When laid-back delivery rider Su Lan shatters a Michelin judge's teacup, her tongue recognizes a secret imperial recipe from three hundred years ago.
Her stoic childhood friend grips the broken porcelain shard and closes in, step by step: “When you were eight, you could already detect a 0.3-second difference in the cooking time of this cabbage-in-clear-broth dish.”
A century-old restaurant on the verge of closing, a food philosopher with no desires, and the undercurrents of the Chinese culinary world.
On the night a rich heiress with a sweet smile flips over a clay pot, Su Lan signs the diagnosis with chili oil on her finger: congenital loss of taste.
Can the iron ladle that fought its way out of the dark culinary world warm two frozen hearts?
As blue-green flames flare once more beneath the old stove, this redemption that began with a sense of taste simmers with a childhood bond spanning twenty years and the truth on the tip of the tongue.
