Chapter 298: Chinese Handmade Pure-Meat Burger, Short for Roujiamo

PS: Chapter 2 will be a bit late, sorry.

A burger food truck?

Lisa instinctively looked toward the direction of the small cart; in fact, it wasn't just her—many pedestrians on the street couldn't help but look over as well.

American street vendors don't shout; they attract customers through displays or clothing, so shouting is rarely heard on the streets. Therefore, the commotion from the burger food truck stood out particularly.

Seeing the burger food truck by the roadside, Snart frowned slightly. He didn't have any issue with burgers; it was just that he had lived in this city for a long time and had scouted the downtown area countless times, yet he had never seen this food truck suddenly appear here. It had popped up today, something he had never seen during his scouting.

Perhaps this food truck could affect his robbery plan, perhaps not, but regardless, the feeling of an unexpected change made him somewhat unhappy—as he had said, the unknown meant uncontrollable, and uncontrollable meant risk, and he hated risk.

But Lisa had already run over in three strides, clearly not very fond of her brother's "uncontrollable risk theory."

When he saw customers approaching, the Asian man beside the food truck immediately stopped shouting. He also knew that America didn't have the street custom of "shouting"; his earlier shouting was purely because his mouth was itchy—when he had a stall set up in front of him, it was hard for him to suppress the urge to shout a couple of times.

"Hey, your food truck is very special." Lisa arrived at Ma Ma Zhaodi's three-wheeled vehicle and looked at the non-mainstream-looking food truck with great interest—one person, one big pot, a pile of buns, and business licenses displayed on top; this thing was actually legal and compliant.

Ma Ma Zhaodi removed the rack from the large iron pot beside him; the cured meat pressed underneath floated on the rich broth. The five-centimeter-square pieces of front-leg meat were three fingers wide, included the skin, had a mix of fat and lean, and distinct layers. They had been soaked for several hours early on to remove the blood, so now there was no gamey smell at all.

Two spice packets containing green onion, ginger, garlic, and various spices were flipped into the pot together with the meat chunks. Simmered on medium-low heat for two hours, the rock sugar inside had completely melted, and the cooking wine had already evaporated.

At this moment, since being put into the pot, the meat chunks had soaked in the soup for a total of five hours, fully infused with flavor, turning a bright reddish-brown sauce color. The skin was transparent and vivid like amber. Lifting a piece onto the cutting board, it didn't even need cutting; just pressing lightly with a cleaver, the fatty part would scatter into fine minced meat, while the lean part would turn into tender, juicy, fine shreds.

The spiciness of star anise, the sweetness of cinnamon, the gelatinous aroma of the pork skin, and the taste of the Baiji bun mixed together—judging solely from appearance and smell, this pot of meat was already quite appetizing.

Lisa couldn't help but sniff, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the cutting board. Amidst the enticing aroma of meat, she asked, "Didn't you say you were selling burgers? What kind of burger are you selling? Where is it?"

"Isn't this it?" Ma Ma Zhaodi raised the Baiji bun in his hand: "It's two pieces of dough and a piece of meat; how can it not count as a kind of burger?"

"... This is not quite what I expected."

"At worst, I'll add another piece of pork skin for you." Ma Ma Zhaodi casually picked up the cleaver, shaved lightly, and a trembling, sauce-red piece of pork skin, like jelly, slid onto the blade, then was placed into the bun.

Lisa hesitated repeatedly; although this thing looked like a carb bomb, its smell was truly excessively fragrant, and the stall looked quite clean. Although it might not fit all American dietary habits, she genuinely wanted to try it.

"Alright, give me one."

"Chinese handmade pure-meat burger, five dollars, fair to all."

It wasn't actually fair to all; the system's procurement price had no logistics costs compared to real-world procurement prices. In fact, the ingredients and spices Ma Ma Zhaodi bought were almost at wholesale prices, with no expenses for storage or freezing, so the profit per portion was about four dollars.

If it weren't for Ma Ma Zhaodi's own mastery of high-level cooking skills and the fact that he personally performed most of the production process, the system wouldn't even acknowledge his five-dollar price tag—directly selling finished products from a store, or selling them after simple processing, would yield no asset points. "Does setting up a stall also require emphasizing 'handmade'?"

"In America, emphasizing the word 'handmade' for anything can drive the price up." Ma Ma Zhaodi showed a polite smile: "This is a specialty of this land; one must taste it."

He had finally figured out this East-West combination.

Snart had also arrived beside his sister at this moment. As an intellectual genius in the criminal world, a perfectionist who nitpicks, and a notorious thief the Central City Police Department could never catch, his aura was always maxed out, and his temperament was always cold and hard.

But then again, even people with the highest aura need to eat, and he had already grown accustomed to a wandering life; after all, a teenager who ran away from home with his sister at eighteen had already endured every kind of hardship.

"... I'll have one too."

"No problem, both of you eat while it's hot, otherwise it won't taste good."

Ma Ma Zhaodi accepted the ten dollars, and the system immediately credited one hundred dollars in asset points. This was his first pot of gold today—it had already recovered the cost of the entire pot of raw materials.

Of course, if he wanted to recover the cost of this heavily modified three-wheeled vehicle, he would probably need to sell half a pot's worth.

Lisa took a bite of the hot Baiji bun; the crispy crust crumbled into small crumbs, the inner layer of dough absorbed some of the braising liquid, the fat's oil soaked into the bun's core, the texture of the lean meat and the wheat aroma of the bun matched perfectly, and the elastic pork skin added layers of mouthfeel—but she didn't want to carefully distinguish the taste of this Chinese handmade pure-meat burger; she subconsciously took a second bite, a third bite...

Ma Ma Zhaodi casually took out a gourd, took a sip of wine, then stuffed it back underneath: "Welcome to come again next time. My name is Ma Ma Zhaodi; you can call me Old Ma—remember to promote my little shop to your friends."

In the time it took to say a few words, Lisa had already gnawed half of the Roujiamo; clearly, her attention was entirely on the bun in her hand, and she hadn't heard Ma Ma Zhaodi's words at all.

Snart stood nearby, taking small bites of the Roujiamo in his mouth, eating very calmly, while his gaze also swept over the business license hanging on the body of the three-wheeled vehicle.

Strange, he thought; although these licenses did look genuine and appeared quite normal, why did this stall always give him a sloppy and casual feeling?

He asked Ma Ma Zhaodi, "Why do you have an alcohol license?"

"Hmm? Do I?"

Ma Ma Zhaodi scratched his head, walked around to the front of the vehicle, and looked: "Oh, I do."

So he stood back behind the vehicle and calmly replied, "No problem, I have it."

This couldn't be blamed on his poor memory; there were too many licenses required to set up a stall, so he simply spent a few days embedding his stall information into the municipal database himself—after all, that's how he got his identity; it was just a side thing.

(End of this chapter)