Chapter 37  : End of Competition

After the boiled cabbage was served out of the pot.

Xu Le turned around and took out all the 12 small pots.

This was the [Pot of Chicken Soup] that he had stewed. It had been boiling in the small pots for three whole hours and had reached a state where the chicken skin and flesh were soft and the soup was rich.

During the boiling, Xu Le also added some wolfberries.

As the chicken soup was stewed, the fresh taste of wolfberries started to spread out. The nutrients in the wolfberries also entered the chicken soup such that drinking it would bring great benefits to the human body.

“Delicious.”

Xu Le rubbed his nose and exclaimed.

If this wasn’t a competition, he would definitely scoop a bowl for himself to taste first.

With the [Pagoda Meat], [Boiled Cabbage], [Pot of Chicken Soup], [Golden Egg Fried Rice], in addition to the osmanthus sweet wine flavored chiffon cake, this was simply a meal that had never existed in this world.

Ding!

The timer at the competition venue made a clear ringing sound.

At this moment, the six-hour culinary competition had officially come to an end.

Regardless of the progress of the contestants, they had to stop what they were doing and hand over the dishes they had prepared to the staff.

Since it was a gourmet festival, the dishes prepared by the contestants would be brought to the exhibition and 100 guests had to cast their blind votes for the contestants.

During the whole process, the judges were whispering amongst themselves.

“I didn’t expect the contestants this year to be so impressive. Three of them actually finished all the dishes.”

Chef Lin exclaimed.

These four dishes were all extremely time-consuming and tedious dishes. Once the time for the cooking process was not properly distributed, six hours would not be enough.

Apart from Xu Le, there were also two other chefs who had completed all the dishes, which surprised Chef Lin.

One of the two chefs was Li Peng from Beijing’s New Glory Restaurant.

The other was Zhang Yang, the chef of Shanghai’s local restaurant, Peace Hotel.

Speaking of which, this Peace Hotel had a huge background.

Everyone in Shanghai knew about it.

It was even famous overseas.

The Peace Hotel, located on Nanjing East Road 20, Huangpu District, Shanghai, was a landmark in Shanghai.

It was said that before the founding of the country, the background of this restaurant was very big. It was not an exaggeration to say that the person behind the Peace Hotel could cover the sky with one hand.

At that time, there was a rumor that no matter what you did, as long as you entered the Peace Hotel, no one from both the police and the underworld would dare to touch you.

For instance, the General Marshall of the United States and Headmaster Leighton Stuart had been here before.

In the 1940s, Lu Xun and Song Qingling had also come to the restaurant to meet their foreign friends, Chaplin and Bernard Shaw.

But after the founding of the country, society became stable.

The Peace Hotel shed its mysterious facade and became the most famous restaurant in China.

“They are really awesome, especially that little Master Chef Xu Le. He has many cooking techniques that even I have never seen before,” a chef named Luo Hao praised.

Tanimura Koji also nodded repeatedly.

He was a head chef who earned three Michelin stars and was good at making cakes. He could be considered experienced and knowledgeable. However, he had not seen many of Xu Le’s techniques before.

One of the dishes that Tanimura Koji paid the most attention to was Xu Le’s chiffon cake.

He planned to watch the recording several times after the competition ended.

He could make use of Xu Le’s ideas in his dishes.

Perhaps… his cheesecake could be made better!

…

At the food exhibition.

customers were tasting the dishes of the chefs one by one. Each of them had three votes in their hands, which they could vote for the best set of dishes.

This process obviously required some time.

During this period of time, the live-stream of the competition had already spread like wildfire on the Internet and had been trending on TikTok and Weibo several times.

It even attracted the attention of Master Cai Lan, who was known as the “Hong Kong God of Food”.

A few days ago, when Zhang Tong was commenting on Xu Le’s food stall online, Master Cai Lan had reposted Zhang Tong’s article and praised Xu Le’s culinary skills.

At this moment, Master Cai Lan was also watching the live broadcast of the culinary competition.

The dishes that Xu Le made, be it the [Boiled Cabbage], [Pagoda Meat], [Golden Egg Fried Rice], or [Osmanthus Sweet Wine Cake], were all eye-opening for Cai Lan.

As far as he knew, many of Xu Le’s way of processing ingredients had long been lost.

Cai Lan was exceptionally excited to see these in Xu Le’s hands.

He immediately posted on Weibo and even tagged Xu Le, complimenting him for his cooking skills.

Cai Lan’s reposts undoubtedly increased the popularity of this cooking competition. The number of viewers in the live-stream soared to nearly ten million.

“China’s culinary skills have never been lost! They have been passed down for generations! With Xu Le, I see hope for China’s culinary skills to flourish!”

That was his Weibo post.

In just half an hour, the number of likes exceeded 200,000 and the repost exceeded 50,000.

Within the country, there was a wave of people starting to cook Chinese food.

With the development of the times, many young people were under a lot of pressure at work and often had to work overtime, so they had no time to cook at home.

Many young people would often order takeout at their workplaces, which was neither delicious nor hygienic.

However, after Xu Le became popular online, many people realized that cooking was not a difficult task.

Even an eight-year-old like Xu Le could cook for himself.

Not to mention young people like them.

A week of silence after the previous rise to popularity, Xu Le had once again become a name that every household knew.

And now…

The hundred customers of the food exhibition also completed their voting, and the culinary competition finally came out with scores for every contestant.

Under the gaze of thousands of people in the broadcast room.

The host picked up the cue card and started to announce the scores of the contestants.

“Contestant number 1, Franklin, 14 votes received!”

…