Su Wan, a chef at the state banquet, missed a step on the stairs after work and fell to her death. When she opened her eyes, she had become the fake heiress who'd just been thrown out of her home in 1975. The original owner had taken the real heiress's place for eighteen years. After the truth came out, Professor Lu and his wife were ashamed of her and secretly signed her up for rural relocation, dumped her luggage at the train station, and sent her off without even a bite to eat. All they left her was an old wooden token she'd worn since childhood.
She discovered that the token held recipe notes left by her imperial chef grandfather, along with a notebook listing where to find scarce ingredients across the country. With her extraordinary cooking skills, she cooked for the educated youth settlement in exchange for work points, sold braised food on the black market to earn her first capital, and found her long-lost grandfather at the foot of a mountain, where he'd been sent to work the land.
After economic reform began, she opened the capital's first private restaurant. Important people from every walk of life lined up for a table. The adoptive parents who had once thrown her out came with the real heiress, hoping she'd give the latter a manager's job. Su Wan smiled and served them a bowl of cornmeal buns. "I'll give you what you gave me back then." Then she showed them the door.
No one knew that her recipe book contained dozens of famous state banquet dishes that had been lost overseas. By the time she had opened restaurants all over the world, the military-industrial researcher who had waited ten years for her was standing outside her restaurant with a diamond ring, waiting for her to close up.
