Forty-three-year-old Chen Lang, a Western food supervisor at a five-star hotel, graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College and has been sharpening his skills for twenty years. A salary of less than 5,000 yuan before tax, a small house of 70 square meters, a pair of twin daughters who are waiting for food, a father-in-law and a mother-in-law with no pension, and a biological father with a monthly pension of 8,000 yuan but no cents - life is like a soup that has been simmered for too long, with all the flavor gone, leaving only blandness.
When the hotel issued a transfer order and sent him from the breakfast room to the cold dish room, and his salary was cut by another five hundred yuan, Chen Lang finally stood on the edge of the cliff. His wife Su Mei has just successfully changed jobs, her salary has increased to 8,500, and the balance of the family has begun to tilt. His mother-in-law's complaints, his father's indifference, the balance of his bank card, and the money for his children's milk powder all weighed heavily on his forty-three-year-old shoulders.
At this moment, the executive chef of "Tsubaki", the most difficult French restaurant in the city to book a table, handed over a business card: "Next Wednesday, come and try the dishes."
Chen Lang, who had not cooked a complete French meal in twenty years, picked up the knife again. He knew that this might be his last chance to prove himself - to prove that the boy who went to Paris with a dream twenty years ago was still alive, to prove that a pair of hands that had been honing on the cutting board for half a lifetime could still cut out the most beautiful textures.
This is a counterattack about craftsmanship and dignity, and it is also a long soup of a middle-aged man being crushed and reorganized by life. The heat is not yet up, but the soup is slowly thickening.
