Chapter 17: The Cuisine of the Tan Family

After they sat down in the private room, Xiao Banxia remarked, “The environment is a bit disappointing. The décor here has clearly been around for a few years—it’s rather dated.”

“Well, it’s an old and established restaurant. A sense of age can be seen as a layer of history,” Xiao Yao explained as best he could.

“Are we ordering à la carte, or is the menu already set?”

“The steward, Mr. Lu, has already pre-ordered the dishes for us. They’re all signature items from the Tan family’s cuisine.”

Xiao Banxia casually flipped open the menu and said, “I’ve always heard that Tan cuisine is especially expensive. Let me see what the prices are like.”

She skimmed through the menu and exclaimed, “It really is expensive! Braised Shark Fin in Brown Sauce is 2,888 per person, Clear Soup with Swallow’s Nest is 998, and Tan’s Supreme Abalone is 1,188 per person…”

“No wonder Director Tian mentioned that last month, when the company entertained a few VIP guests here, the bill for one table came to ninety thousand yuan. These prices are indeed sky-high.” For an ordinary person like Xiao Banxia, such prices were hard to accept. If her brother weren’t now a wealthy man, she would never be willing to spend so much of her own money.

A server brought over a pot of Shifeng Dragon Well tea, and the two of them sipped their tea as they waited for the food.

Tan cuisine is the most renowned official household cuisine in the country. In Xiao Yao’s memory, Pan Wu had tasted it many times. Even though those memories now felt as real as his own, they were not experiences he had personally lived. He was still eager to finally taste Tan cuisine for himself.

Tan cuisine is pleasingly balanced between salty and sweet, suitable for both northerners and southerners. The emphasis is on preserving the original flavors of the ingredients, with precise control of heat and generous use of high-quality ingredients. The dishes are tender and soft, resulting in a fresh and delicate taste and texture. The flavors are mellow and rich, true to their original colors and tastes. The cuisine pursues moderation and harmony, with nearly three hundred dishes forming its own system, most famous for its elaborate seafood creations. Among these, the Clear Soup with Swallow’s Nest stands out as a masterpiece.

Another hallmark of Tan cuisine is its commitment to original flavor. When preparing dishes, pungent spices such as Sichuan peppercorns are rarely used, nor is pepper powder sprinkled over the finished dishes. The essence of Tan cuisine is to let chicken taste like chicken, fish like fish, never allowing foreign or strange flavors to mask the dish’s true character. When braising, the chef never adds extra broth or sauce, otherwise the dish would lose its purity.

Tan cuisine is essentially home-style, requiring slow, meticulous cooking rather than the rapid, high-heat methods commonly used in commercial kitchens. The preferred techniques are braising, stewing, slow simmering, steaming, pan-searing, roasting, and preparing soups—rarely stir-frying, nor emphasizing the tossing and flipping of woks. For this reason, advance reservation is ideal, allowing the chef ample time to prepare ingredients and cook each dish properly.

Tan cuisine is especially renowned for its bird’s nest and shark fin dishes, maintaining the traditional methods of the Hanlin residence. The shark fin is gently soaked in warm water, never rushed with caustic soda, to avoid destroying its nutritional value.

All traditional Chinese haute cuisine relies on carefully simmered stock, especially for delicacies like shark fin and other rare ingredients. The Tan family’s stock is made by simmering whole free-range hens, ducks, dried scallops, and ham together for two days, until the poultry fully dissolves into the broth, which is then strained and further clarified. The shark fin is then added and gently simmered for another full day, so the entire cooking process takes three days. The resulting shark fin is richly flavored, tender, and silky, extraordinarily delicious.

There are more than a dozen classic preparations for shark fin in Tan cuisine, such as “Shredded Trio Shark Fin,” “Crab Roe Shark Fin,” “Clay Pot Shark Fin,” “Clear Stewed Shark Fin,” “Rich Broth Shark Fin,” and “Seafood Braised Shark Fin,” among others.

The shark fin, meticulously soaked in hot and cold water, is completely free of any fishy odor. Once finished, it is tender, meltingly soft, and exquisitely flavorful. Among all the shark fin dishes, “Braised Shark Fin in Brown Sauce” is considered the finest. It uses the precious yellow-fleshed fin (Luzon yellow), served whole, and is braised for several hours. The Tan family’s shark fin glows golden and bright, with a rich yet clean flavor, and a mellow, lingering aftertaste.

The “Clear Soup with Swallow’s Nest” is another highlight of Tan cuisine. Unlike the common method of soaking the nest with alkali, which may yield a whiter and greater volume but sacrifices nutrition, this dish is prepared with utmost care. The nest is soaked in warm water for three hours, then repeatedly rinsed and meticulously cleaned of feathers and impurities. Once ready, the nest is placed in a large soup bowl, covered with half a pound of chicken stock, then steamed for twenty to thirty minutes. It is then portioned into small bowls. A clear broth made from chicken, duck, pork knuckle, dried scallop, and ham is brought to a boil, seasoned with rice wine, sugar, and salt, then poured into each bowl and garnished with delicate slivers of ham. The resulting soup is clear as water with a pale yellow hue, delicious flavor, tender and intact bird’s nest, and high nutritional value—a true signature of Tan cuisine.

All of Xiao Yao’s knowledge of Tan cuisine came from Pan Wu. He and his sister ordered a bottle of fifty-year-old Moutai and waited for the meal to begin.

Before the dishes arrived, Xiao Yao called a waiter over and said, “Please check for me which private room Mr. Wang and Mr. Tian from Weston Electronics are in. Once you find out, I’d like to send them a little gesture—shark fin, bird’s nest, abalone, and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. Whatever they haven’t ordered, please send them each a serving and put it on my bill. I’ll settle everything together later.”

“Certainly, sir. I’ll check right away,” the waiter replied.

After the waiter left, Xiao Banxia said, “Is that really necessary? They must have ten or so people at their table. If you send each person a portion, that’s at least ten or twenty thousand yuan.”

“Well, since we happened to meet, I should show some goodwill. If a gesture of ten or twenty thousand yuan can make an impression on the bosses, I think it’s worth it.” Xiao Yao had always had a high emotional intelligence, and after absorbing Pan Wu’s memories, he was now as shrewd as a thousand-year-old fox. Whenever he felt it was necessary, he would handle the subtleties of human relations and social etiquette flawlessly.

“Alright, it’s your money. However much you spend, I won’t feel bad about it.”

Knowing his sister’s reluctance to spend such sums, Xiao Yao reassured her, “At most, it’s just the price of a T-shirt. Now that your brother is a wealthy man, I can’t afford to be stingy. Otherwise, what’s the point of inheriting so much money?”

As the dishes were served, the two of them began to feast.

The first main dish was Braised Shark Fin in Brown Sauce. The fin was tender and richly flavorful, golden and glossy, intensely savory yet not greasy. One bite left a lingering aftertaste; though expensive, it was well worth the price. After the first taste, the siblings couldn’t help but praise the dish, and their chopsticks scarcely paused.