Early Wednesday morning, He Yuqiang woke up in the king-sized bed at the Four Seasons Hotel. The suite she had booked came with a complimentary breakfast, but she didn’t go downstairs to eat. Instead, she hired a luxury private car and headed straight for Rongxing House.
There were already five or six people lined up outside Rongxing House. After Xia Yongen’s adjustments, even people fifty meters away could now see the lightbox beside the glass display counter, with the word “Breakfast” clearly written on it.
Behind the glass counter, every metal tray containing pastries had a large label beside it. The names, prices, and units of measurement were printed in conspicuous bold black lettering.
In addition, a large price board had been placed on top of the glass counter, with two payment QR codes underneath.
Although these were only minor changes, Xia Yongen could clearly tell that quite a few more people had come to buy breakfast that morning.
Meanwhile, Xu Meng, who had stayed up late the previous night finishing her copywriting, was hurrying toward the breakfast stall.
She had gotten used to buying breakfast at Rongxing House lately, and she had also become quite familiar with Xia Yongen. Before Xu Meng could even say anything, Xia Yongen had already reached for the savory water chestnut pastries and corn cakes that Xu Meng usually liked.
“We have a new item today. Do you want to try it?”
Xia Yongen pointed to the salted egg yolk lava buns that had just been taken out of the steamer. They were white, plump, and round, looking just like little steamed buns. One of them had already split open—that was intentional. She wanted everyone passing by to be able to see it.
The golden, glistening salted egg yolk filling looked incredibly tempting. Who wouldn’t want to take a bite?
Xu Meng nodded without hesitation and ordered two salted egg yolk lava buns.
When she returned to the company, Mi Lai was holding a box of salad and eating.
“What delicious food did you buy today?”
Ever since Xu Meng had gotten into the habit of buying breakfast at Rongxing House, Mi Lai had been suffering terribly every day. Yet she couldn’t help asking every time, then craning her neck to carefully examine the breakfast in front of Xu Meng.
Even though she couldn’t eat it herself, at least she could feast her eyes on it and breathe in the delicious aroma of the pastries!
Xu Meng took the two salted egg yolk lava buns out of her pocket and swallowed as well. Right after buying them, she had seen someone eating one on the spot, and they had looked absolutely delicious!
If she hadn’t been worried about getting her clothes dirty by eating a lava bun while walking, she would have eaten them immediately. How could she have waited until now?
After finally making it back to the company, however, the buns had already gone cold. So Xu Meng went to the pantry and heated them in the microwave.
The heated salted egg yolk lava buns were almost too hot to hold. Xu Meng blew on them several times before picking one up and taking a small, careful bite.
After being briefly reheated, the temperature of the lava filling was just right—not too hot and not too cold. If it was too cold, there would be an eggy smell, and the filling would solidify. If it was too hot, it could easily burn someone’s mouth, while excessive heating would also turn the filling completely liquid.
Right now, however, the filling had the perfect semi-liquid consistency, with a layer of obvious oil glistening over the bright yellow salted egg yolk.
Holding her salad, Mi Lai stared intently at the salted egg yolk lava bun in Xu Meng’s hand and couldn’t help exclaiming inwardly:
Oh my gosh, that looks way too delicious!
Xu Meng took a second bite, and the natural, rich fragrance of the salted egg yolk’s oiliness immediately filled her tongue.
So fragrant!
The salted egg yolk filling was smooth and creamy yet contained tiny sandy granules. The first taste was a faint saltiness, but sweetness soon followed. Both flavors were very gentle, and instead of tasting strange together, they blended exceptionally well.
She had thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, but the bun’s outer dough was the real masterpiece!
The inner layer of the dough had been softened slightly by the golden oil. Once it entered her mouth, she could taste both the rich fragrance of the egg yolk and the sweet aroma of wheat.
Xu Meng’s eyes widened as she stared at the salted egg yolk lava bun in her hand.
This is way too delicious!
Beside her, Mi Lai couldn’t help swallowing. She wished desperately that the leaves she was chewing could magically turn into a delicious salted egg yolk lava bun.
But lava buns were an extreme combination of sugar and oil. If she ate one, she would definitely gain weight.
With no other choice, she picked up her fork and took another bite of salad. The fragrance of the lava bun still lingered in the air, making the salad in her mouth taste even worse by comparison.
Seeing that Xu Meng was about to eat her second bun, Mi Lai involuntarily called out to her.
“Wait, I…”
When Xu Meng looked up at her, Mi Lai hesitated for a while before finally steeling herself.
“Could you… let me have just a little taste? Just one bite is enough.”
“Of course! This is definitely much tastier than your salad.”
Worried that the lava filling would spill out, Xu Meng carefully tore off half of the bun. But what she feared most still happened: a small amount of the filling seeped out along the edge of the bun and dripped onto the tabletop.
At that point, she couldn’t bring herself to care about wasting it. She hurriedly held the half-bun up to Mi Lai’s mouth.
“Quick, eat it! Otherwise, all the filling will run out.”
That precious half of the salted egg yolk lava bun slowly melted in Mi Lai’s mouth.
The rich, creamy salted egg yolk gradually spread across her tongue. She was so excited that tears nearly welled up in her eyes.
How could there be a bun this delicious?!
Her bland palate was instantly awakened by the salty-sweet flavor. While marveling at the deliciousness of the lava bun, she quickly chewed, and before long, she had swallowed the entire half.
After finishing it, Mi Lai licked her lips, feeling somewhat dejected.
She had lost control for a moment and swallowed it after barely chewing a few times. Thinking about it now, she regretted it terribly.
Seeing her expression, Xu Meng said, “Xiaomi, if you like them, I can bring some for you in the future.”
Mi Lai froze, immediately feeling tempted.
But after thinking it over, she decided that having one occasionally to satisfy her craving was enough. She couldn’t indulge herself too much.
She’d better stick to salad.
So she replied, “I think I’ll pass. I don’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble at all. How could it be? Besides, these salted egg yolk lava buns are pretty cheap too. They’re definitely more affordable than the salads you buy.”
Mi Lai bit her lip and thought about it. For such delicious buns, it really is a shame that I can’t eat them every day!
Maybe… I’ll just eat them for a few days. Once I’ve had my fill, I’ll return to the embrace of salad and properly focus on losing fat.
She hesitated for a while before finally nodding firmly.
Two minutes later, Xu Meng sent Mi Lai a photo of the menu she had taken outside Rongxing House that morning.
“Take a look and see if there’s anything you want to eat.”
After just having a small piece of the salted egg yolk lava bun, Mi Lai’s appetite was truly wide open. Looking at everything on the menu, she wanted to order one of each. But in the end, she only asked for one salted egg yolk lava bun.
Just then, Chen Chen arrived at the office. Hearing the two of them discussing breakfast, he couldn’t help asking, “What’s going on? Is our next restaurant-review subject a breakfast shop?”
Mi Lai smiled. “No. I asked Mengmeng to bring me breakfast. The breakfast from this place is really delicious.”
Chen Chen was somewhat shocked. “Huh? You’re not eating salad and yogurt anymore?”
Xu Meng answered for Mi Lai. “It’s because the breakfast they sell is delicious and inexpensive. Let me tell you, I bought two salted egg yolk lava buns today, and they’re really, really delicious!”
She simply sent the menu to Chen Chen as well.
“Brother Chen, do you want anything? I can bring you something while I’m at it.”
Chen Chen glanced at it casually and shook his head.
“No, I’m good. You two eat.”
The menu only had ordinary pastries, the kind that could be found at many teahouses, so he wasn’t particularly interested.
Besides, as a food photographer, he had probably eaten more delicious food than even Mi Lai.
After all, if you wanted to photograph food in a way that made it look delicious, you had to empathize with the food. Only when you genuinely thought the food in front of you was delicious would you put your heart and soul into using the camera to convey its flavor to every viewer.
With this philosophy, the food Chen Chen photographed had always been very popular. He himself was also famously picky about food. After all, he had photographed so many dishes that no one knew better than him which ones were delicious, which ones were terrible, which ones were lacking just a little something, and which ones were delicious but lacked any distinctive quality.
Therefore, when he saw Xu Meng and Mi Lai enthusiastically discussing the salted egg yolk lava buns, he naturally wasn’t very interested.
In his opinion, Mi Lai was always eating bland diet food. Naturally, anything else would taste delicious to her.
And Xu Meng was famous for having a good appetite. As far as she was concerned, there was probably nothing in this world that didn’t taste good.
Chen Chen turned on his computer. When he saw the reminder on his desktop, he suddenly remembered Liang Xiuwen’s matter and quickly turned toward Xu Meng.
“By the way, when did you arrange to meet him?”
Xu Meng’s face immediately scrunched up.
“We arranged to meet at nine tomorrow morning at a café.”
Just talking about it made Xu Meng feel an enormous amount of pressure.
Over the past few days, she had taken out all the collections of Liang Xiuwen’s essays that she had at home and gone through them from beginning to end. She had made a list of several points that might persuade him.
But after discussing them with Mi Lai and Chen Chen, she discovered that the two of them had already tried everything she’d come up with.
“It’s fine. At worst, he’ll just reject you. He’s not going to eat you. Just relax. Think of it as going to a book signing and meeting a writer you like.”
Chen Chen also picked up where Mi Lai left off.
“Exactly. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. He’s always been a very low-key person, so it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t want to work with us. It’s not just us, either. The team next door tried inviting him to shoot a video before, and he rejected them too, didn’t he?”
Apart from Mi Lai, the company naturally had other food bloggers under contract as well.
The team Chen Chen was referring to was the “Kang’s Restaurant Reviews” channel, which operated out of the office across from theirs.
The person in charge of “Kang’s Restaurant Reviews” was Liu Zhaokang, a middle-aged man in his forties. His channel’s style was completely different from “Xiaomi Eats”—it was extremely exaggerated and designed to grab people’s attention.
“¥299 Beef Noodles.”
“The Cheapest Michelin Restaurant in the World.”
“Eat This Seafood Hotpot and You’re Guaranteed to Get Gout.”
Just looking at the titles and thumbnails made people want to click.
Therefore, compared with “Xiaomi Eats,” the data for “Kang’s Restaurant Reviews” was much better. It now had more than 600,000 followers, while the growth of “Xiaomi Eats” had slowed considerably after reaching 200,000 followers.
Naturally, Mi Lai was very anxious about this situation. The company had hinted several times, both openly and subtly, that “Xiaomi Eats” should undergo a transformation.
But Mi Lai knew that making such a drastic change rashly would only cause even more followers to leave. Besides, the atmosphere of the channel and the loyalty of its followers were both excellent at the moment. The commercial collaborations they accepted were also mostly with established restaurants and food businesses, giving the channel a fairly positive public image.
If they suddenly changed direction, there was no telling whether it might backfire instead.
Although Mi Lai’s team had repeatedly fought against the proposed transformation, the matter eventually came to nothing. But precisely because of this, the company felt that Mi Lai’s channel was growing too slowly. Some of the traffic and commercial resources that had originally been allocated specifically to “Xiaomi Eats” were instead distributed to “Kang’s Restaurant Reviews.”
After all, the company wasn’t running a charity. Whoever had better numbers got better resources.
Hearing what Mi Lai and Chen Chen said, Xu Meng felt an even greater burden on her shoulders.
“Kang’s Restaurant Reviews” has so many followers, and even they couldn’t persuade Liang Xiuwen. Can I really do it?
Meanwhile, at Rongxing House, He Yuqiang was holding a freshly steamed salted egg yolk lava bun and looking at Xia Yongen in disbelief.
She couldn’t help taking another huge bite of the lava bun, marveling at the exquisite flavor filling her mouth while also feeling utterly shocked.
“You really made this? Why does it taste so different from the one I had before?”
Author’s Note:
I don’t know why, but these days a lot of teahouses seem to confuse salted egg yolk lava buns with custard buns. In fact, the two are completely different things.
P.S. I went out for morning tea again today to gather material for the novel, but ended up eating at a place where the food was especially terrible. It was so bad that I actually laughed. I’ve seriously never eaten anything this awful before…