previous night!

Su Chen whipped up a tomato pasta for her on the spot. After reaping a handsome amount of experience points, he made a dish of tomato and shrimp paste stew.

This time, Wang Xiaoyi only yielded a little over one hundred experience points for Su Chen.

In other words, Su Chen’s theory was completely correct.

The tomato pasta had lowered Wang Xiaoyi’s sensitivity to tomato flavors, and the previous Longjing shrimp dish had lowered her sensitivity to shrimp. Therefore, the tomato and shrimp paste dish hadn’t triggered her Peak of Flavor.

With this new understanding, the path forward became much clearer. This was also why Su Chen had decided to focus on the small diner recently.

As a result, his rest intervals after studying in the Gourmet Practice Room were now longer than before.

He had to complete this hidden task as quickly as possible. For someone who loved food, the allure of the Peak of Flavor was unprecedented!

To finish the task sooner, Su Chen immediately changed the daily lunch menu from four dishes and a soup to eight dishes and a soup!

He even set up an exclusive breakfast service for the teachers.

While everyone else got steamed buns, millet porridge, and tea eggs, the teachers were treated to a different, elaborate breakfast every morning!

The same went for dinner.

This breakneck pace continued for seven straight days. Aside from Saturday and Sunday, the entire staff of Delicious was operating at maximum capacity—insanely busy!

A new Monday arrived. After a two-day rest, Su Chen woke up early, full of energy, and hurried to the second floor.

"What are we making today?"

A week ago, he had given a menu he designed to Liu Ahbao, letting him select the dishes for each day.

Ah Bao was so happy he was practically grinning from ear to ear. He had learned more from Boss Su in the past week than he had in the entire previous year.

"Boss, we’ve already made every dish on the menu you gave me last week."

"That fast?" Su Chen’s eyes widened in disbelief.

’It didn’t feel like we made that many,’ he thought.

Besides, his standard for those dishes was just A Level, so they were a breeze for him to make.

"You wanted three kinds for breakfast, eight for lunch, and four for dinner, with a different variety every day. We’ve already made sixty or seventy different dishes!"

’Already?’

Su Chen turned away. ’No wonder the experience points from Wang Xiaoyi have been dropping lately.’

"Then what textures or flavors from my menu do you think we haven’t covered yet?"

Liu Ahbao pulled the menu from a drawer.

It covered most of the representative dishes from the Eight Major Cuisines. Granted, the execution was only at an upper-middle level, not quite matching the standard Boss Su demonstrated when he was cooking for guests himself.

But in terms of textures and flavors, it pretty much had everything covered.

As for flavors...

You had your five basic tastes—sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty. As for textures, there are only so many, when you get down to it. The menu also included over a hundred ingredients; they had basically gone through all the common vegetables on the market!

The variety of meats was exhaustive. Any type of meat not on the list was likely something most people would rarely get to eat anyway.

Looking it over, Liu Ahbao felt the menu was nearly perfect.

"I feel like... it seems to cover everything."

"Take another look." Su Chen was afraid he might miss something if he was the only one looking.

After poring over it again, Liu Ahbao said, frustrated, "Well, if you absolutely have to find something missing... there is one flavor profile that hasn’t appeared yet."

"What flavor?"

Ah Bao was a little unsure if this particular flavor really counted as a culinary taste.

After all, it wasn’t exactly common.

But since his boss was pressing him, he had no choice but to answer slowly, "I don’t think... stinky has made an appearance yet..."

"Stinky?"

Su Chen stroked his chin. ’Now that he mentions it, that’s true!’

’The problem is, stinky isn’t exactly a standard culinary flavor.’

Imagine a luxurious restaurant. Everyone is seated, eagerly anticipating a grand feast, and the first dish that comes out reeks to high heaven.

No matter how delicious it might taste, it wouldn’t be a great experience for the other customers!

But if such dishes exist, there must be a reason for it.

’And the hidden task never said that "stinky" wasn’t a category of fine cuisine!’

"Alright. But if we’re going for stinky, there’s not enough time to make anything now."

Dishes with that kind of flavor generally require a fermentation process; very few can be made on the spot.

Su Chen thought for a moment. He truly didn’t know what else to make. "What kind of stinky dishes do you think we could make?"

Liu Ahbao looked at his boss in horror. "I am vehemently opposed to luosifen and stinky tofu! And surströmming is out of the question!"

No matter how delicious you make them, they just plain stink!

Su Chen shook his head. "What even is surströmming? If I remember correctly, we have a famous dish in our own country that’s known for being stinky. It’s also fish, but it’s far more delicious than that canned stuff."

Liu Ahbao’s expression changed, and he stared at his boss in shock.

There was indeed such a dish.

But the cuisine that dish belonged to... ’Could the boss master even *that* cuisine with such ease?’

"You don’t mean..."

Su Chen gave him a rare, cheeky grin.

"That’s right. That’s the one!"

GASP!

Ah Bao stumbled back two steps. It really was that dish!

It was a highly controversial dish, its fame no less than that of any representative dish from the Eight Major Cuisines.

Yet its regional classification remained a mystery.

The standard for judging whether a restaurant could make it well was often down to a single question: did it have the right kind of stink?

’With Boss Su’s skill...’

The thought of this dish being created at Delicious made Liu Ahbao’s stomach drop.

’I really want to run away. What do I do?’