National Tide 1980

"Damn it! These French people are sincerely tormenting people! We are chefs, is it our job to clean the kitchen? That is the job of the cleaners. Besides, the kitchen is worse than the restaurant outside. Clean, is this normal? These foreign devils are simply sick! Mysophobia! They made me tired all day long, and I had to clean the chimney at the end. Are they so bossy? Xiaocha, do you think so?"

"That's right. In fact, I'm not afraid of being tired. We are all asked to do our job diligently. The key is that they don't treat us men as human beings! Just those foreign devils, when serving food in the kitchen, They weren’t yelling anymore, they were yelling, hysterical yelling! I felt like they were going to throw a frying pan on my face in the next second. Damn it, it’s been so many years since the Opium War ended, why do we still have to suffer? What do foreigners mean? Brother Chun'er, that means I don't understand, and I don't know if they use any curse words, otherwise I'll really have to slap them!"

"Oh, Xiaocha, why do you men always want to fight? Will this solve the problem? If I knew French, I would go and reason with those foreign chefs, and the staff meals must be changed first. Don't let it happen They don't have to fool us by making sandwiches all day long. Don't you think so? If our chefs can't even eat well, how can we make the guests eat well? Hey, here it is, let alone compare it to our Tan Palace, it's not as good as What about those ordinary small state-owned restaurants? I’m also telling you, I’m really not being pretentious, and I don’t have to eat a lot of meat and fish. I just want to have a hot meal, is that too much? I’d rather just eat steamed buns, eat cabbage, stir-fry bean sprouts, and get some I don’t want to eat watery pimples or big pickled radish rolled into a flatbread, but I don’t want to eat that hard baguette or the white toast. Oh, those three foreigners even asked me to spread butter on it and put it on Put on the cheese, add the vegetable leaves, purple cabbage, pickles, tomatoes and cold meats. As soon as I eat it, my stomach will make a fuss..."

"That's right, Sister Yan'er. Hey, before I came here, I only heard that French cuisine was famous. I really didn't know that Western food was so unpalatable. Hey, let's just talk about the baguette. It's baked so dry, but it's actually hollow inside. Isn't this fooling people. How can our Laomian steamed buns and Su Ye'er pastries be as delicious? What kind of pizza is there? It's just Northeastern flatbread with some vegetables on it. The macaroni is so hard and far less delicious than the braised noodles we have in Beijing. The salad is not as good as our chives and bean sprouts mixed with vermicelli! Onion soup is like washing the pot with water, and mushroom soup is like batter. God knows what they are thinking. Dried mushrooms are ground into powder and then boiled. How can this be soup? Even the famous French foie gras is slimy and not chewy. Where can we find our sauced pork liver and chicken liver? It's delicious. Not to mention the cheese, it smells like stinky feet. Sister Yaner, you are too honest. You just eat it when you are told? No wonder you feel so uncomfortable. Next time you eat, you Never touch that thing again..."

"Haha, Dai Hong, what you said is so right. I couldn't eat the cheese and secretly vomited it all. Hehe, it's not that we are immodest. In my opinion, French food is probably just in name. Ah. If nothing else, look at those French guys. When they are cooking, they don’t even have the slightest idea of ​​what to expect. They still have to try it. This is something we have to do in the kitchen of Tan Palace. Their craftsmanship is I'm a kid, can you let them get a wok? Let alone the first stove, it's the second stove, and I don't even have the money to make soup. Okay, let's really fry the belly with oil and cook the shrimp pieces, and they can try a few more bites on the stove , Do you have the time? If you just delay like this, won't the heat become too old? How can you eat the food in the pot? They are the only ones who think that others are slow? Damn! They are the ones who waste the most time."

"Yes, yes, brother Chun'er, this foreign devil is really good at cooking. He even takes off his pants and farts. Good guy, there are so many knives, big and small, flat and long, And that jagged one, is that necessary? I don’t know, I thought they were surgeons. There are so many pots, fry this one, you have to use this pot, and you have to use that pot to do this, wrong, then Baimao'er has to fall out with you. I really don't understand. Why do they have to make the kitchen so complicated? It's better to have Chinese food. We can travel all over the world with an iron pot and a kitchen knife. No wonder they I can’t even count the plates. I have to spread them out one by one to count them. If I stack the plates together, I’ll be blinded. My IQ is worrying..."

To be honest, both the three French guys and the Western chefs they trained were partly right.

This five-person group of three men and two women in the altar, Jiang Dachun, Xiao Cha, Yang Feng, Xu Chunyan, and Dai Hong, secretly had strong opinions because of the "torture" they had received and their inability to adapt.

I worked in Maxim's kitchen for only three to five days, less than a week.

After finishing the cleaning on the previous Friday, everyone went back to the dormitory to sleep together after get off work.

They couldn't help but vent their pent-up complaints and complaints to each other.

But then again, although a few of them tried their best to vent their dissatisfaction by spoiling Western food and have fun by crowding out the French.

But they are not newbies to the kitchen industry, and they still have some discernment.

What's more, who can stand out in the kitchen of Tan Palace and do well in the kitchen? Who is not a master with some real skills under his command?

Since he is a truly capable chef, who has never experienced hardship or suffered?

In fact, not long after the pure negative emotions were vented, Huatouer's trend began to change.

This was something that those foreigners and those Western chefs didn’t guess.

The first people to lead this trend were good buddies Ning Weimin and Zhang Shihui who met at the Diianfang downstairs when they were working at the Chongwenmen Hotel.

Yang Feng, the leader of the Tan Palace Hanging Stove Group.

"Hey, that's it. If we keep talking, it will be over. We are hurting people behind their backs like this and they can't talk back. It's not very interesting. Xiaocha, don't look at me like that. I didn't mean to talk to the big guys. Play devil’s advocate.”

"Yes, it's quite hard to work here. We have to work two shifts every day. The working hours range from ten hours to thirteen or fourteen hours, with only one and a half hours of rest in between. We can't even eat well. For our As for the stomach and intestines, adapting to Western food is probably more difficult than cooking Western food."

"And in this kitchen, if you do nothing for more than three seconds, you will be urged and scolded. No one can search for anything for more than thirty seconds. Just because of this, I lost two knives. I didn't have any." Time to find it. If I say I like it here, then I’m a coward and I’m just pretending to be big in front of everyone.”

"But the problem is, we can't forget why we came here! Isn't it just to learn skills? Those foreigners love to scold. But who of us didn't get scolded when we were apprentices? You forgot that we, Tan Gong, What did those old masters say about us? They said that we are all a happy generation and don’t need to be beaten to learn our skills. I won’t hide it from you. Even a good-tempered person like Master Ai scolded me and even punished me. Duck stove.”

"Good guy, that was the stove that had been baking all morning, and it was still hot. I didn't dare to hesitate. I sprayed cold water all over my body, put on a sack and got in. The wall of the stove was at least over 100 degrees at that time, and as soon as the water touched it, It turned into water vapor, wrapped in soot, and the spray made my whole body black. After brushing, I almost turned into a piece of bacon. Compared with brushing the oil fume fan, it is nothing."

"Hey, how about we change the explanation. I don't believe it. If Master Zhang, who teaches us how to cook palace dishes, scolds you like this in the kitchen and asks you to clean like this. How dare you talk back? You're good at cooking. Isn’t that the case, whoever is good at his craftsmanship is the master. If you don’t get scolded and endure hardship, how can you learn real skills?”

"And foreigners do have some real skills. We can't tell lies with open eyes, right? If nothing else, their kitchen is so well managed, it is cleaner, more hygienic, with fresher ingredients and more efficient than our kitchen. I am also happy to let us The hanging stove is so clean, and duck embryos are preserved as well as others. To be honest, I will try it when I get back. Don’t forget, our Tan Palace is the number one in Beijing’s palace cuisine, the most high-end restaurant in Beijing, and its consumption level It’s not much lower than Maxim’s. Then it’s up to you to get good at whatever you want and learn whatever you want. You can’t let others compare with the past in terms of hygiene and overpower us.”

"As for whether this French food is delicious or not? It depends on two things. After all, our appetites are different from those of foreigners. It's hard to say this attributive. But there is one thing I can be sure of, the grilling method of Western food. , it does have merits and should not be underestimated. I specialize in hanging furnaces, and I know the things inside best."

"There's almost nothing that cannot be grilled like watercress, and nothing baked is not delicious. What's especially unimaginable is that all kinds of watercress are actually delicious when grilled. This is There’s no better place for Chinese food.”

"Although our Chinese food also has a lot of baked goods, such as pastries in pastry shops, sesame cakes, fire roasts, screw spinners and so on. However, the hanging stove barbecue in the kitchen has a limited variety, almost all of which are meat. Roast chicken, Roast duck, roast pigeon, roast lamb, roast deer, roast piglet, that’s all.”

"In addition, the methods of adding ingredients and marinating in advance, as well as the details of dish presentation, are not as good as others. Western barbecues have many types of ingredients added in advance, and the sauces that accompany them are far more abundant than ours. And that The electric oven is definitely a good thing. It is easier to use than our oven for roasting whole pieces of meat. It is also worth learning how to use hot plates to bake roasts and steaks. "

"So I don't care what you all think, I have decided to treat this place as Shajiabang. Isn't it just that I don't retaliate when I scold you? Isn't it just that I am tired and suffering? It's not like we haven't passed by, it's no big deal. . I plan to do whatever it takes, even if I bow my head and pretend to be a grandson here and work as a handyman, I still have to learn the barbecue techniques of these foreigners."

"In the words of our master chefs in the kitchen, being uncomfortable is not a good thing. If you want to be prominent in front of others, you have to learn to suffer behind your back. Those three foreigners must not let me learn it. As long as I learn it, it will be different. Think about it, we can do what they can do, but they can’t do what we can do. Then, I will be confident that Tan Palace’s BBQ will overwhelm them."

"What's more, once you learn this skill, the one who can benefit most from it is our own. No matter where we go from now on, if we want to make a fortune and be respected by others, we have to Relying on the true ability of the people behind you. This is called a wolf traveling a thousand miles to eat meat."

"Seriously, this is a rare opportunity! Everyone, don't look at the unpleasantness. But if this Tan Palace is not in charge of the civil affairs, if it is not inextricably linked to the Pierre Cardin Company and the Service Bureau, how can we There may be a chance to come here to have a closer look. For us, French food will always be a mystery that we can’t figure out.”

Yang Feng's long conversation silenced several people.

Now the five of them were walking silently on the road.

Because no one spoke anymore, the cold wind whistling in his ears began to become more and more obvious.

This rhythm, this rhythm, is somewhat depressing and makes everyone a little embarrassed.

But after a while, after a moment of contemplation, Xu Chunyan, the oldest among the group, took the initiative to express her approval of what Yang Feng had just said.

"Yang Zi, I didn't expect that you are really thoughtful and ambitious. It seems that we all underestimate you on weekdays. But don't look down on others. Among the five of us, you are not the only one who knows how to thank our manager Ning. , I know that I have to fight for Tan Gong. You are not the only one who has vision and can endure hardships. As the eldest sister of you guys, I don’t want to let you, a little brother, compare with the past. Then I will lose face. Tell the truth. You tell me, the skills of those three foreigners in making desserts also caught my fancy. Let’s compare ourselves to see if you can learn all the French barbecue dishes first, or if I can master all the French desserts first. Yes. How about a treat for whoever loses? Make a banquet with your own hands. Then everyone present will be treated to a big meal."

What does it mean to be a woman without giving way to a man?

This Beijing girl's unique boldness immediately made everyone cheer.

Yang Feng also had to express his admiration.

"Sister Yan'er, if you say that, I'm taking advantage of you. There seem to be many types of Western desserts, baking, pastry, cold food, knife skills, it seems that you have to use them all. This kind of competition is unfair to you. How about this? Let's compete with each other to learn three things first. Of course, they are the most famous dishes. They must be recognized as authentic French dishes that are world-famous. As for the bet, if I lose, I will do as you say. But you If you want to lose, just buy me two big nines."

The stakes are too high.

As a result, when he said this, not only was he full of atmosphere, but it also aroused Dai Hong's interest.

"Then I want to participate too. Brother Yang, let's compete too, but the stakes have to be lower. If you lose, treat me to Maxim's ice cream. If I lose, I'll give you a cigarette. Do you think that's okay?" "

This time Yang Zi didn't say anything, Xiao Cha didn't want to do it anymore.

"Dai Hong, you are just trying to take advantage. You wouldn't be such a bully. Maxim's ice cream costs twenty yuan per serving. How much does a pack of cigarettes cost? Besides, you're a connoisseur. What have you learned? That's so simple. It's just the two of us. The stakes don't change, but the projects have to be fair. I'm a hot-dish guy, and you're a cold-dish guy. Let's make a cold dish, a hot dish, and a soup each. , compare three things. When the time comes, let everyone evaluate to see who has a higher level."

Just like that, there were one more pair of bettors.

Now not only were everyone gearing up, but Jiang Dachun was even more amused.

"Yang Zi, you are amazing. I really didn't see it. You are so scheming. You are simply the contemporary 'Tai Chi Yang', Yang Luchan. Don't tell me, your energy is really worthy of everyone's praise. Study. That’s right, no matter what, we can’t go back to Tan Palace with nothing, right? Not to mention it’s embarrassing, I’m really sorry for Manager Ning.”

"What? What Tai Chi Yang? What did you say?" Yang Feng was confused and had no idea what Jiang Dachun meant.

Xiao Cha immediately stepped in again and explained for his senior brother.

"Hey, Brother Yang, how come you don't know? Haven't you read the little book "Stealing Fists"? Just last month, it spread throughout our entire Tan Palace Restaurant. Even the chefs in the restaurant are reading it. Later, I wished that everyone had the same skills."

"Ah? A book about little people? A comic book? A martial artist? Does that have anything to do with me?"

"Oh, Brother Yang, you don't know. The Yang Luchan in the book was determined to practice martial arts, and even pretended to be a mute beggar. She deliberately froze and passed out in front of the Tai Chi Chen family's gate. As a result, she took great pains to be taken in as a servant by the Chen family. I secretly learned someone else's Tai Chi and became a great master. That Tai Chi Yang is just like you, who has the same courage and courage as you. Come on, I'll give you my little book later, and you'll know after you read it. "

Jiang Dachun was happy again and gave a concluding speech.

"Hey, that's right. From here on out, we are Maxim's five-man sneak punch team."