Laiyang Focus: The Story of Chaoyang Lou - Remembering Xin Xiliang, manager of Xiguan Chaoyang Lou Hotel
Text/Gai Ailing
Cinhilling, 52 years old, medium-sized, wears a pair of glasses, Sven, and does not know that he will think that he is a middle school teacher.
He grew up in Xiguan Village, mottled old houses, narrow streets and alleys, catching crickets under the dim street lamps in autumn, everything is in memory, just like yesterday - he loves the land that gave birth to him. In 1985, Xin Xiliang graduated from junior high school, and his father said: At present, it is said that carpenters and bricklayers are popular, and I see that you still inherit your grandfather's wishes, open a restaurant with your fifth uncle, and learn to eat. Xin Xiliang understood his father's intentions, hoping that he would learn a craft, so that he could settle down and support his family.
Speaking of the Xin family in Xiguancun, it is not simple, Xin Xiliang's father is a generation, seven men and one daughter of brothers and sisters; to his generation, the uncles and brothers and sisters have eight men and seven women, which can really be described as "dragon brothers and tiger brothers", and the lintel is prosperous. There is a tradition of business in the ancestors, grandpa opened a restaurant, grandma sold fire. Although his father did not engage in business, he served as a village cadre in the village; but the fifth uncle inherited the tradition of his grandfather's business and also did catering.
So Xin Xiliang adhered to his father's order and became an apprentice in Uncle Wu's hotel.
On the road of learning art, there was no shortcut to take, he remembered his father's words, and worked solidly and diligently. Under the careful tutelage of the fifth uncle, he seriously studied the chef's craft. Chef industry dividend case, white case. The red case is a dish, and the white case is pasta. Xin Xiliang learned the red case, that is, stir-frying and spooning.
He first learned knife work: cut shredded meat, slices of meat, cut twenty or thirty pounds of fresh meat every day, and prepare the next day's dosage. A meat-cutting knife weighs about two or three pounds. At that time, there was no refrigerator, only fresh meat; after cutting fresh meat, cut green onions, ginger shreds, peppers, coriander and other ingredients... There is still a day to do: get up at six o'clock in the morning to press the water, there is no water pump, hand pressure well. Press once in the morning, each time pressing three large cylinders, enough for one morning; at noon, it will be pressed once, enough for one afternoon. The pressurized water time is about an hour or so at a time. I didn't go home until half the night, and I felt so tired that I couldn't even turn over when I lay on the kang... But in his heart, there is always a flash of expectation: no matter how tired and how bitter, I will learn the craft of a good chef, open a decent restaurant, carry forward my grandfather's wishes, and inherit my grandfather's unfinished business.
After that, he went out to study for a year. He came back and opened a snack bar with his seventh uncle, aunt and other family members next to the Xiguan Mall building, but the efficiency was not good, and it was barely maintained.
In 1991, Xin Xiliang began to fly alone, he first opened a branch opposite the Xiguan Huatai community, and in 1997 the hotel operation situation began to improve. In 2007, he seized the opportunity to rent a façade house totaling 1800 square meters on Xiajingqi West Road. Invested more than 3 million yuan to carry out renovation - this is now the Chaoyang Lou Hotel in the south of XiguanCun.
Being able to stand firm in the turbulent sea of commerce must have something outstanding that customers like, and there must be its "unique secret book". What is Singh-leung's "Peerless Secret Book"? That is "innovation".
Man has no self, man has me new. Everybody has it, I innovate. A restaurant that attracts repeat customers is different. Customers are consumers, identity, age, occupation, preferences, etc. are very different, and hoteliers should find commonalities from these different consumption habits and extract the common preferences of these different consumer groups. To this end, Xin Xiliang set a goal to innovate his own cuisine – one of the dishes with a story is "braised fish".
Xin Xiliang is a person with a heart, in the daily catering business, he found that Laiyang's freshwater fish are only so many: silver carp, carp, grass carp, etc., freshwater fish is a bit fishy, the chef will be a silver carp with two methods: braised fish head, sauce stewed fish tail, this is called "silver carp two eat"; and the choice of marine fish is more: mackerel, knife fish, small mackerel, small yellow fish, small village flowers, small blue fish, etc., customers often do not know how to choose, borrowing "silver carp two eat", Xin Xiliang will be a variety of small trash fish together, a pot of stewed, The name of the dish is "braised miscellaneous fish".
After the launch, I did not expect that the customer response was surprisingly good, and soon word of mouth spread that all customers who came to the store must order "stewed miscellaneous fish" when entering the store. In the following years, laiyang restaurants also popularized the "fish pot cake", putting the corn cake together into the fish pot to stew, and the cake was mixed with the fish and served together. However, now they are all separate, the fish pot remains unchanged, and the cakes are brought up separately, which is more suitable for the tastes of different customers.
The "braised miscellaneous fish" of Chaoyang Lou Hotel has been stewed for more than 20 years. As a signature dish of Chaoyang Lou Hotel, although this "stewed miscellaneous fish" is still a staple dish loved by customers, Xin Xi's conscience is extremely sober: no matter how well a play is sung, it cannot be sung unchanged for decades, and the program list must be constantly changed.
He is a brain-conscious, thoughtful, and constantly pursuing innovation. No, five years ago, he innovated a dish, and the name of this dish is exquisite, called "seafood tofu".
The name is "tofu", in fact, there is no tofu in it, but it is cooked with 70% or 80% of the tender green beans, crushed into large ballast grains, and then the fresh shrimp and egg liquid are stirred and fried. When the two are combined, a miracle happens: fried tender green beans, green and green; fried shrimp egg liquid, white raw, yellow and puffy. The whole dish is like a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old cardamom girl in a swimsuit bathing, exuding a fresh and beautiful breath. Take a sip, chew slowly, carefully, and softly, and the taste buds on the tip of the tongue suddenly bloom with thousands of colors and flowers.
Xin Xiliang said that this dish also has a name called "longevity dish"? Why is it related to the word "longevity"? This brings us to the change in people's concept of eating. In the past, when life was difficult, big fish and big meat were the first choice, braised meat, elbow meat, no matter which restaurant was the main dish. But this is not the case now, customers enter the store to choose dishes, often preferred to be related to health. The main ingredients of this dish are tender green beans, fresh shrimp and egg liquid, no fat, no cholesterol, full of fresh and beautiful mouth, which is loved by customers of all ages. Therefore, since its launch, it has become a must-have "popular miracle" for customers of Chaoyang Building to enter the store in recent years.
These two dishes really have some stories:
An old man who worked in Inner Mongolia and left his hometown for decades returned to Laiyang in his old age, and his relatives and juniors feasted on him in Chaoyang Lou. After the old man ate a meal of "braised miscellaneous fish", he was full of praise, and said that it was really an authentic "Laiyang taste". When he returned after ten days, he also specially instructed his family to book a "stewed miscellaneous fish" for him to take back to Inner Mongolia in Chaoyang Building. As for the repeat customers who come to the store to taste, there are many more to say. There is a filial son, every three to five to order a "stewed miscellaneous fish", for his old father lying on the sickbed...
And "seafood tofu" is even more "legendary": there is a Laiyang customer working in Beijing, who ate "seafood tofu" here once, and the degree of like is beyond words. After returning to Beijing, I dreamed of eating this dish again, and specially told my daughter that the next birthday, I will go back to Laiyang, and I will be in Chaoyang Building.
Xin Xiliang said that in fact, under the sky, large and small hotels are lined up one after another, which hotel does not have mountain treasures and seafood? Why do customers love my little shop so much? So fond of these two dishes of my Chaoyang Building? It is because they have eaten nostalgia, family affection, and a real sincere heart.
Oh, nostalgia, affection, human nature. No wonder it can hold the hearts of customers, the original secret is here.
The ingredients and processing processes of these two dishes are announced to the public, and others will imitate you, which is a "trade secret" that cannot be shown to people- I asked him.
Xin Xiliang said that he is not afraid, the core secret of this dish is the tender green beans, and there are exclusive supply channels from other places in the store. It is not a tender green bean that can be brought casually to make this dish, and there is no such thing in the market.
Why is it so delicious?
He said: Everything in heaven and earth has spirituality, and ingredients have souls. All things are born and the earth is long and grainy, and nature provides for human beings to survive. Man should have a grateful heart for nature and for all things in heaven and earth. In the dining kitchen, all ingredients have a spirituality and a soul. Treat ingredients like people, carefully grind them, and mix them scientifically. Reverence for nature, gratitude for the heavens and the earth, the ingredients will produce thousands of flavors, to repay human beings.
Xin Xiliang also said that on the road of inheritance, innovation, and development, we must have a sense of crisis. A dish, no matter how popular it is with customers, should also consider what to do if customers don't like it one day in the future? For example, he said, there was once a dish that became popular with "braised miscellaneous fish", "spinach stew vermicelli". It's a home-cooked dish, pork belly fried, stewed in stick bone broth, salt and chicken essence, homemade pepper oil; red pepper fried and poured over spinach vermicelli while the oil is hot. The two collide and collide with a wonderful mellow fragrance. Only this one dish, how red could it be at that time? Sometimes the restaurant uses 40 to 50 pounds of spinach a day, and more than 20 pounds of pork belly.
However, the customer's taste buds are also evolving, the "threshold" of gourmet pleasure is constantly improving, often eating, often eating feels general, the taste buds of the tip of the tongue are dull. Even if the chef still does that process, the ingredients are still so authentic, the taste is still the original taste, but people just feel that it is not as delicious as the original. Are you weird or not?
Therefore, if a restaurant owner is blindly optimistic about the good situation of "flowers blooming" and customers in front of him, "people have no far-reaching worries, they will have near-term worries", which is what he means.
After so many years, when was the most difficult?
He said that the most difficult thing was in 1992, when he took over the small restaurant run by the Xiguan Building, he paid 2,000 yuan, and finally ran seven or eight. The saddest part was that from 1993 to 1994, business was cold and no one visited. Once he only sold more than 100 yuan for seven or eight days, to the point where he could not even pay the rent, and he could not sleep in the middle of the night. But with his wife and two gritted teeth, there was no flame mountain that could not be passed, and finally survived. Since 1997, the situation of the hotel has slowly improved.
Big waves and sand, the world is difficult, the same time as Xin Xiliang opened the hotel mushroomed, Laiyang City said that there are twenty or thirty, but still in the red fire and famous, only Chaoyang Lou this one. Among the dozens of hotels that opened at the same time, chaoyanglou hotel is the only one that insists on today.
If you count from the grandfather's generation to start operating the catering industry, it has been more than 60 years, from the time he provoked the banner of "Chaoyang Lou", to today's 32 years. He said that when going out, people have to eat, do catering with a conscience, be grateful for nature, and love customers. Open the name of "Chaoyang Lou" into a century-old store, realize the long-cherished wishes of their grandparents and fathers in their own lifetime, choose the catering industry, and never regret it for life.
【About the author: Gai Ailing, a native of Laiyang City, a member of the Shandong Provincial Artists Association, the former vice chairman of the Laiyang Writers Association, the former chief editor of Laiyang Television Station, the 30-episode large-scale TV series "Five Dragon People's Home", written and directed by myself, won the first prize of the 2000 National "Documentary TV News Feature film on Rural Folk Customs"; nearly 100 novels, essays, reportages, etc. have been published in various newspapers and magazines at all levels such as "Shandong Literature" and "Dazhong Daily", and have published a personal essay collection and a reportage collection. A collection of historical materials, with more than one million words. In 2019, he was hired as a consultant of Laiyang Writers Association. Fine art works have participated in art exhibitions many times and won awards】
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