Chapter 407: Chapter 319: Kindred Spirits—This Guy Is Even Lazier Than Me!

Nicole rubbed her eyes in disbelief, thinking she was seeing things.

When she looked closely again, the two unfamiliar faces were still inside the food cart.

If it weren’t for Dais, Elsa, and Lucas outside, she’d suspect the food cart had changed hands.

A bit of inquiry revealed that Lin had hired two new employees from Great Xia.

Upon reflection, it made sense; handling hundreds of diners daily alone was indeed overwhelming, hiring help was necessary.

But the problem is... where is Lin?

Lin Chen was sitting in the most secluded corner of the restaurant, next to the entrance to the kitchen, where there was a small table meant for employees to rest.

Sitting there, he could clearly see Jonathan busy in the kitchen and the majority of the central meal pick-up area.

In front of him was a notebook, the right side was playing a video on making hand-chopped meatballs, and the left side was being constantly filled with related content.

He had made Western-style meatballs quite often, but there was almost no technical skill involved, just similar to how Jonathan usually made tomato sauce meatballs.

Add the minced fat and lean meat into the mixer in proportion, blend with various spices, seasonings, and eggs, then scoop out one by one with an ice cream scoop, roll them into balls, bake them for color, and cook with tomato sauce for one or two hours to complete.

These meatballs have a more solid texture, you can distinctly taste the mince, unlike the bouncy texture of Chinese-style meatballs which aren’t as smooth.

He’s confident, if he can perfectly recreate the domestic hand-chopped meatballs, even if achieving seventy to eighty percent taste similarity, they’d definitely outshine tomato sauce meatballs!

Foreign chefs aren’t really that good with creativity; amongst so many Western countries’ cuisines, only a few types of meatballs exist, typically pork, chicken, or beef meatballs, fish meatballs are rarely seen.

"The cuttlefish balls must be made very bouncy to taste good, shrimp balls need visible shrimp chunks, pork balls... let me think, making them like Chaoshan beef balls seems a bit time-consuming, and I’ve never done it before, hard to guarantee."

"The bouncy texture is already there with cuttlefish balls and shrimp balls, maybe we can alter the pork balls to those rough-textured ones for hot pots? After all, foreigners love those."

He’s already ordered the seafood from Boss Magna, for pork, he can only ask Boss John. Ordering from suppliers now, it won’t arrive until evening, a bit of a waste of time.

Perhaps it’s better to trial a batch first; if successful, then place a large order in the evening for safety.

"Hey, John, are you free right now?"

Receiving his call, John’s voice shook with excitement.

"Oh dear Lin, I missed you so much! Whatever you need, just tell me, I’ll give you a discount!!!"

"......I need some lean minced pork and pure fat pork, along with fresh shiitake mushrooms, oh right, do you have those long, slightly thicker green peppers? If yes, please bring some, if not, that’s fine."

"Need bullfrogs? How about black fish? Crawfish? Recently, we’ve caught many snails from the fields, not sure if they’re edible..."

"Uh, if convenient, keep them for now, I’m busy these days, I’ve just hired two new employees."

"That’s great! Consider it as a welcome gift for them, deal’s set, I’ll come right away!!"

Before he could respond, the call was already disconnected.

Lin Chen shook his head speechlessly, it seems that old fellow is quite busy recently, busy to the point he has no time to loaf around.

But that’s good; if the farm attracts a lot of traffic, moving the food cart there would be beneficial for business, and the promotional effect would be better.

Half an hour later.

Magna and John arrived at the restaurant one after the other.

When they each pulled their delivery carts to meet at the restaurant’s side door, they couldn’t help but size each other up.

"Delivering seafood to Lin?"

"Yes," Magna nodded, eyeing the bags on John’s cart, "You wouldn’t happen to be an employee from Radisson’s farm, would you?"

"No way, I’m the manager!"

"??????"

Magna’s eyes widened: "The manager personally delivers goods??"

"Which company are you from?"

John also glanced at Magna’s cart full of foam boxes, but couldn’t tell anything.

"Me? I set up a stall by the seaside market."

"Oh~"

John nodded instinctively, walked forward a couple of steps, seemed to recall something.

"Magna is your boss? I remember hearing, that seafood market was his investment."

"That’s me."

"Oh, it’s you~~... huh??!"

"I am Magna."

"......"

John rolled his eyes speechlessly.

Then why were you so surprised just now!

Don’t you yourself deliver the goods too?

"Hello hello, are you here to eat too?"

Magna chuckled, winking at John with a ’I understand’ look on his face.

When they arrived, they saw the food cart outside had already lined up long queues, seemingly selling large fried dumplings with a texture akin to fried bread, looked pretty good.

But compared to the ingredients they brought, the allure seemed much smaller.

They were more curious about what delicious dish Lin Chen would make with these ingredients.

"What do you have in these boxes?"

"Deep-sea squid, black tiger prawns, and stuff like that. What about you? From the color, is that minced pork? What’s in the box next to it?"

"Hehe, you’ve definitely never eaten these before. It’s bullfrogs and black fish! And a big bag of some kind of snails, I brought them to ask Lin if they’re edible."

"Bullfrogs? Black fish?"

Magna blinked blankly, searching through his mental dictionary but couldn’t find a match for these species.

Instinctively, he lifted the lid for a look, and his face changed.

"Good grief, such an ugly frog!"

"Hey, don’t judge by its looks, it tastes amazing!"

Magna was about to retort, but images of fish roe, fish bubbles, and fish heads flashed through his mind, so he swallowed the words that were about to slip out.

If he’s saying so, he must have already tried it, no need to lie.

Staring at the plump black fish for a few moments, he asked, "Have you eaten fish heads?"

"... What heads?" John was stunned.

"Fish heads, the head of the fish."

"Can you eat that?"

"Hey!"

Magna instantly felt balanced, grinning, "Of course, not only edible, but they’re delicious! Including the fish bubbles and roe inside, they’re all good stuff, easy to finish a bowl of rice and noodles with them!"

"Hey, you two, are you blocking the entrance on purpose?"

Lin Chen had seen them for a while, initially thinking they’d come in one after the other, but instead, these two were standing at the side entrance of the beach area, chatting without any intention of coming in.

Outside, quite a few diners were seated, curiously eyeing the ingredients on their carts.

At the main entrance, people were continuously entering, making the two stand out even more.

Once Lin called out, John and Magna snapped out of it, quickly dragging their respective ingredients into the restaurant.

"Let’s exchange contact info, next time there’s something delicious, we can let each other know, how about that?"

"Great idea!"

John’s eyes lit up, like he’d found a savior, quickly pulling out his phone and cheerfully exchanging contacts with Magna.

Seeing John’s expression, Lin Chen could more or less guess what he was thinking, shook his head with a smile, and came over to check the ingredients they brought.

"Since you, Lin, said there’s not much time, I didn’t dare bring too many bullfrogs and black fish, just twenty frogs and ten fish, should be enough for a staff meal, right?"

"You just want to eat them yourself, don’t you?"

"Oh come on, good stuff is meant to be shared, right? Not like I’m charging you~"

"I haven’t charged you a processing fee yet!"

"We’re friends, no need to talk about money~"

John’s eyes darted around, quickly changing the subject.

"By the way, Lin, what tasty dish are you going to make with lean minced pork and pork fat? I see Magna here also has squid and shrimp, doesn’t seem like they go with pork?"

"Care to guess?"

Lin Chen smiled mysteriously, turned around, picked up a notebook, and walked into the kitchen, with the two hurriedly dragging their ingredients to catch up.

Jonathan was in the kitchen, busily preparing the second wave of breakfast restocks. Seeing the three come in, he glanced at them curiously but was too busy to pay much attention.

The whole kitchen was divided into two sections, with an operation area in the middle and stoves on both sides. Usually, Jonathan only used his section unless he really couldn’t fit everything, then he’d borrow Lin Chen’s side.

But luckily, Lin Chen didn’t use the kitchen much either, so it was no big deal, Jonathan could use it freely.

"You two aren’t planning to stay here until you finish eating, are you?"

Though he more or less guessed it, he couldn’t help but ask.

"Is there a problem?"

John had a perfectly justified expression: "Of course we’re staying for breakfast before leaving, would you let us go back hungry?"

Magna: "Agreed."

"... Whatever, I can’t guarantee how long I’ll take, because what I want to try today is still in the experimental stage."

"That sounds great!"

"What?"

"Ahem, I mean, that’s too bad, but I believe my staff can manage the whole farm well!"

Magna stared dumbfoundedly at John for a few seconds, realizing something.

This guy... seems even lazier than me?

Lin Chen didn’t argue with them further, casually picked up a box of squid and poured it into the sink to wash, saying, "To be conservative, it should take more than two hours, you can go outside for a bite, check out the skills of the new staff I hired, and give me some feedback."

"But I’m quite curious about what dishes you’ll make with the squid and shrimp."

"Don’t worry, it’ll take me at least half an hour to deal with all these things myself, just enough time for you to queue up, and since there aren’t many people now, you can get a number and come back directly, have Dais bring the food to you."

"Great idea!"

"Then we’ll get in line first, make sure you don’t start without me!!"