Dishes That Keep Guests Coming Back

The Signature Dish: About the Book

**A restaurant owner who has opened five hundred eateries asks a naming expert with a "three refusals" rule to name her final store. She doesn't know that twenty-five years ago, when this stranger was on the verge of starving to death, he ate a bowl of noodles made by her grandmother. Nor does she know that the impoverished writer's review saved her first restaurant from closing.**

## Official Synopsis

Min Xi, 50, is the founder of a restaurant group with more than four hundred locations. She has spent three years preparing her five-hundredth and final restaurant, but she's stuck on one thing: its name. She has rejected all forty proposals.

The restaurant business in 2026 is in decline. Jia's Xibei is closing locations and scaling back, while Tianbian Braised Noodles, with more than three hundred restaurants, collapses overnight. Everyone tells her not to expand any further. Only she knows that this restaurant isn't about expansion. It's her final attempt to go from being "Boss Min" back to "Xixi."

Old Jin recommends someone to her: Tian Yu, 46, a writer who also reads feng shui, names things, and chooses auspicious dates. One man, one cloth bag, and a strange rule called "three refusals": no rush jobs, no strangers, and no names he isn't confident about.

The day they first meet, Tian Yu squats in the bare shell of the building and studies a load-bearing column for ten minutes. Then he asks her only three questions:

"Will you run this restaurant yourself, or leave it to the company's procedures?"

"Who are you cooking for?"

"What was the dish your grandmother made called?"