I Opened a Restaurant in the 1990S [Gourmet]

Sequel: A Handbook for Taming a Darling Husband. If you like it, please add it to your reading list! Dual rebirth | Period cuisine | Family and neighborhood life | Business | Everyday street life Reserved, quiet master chef × cheerful, genius puppy-like boy [Blurb] On the night 46-year-old Wu Qiao finally won the title of Master Chef, she was hit by a car while trying to save a cat and died. Her only wish before she died was to return to the days when her parents and younger siblings were still alive. 1990. Wu Qiao was reborn at the age of twenty, on the very day she was fired by her manager. She hurried home. There she saw her father, who had died saving someone; her younger sister, who had been abducted by human traffickers; her younger brother, who had taken his own life in prison; and her mother, who had died of stomach cancer. Tears streamed down Wu Qiao’s face at the sight of them all again. This time, she would protect them. Just three months later, word got around that Wu’s Restaurant had reopened, with the eldest Wu daughter as its chef. Everyone scoffed. One neighbor even sneered, “How can some little girl be a cook?” It wasn’t long before that neighbor had to eat their words. More and more customers came to dine there. Seeing this, her relatives also wanted a share of the profits. Wu Qiao stared at them coldly. If that was what they wanted, she would give it to them. The only question was whether they could handle it... One day, a tall, handsome man with long legs appeared at the restaurant. He specifically asked for Wu Qiao’s cooking. Not only did he come by every day, he even requested that she deliver his meals in person. Later, she heard something and stopped going. A week later, the handsome man cornered Wu Qiao in an alley. He glared at her, indignant. “Wu Xiaoqiao, you still haven’t recognized me?!” Wu Qiao: ... (confused.jpg) Only then did she learn that the handsome man was Wu Mo, her former high school desk mate. [Reading Guide] 1. The heroine is reserved and quiet, and can be hard to like, but she can flip a wok with one hand and wield a huge ladle. 2. The hero is a sunny, cheerful, puppy-like boy: lively and mischievous. 3. In high school, the leads were bickering frenemies, and he had a secret crush on her. 4. Both leads are reborn. 5. The story has a gentle, everyday narrative style, and the hero appears relatively late. 6. This is not a wish-fulfillment story. Blurb revised on August 31, 2026 Sequel: A Handbook for Taming a Darling Husband. Blurb: Mutual surrender | A love born of bitter hatred | Romance-focused | Possessive love Clear-headed career woman heroine × aloof scion of the imperial clan Song Zhiyuan never imagined that the blind man she had rescued from human traffickers a year earlier would turn out to be the most doted-on legitimate young son of the Regent of the Great Xia Empire. This was practically a death sentence for her. She had become a heartless, faithless lover. Looking at Xie Qingheng’s tearful eyes, full of unspoken words and resentment, she felt a chill sweep past her. Her life was in danger Then, in the next instant, he leaned close. Song Zhiyuan heard Xie Qingheng say, “Elder sister, I’ve already given you my body. You can’t escape me.” In that moment, Song Zhiyuan felt a chill run down her back, and broke out in a cold sweat. If only she had known, she would never have brought this little menace home! * Song Zhiyuan, a modern-day CEO, was in a car accident and unexpectedly reborn in the womb as the frail legitimate daughter of the eldest branch of the Song family, an imperial censor’s household in the Great Xia Empire. A fortune-teller warned that if she were raised in the capital, she would not live to come of age. So, to protect their precious daughter’s life, her parents promptly sent her to her maternal grandparents’ home in Jiangnan. She stayed there for eighteen years. After arriving in Jiangnan, Song Zhiyuan lived a wonderfully carefree life. Her grandmother doted on her and protected her in every way, and no one in Jiangnan dared bully her. On top of that, even before she was eleven, she was already coming up with one ingenious business strategy after another. By sixteen, she had secured her position as head of the Meng family. Everyone in Jiangnan knew that Shopkeeper Song was fond of handsome men, and that her back courtyard housed countless beautiful men. This time, she had even bought a peerlessly beautiful man from human traffickers. However The beauty was not only blind, but had also lost his memory. Song Zhiyuan gave her new personal attendant a name. A Xun. They had met by the riverbank, and she hoped he would soon find his family. From that day on, people often saw a celestial-looking young attendant with a strip of cloth covering his eyes following Shopkeeper Song around. Everyone praised the attendant’s elegant bearing and impeccable manners. But only Song Zhiyuan knew what this personal attendant was really like in private. * At the pleasure house. When she went drinking with a friend, someone would stop her. Completely bundled up, A Xun would say, “Mistress, drinking is bad for your health.” In her bedroom. A Xun, wearing nothing but a sheer robe, would be lying on the bed. A small pool of bright red wine, like blood, would trickle down his firm, broad chest. It would slide over his sharply defined abs. His alluring, affectionate eyes would silently entice her, and even his voice was irresistibly seductive. “Miss, would you like to taste this wine and see if it’s sweet?” * When a friend gave her a handsome man, A Xun stood by Song Zhiyuan’s side in public, his gaze fixed straight ahead. “Miss, which courtyard should I assign him to?” But once they were back in her room, alone, A Xun would pin Song Zhiyuan to the bed. He gazed at her through tear-filled eyes, brimming with anger and grievance. “I won’t let him stay by your side!” “Song Zhiyuan, you can only be mine.” In the end, Song Zhiyuan fell for Xie Qingheng all the same. She loved the clear tea he brewed. She loved his profile as he read. And she loved how adorably petulant he became when jealous. But to protect him, she had no choice but to make a new decision. * On her twentieth birthday, Song Zhiyuan had just three days left before returning to the capital. She gave A Xun a large sum of money and enough travel expenses, then told him to leave Jiangnan. That night, the two of them argued, and A Xun stormed out of the Meng residence. The next day, when he returned, he learned that Song Zhiyuan had vanished without a trace. A Xun searched frantically for three days. He found nothing. * Half a year passed in the blink of an eye. When they met again, everything between them had changed. At the flower-viewing banquet in the imperial palace in the capital, A Xun had become Xie Qingheng, the most doted-on legitimate young son of the powerful Regent. When he saw another man standing beside Song Zhiyuan, jealousy surged up without warning and overwhelmed his reason. She was his. She had said she loved no one but him. She was the one who had betrayed him. He wanted so badly... to lock her away. To keep her somewhere only he could see her. Theme: Food heals all wounds