The private room finally quieted down.
The group of friends around the table looked at each other and could not help but start complaining.
"They sure know how to spin it. 'Assisting'? It was clearly surveillance!"
Ye Shu sneered and said, "After all that, this is how they get zero negative reviews. It turns out if anyone dares to say their food is bad, the video will not even be allowed to be posted!"
"Exactly,"
Sister Gao also could not help but add. "I have lived for almost forty years, and this is the first time I have seen such an arrogant restaurant. Customers come to spend money on a meal, and they actually assign someone to watch over them."
"Only a restaurant this big would dare to do something like this, right?"
Suisui glanced at Xiaoxian, whose family also ran a restaurant, and said with deep understanding, "For a small eatery like my family's, if we are even a little slow in answering a customer, we are terrified they will scold us for a bad attitude and expose us online."
Ye Shu disagreed, "Not necessarily. Both of our Xiaxia's restaurants are excellent. Especially Jiushan, which is the same type of restaurant; their service attitude is simply impeccable, and the food is miles better than this place!"
"That is right,"
Xiaozhen testified from the side. "The last time I took my baby there to eat, the little guy could not sit still, and the waiter specifically helped us watch him! My baby is naughty and accidentally knocked over the kids' meal. Their first reaction was to come over and check if he was burned. When we left, they even gave us a small gift. It made us feel so bad about the trouble we caused!"
"Is that not how it should be?"
Xu Yanxia said, "For a high-end restaurant, besides the quality of the food, the most important thing is the customer's experience. People spend so much money on a meal, of course they need to feel comfortable and happy. Otherwise, why would they choose to spend their money at our place?"
"Makes sense."
Suisui immediately sighed in admiration. "Our Captain Xiaxia is truly meant for big things, her perspective is just on another level!"
Saying that, she specifically apologized to her, "Sorry, Captain, I was just venting my feelings about this restaurant earlier, I did not mean that you made a bad choice."
"Actually, I am the one who should be sorry,"
Xu Yanxia apologized to everyone. "This restaurant really does not live up to its reputation. I originally thought that with such great fame and no bad reviews, the taste should be good. Since the theme of our competition in Jingbei is definitely going to be Beijing-Shandong cuisine, I figured it would be good for us to come and learn in advance. I did not expect the food to be completely off the mark."
With that, she looked at her grandfather beside her and said, "Grandpa, you are a senior expert in Beijing-Shandong cuisine. There are no outsiders here today, so please tell everyone where the problems with these dishes lie, so we can be careful to avoid them during tomorrow's competition."
"Yes, please tell us, Grandpa. It is a perfect opportunity for some on-the-spot teaching for us, so we do not fall into any traps during the competition tomorrow."
Everyone turned to look at Grandpa Xu.
Grandpa Xu also nodded and said, "Alright then, I will just briefly explain..."
Who would have known that right at this moment, someone would knock on their private room door and walk in from outside.
"Excuse me, everyone, sorry for the interruption."
A slightly chubby middle-aged man in a suit smiled at them and said, "Perhaps our staff member did not express things clearly just now, and it seems to have caused a little misunderstanding? I am the manager of Decui Restaurant. If there are any issues, we can have a good face-to-face chat about them."
"???"
This gave everyone pause. Good grief, did that waiter actually call their manager over?
Was that really necessary?
...Did he genuinely want to apologize, or was he trying to blow a small matter out of proportion?
Seeing this situation, Xu Yanxia was about to speak, but unexpectedly, the man fixed his gaze on her and smiled, saying, "Pardon me for asking, but is this beautiful lady Director Xu, who recently participated in the food show? You are the girlfriend of CEO Lu from Lu's Technology in Rong City, aren't you?"
"I am so sorry, our waiter has not been here long and actually failed to recognize you. My apologies for the disrespect. Welcome, all of you. Forgive me for not coming out to greet you sooner."
"Uh..."
The friends looked at each other, unable to help but frown.
This guy looked polite on the surface, but why did his words make people feel so uncomfortable?
What girlfriend of CEO Lu? Their Captain Xiaxia obviously had her own name, okay!!!
Xu Yanxia's expression also turned cold as she told him, "Regardless of who I am, today I am first and foremost your consumer, here to eat. If you genuinely want to apologize, there is no need to drag other things into it."
"Yes, yes, yes, you are absolutely right,"
the manager said, his face once again covered in smiles. "As a century-old establishment, Decui Restaurant has always followed the principle that the customer is God. I am truly sorry that you were disappointed earlier because of our waiter's inaccurate phrasing. However,"
He looked at the pocket camera placed next to Ye Shu and said, "You see, could you perhaps turn off the camera first?
If there is a problem, we will solve the problem, but there is no need to record the process."
Xu Yanxia actually laughed, unable to resist asking him in return, "Then what is necessary to record? Us praising you? With your restaurant doing such big business, surely you are not incapable of handling a single word of truth?"
"Besides, I did not film your kitchen, your secret recipes, or other consumers. We were just recording our own daily conversation. It is bad enough that you barged in suddenly, but on what grounds are you forbidding us from recording our own conversation?"
...This was truly ridiculous. Today, Ye Shu had only turned on the camera when they first walked in and just now when Grandpa Xu was about to speak. Right now, they had not even managed to record a single proper sentence before these people barged in.
What on earth were they so afraid of???
Exactly.
The other friends were already finding this bizarre and had reached the end of their tolerance.
In front of the camera, Ye Shu also said to the manager, "We spent our own money to eat, ordered thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan worth of your dishes, and we do not even have the freedom to record a little video?
"Do guests have to hand over their phones for you to inspect before they can leave after eating at your place?"
"How could that be possible?"
The manager was seen still smiling as he said, "We are just a restaurant, what right do we have to restrict your personal freedom?"
"How about this, let us not beat around the bush. I also know that Miss Xu is in the same industry as us. Originally, we are separated by thousands of kilometers from south to north. You make Cantonese cuisine, and we make Shandong cuisine. There is absolutely no competitive relationship between us. We can completely join hands, develop cooperatively, and drive traffic for each other, right?"
"There is absolutely no need to resort to these kinds of tactics to compete and suppress each other."
