Qianjiang Evening News·Hourly News Reporter Shi Wen
On a summer evening, the sun was setting in the west.
At the bridgehead of Renhe Dongtang Village in Yuhang, Hangzhou, the trees are full of sparrows chirping, jumping and flashing in time with the rhythm of the neon lights of "Aqi Night Supper" on the street corner.
Villagers were waving cattail leaf fans and passing by in twos and threes. Someone pushed open the glass door and came in, singing a familiar line: "Boss, two bowls of tofu noodles ."
The owner and chef is 48-year-old Shi Keqi.
This man of medium build is a villager in Dongtang Village.
For most of his life, he barely left home.
On this section of the street less than 100 meters away from Qiaotou, "Aqi Night Supper" has moved three times, the most recent time last year.
The epidemic has made everyone eat late-night snacks earlier. As a result, SmithKeeper moved the closing time from 3 a.m. to 1 a.m.
’s new store covers an area of 100 square meters and can accommodate more than 20 tables. The annual rent is only 30,000 yuan. Aqi and his wife are very satisfied.
At the beginning of this year, this rural late-night noodle shop was closed for more than a month due to the epidemic. June is already a hot month for its return.
] Vermicelli pot, tofu noodles, small wine and side dishes, slowly enjoy
This blue steel overpass at the entrance of the village becomes lively in the evening. Some people bring their children to enjoy the cool air on the bridge, and some people rush to carry the meat and vegetables they just bought. And passed.
After get off work, four young men from a nearby electric fan factory always form a group to eat noodles.
The boy from the village wearing blue overalls ordered a casserole out of habit, and the other three, who were workers from the next village, ordered shredded pork and tofu noodles.
"Tofu noodles became popular later. Our village used to eat claypot noodles. I eat them once a week." The boy from the village slurped the vermicelli with relish, while three boys next to him blew the noodles and waited for them to cool.
The guy ate neatly. After finishing the noodles, he got up and left. Most of the people in the store eating stir-fried dishes and drinking wine were mostly local uncles.
Most of the diners in small shops are men. The uncles are used to drinking and eating vegetables first, and then eating noodles.
The waitress in the store is very cute. Because she can't find which table the food is ordered from, she always carries the food and spins around the hall. After a few turns, she seems to have found the direction and delivers the food to the customer's table accurately. .
Aqi Ze is busy in the kitchen.
goes to bed at 3 a.m. and starts working at 5 p.m. His routine is completely different from ordinary people. This rhythm of
has been maintained for at least 15 years.
Before the midnight snack, Ah Qi was a worker at Zhangshan Gas Cylinder Factory.
Back then, when this taciturn country man resigned from the factory, his wife Su Qi objected.
Later, Aqi found a storefront with only 6 small tables at the entrance of the village, and started his own business selling late-night snacks, specializing in vermicelli claypot and tofu noodles.
"My son took the college entrance examination this year, but his results were not satisfactory." When he said this, Aqi had a look of helplessness on his face and kept burning the noodles with his hands.
] , a rural Internet celebrity noodle that has become a popular street, counterattacked thanks to everyone
In the first two years since the store opened, "Aqi Night Supper" was the only late-night canteen in the village, and the vermicelli pot was actually modeled after a nearby restaurant.
Due to homogeneous competition, there were very few people visiting the late-night snack shop at the beginning. Only the police patrolling late at night and the village patrol officers would often come to have a meal.
Once, a guest casually asked for tofu noodles, and Aqi cooked a bowl of it. The result was unexpectedly delicious. People in the village spread the word, and everyone came to the store to order tofu noodles.
Although the business hours are now moved up from 3 a.m. to 1 a.m., the signature tofu noodles can still sell more than 200 bowls every day. The beef tofu noodles for 25 yuan a bowl account for half of the sales, and there are also beef tripe and river noodles. Shrimp, shredded pork, and large ribs of tofu noodles.
15 Yuan for a casserole with solid ingredients, including vermicelli, vegetables, sausages, beef, oiled tofu and poached eggs. It is very cost-effective.
People in the village like to eat noodles with side dishes. The stir-fries in the store are particularly delicious. Stir-fried beef tripe with garlic, stir-fried duck gizzards wild rice , stir-fried duck intestines with green peppers, braised chicken feet... these are all Ah Qi's specialty dishes. Good food.
My wife Su Qi does all the food purchasing and cooking.
She gets up at 7 o'clock every day and goes to the store. Fresh noodles from the vegetable market, meat and vegetables from the e-commerce platform will arrive one after another. The noodles and beef are more troublesome to deal with.
Noodles need to be blanched in water and then allowed to cool, so that the noodles will be chewy and not easy to burn when cooked.
Su Qi will help her husband divide the portions first, so that they can be easily picked up when burning. The beef needs to be marinated for 1 hour, then simmered over low heat for half a day, and then sliced into pieces for later use.
"Our store's business was really average at first, and it really depended on that bowl of tofu noodles." Aqi smiled.
My wife also saw that the business in the store was so good that she was too busy, so she resigned from the factory and came to help in the store. Later, she hired an aunt from the village to run the store.
In addition to local villagers coming to eat, some people come from the next door Liangzhu and Pingyao, and there are even people who drive from Linping and Deqing to eat noodles.
Ah Qi single-handedly set off a small "Hang'er style", which also popularized the catering business in the entire street. Several restaurants including barbecue, stir-fry, and noodle restaurants opened at the entrance of the village.
] The weather is getting hot, and people are more willing to eat out.
Because the shops in Qiaotou were being demolished one after another, the two stores Aqi rented in front of him were demolished one after another.
Every time he moved a store, he would look for a store closest to his old store. The distance between the three store moves was no more than 100 meters, for fear that regular customers would not be able to find it. At the peak of
, "Aqi Night Supper" did business from 10 pm to 3 am, and could sell 300 to 400 bowls of noodles a day. When
's new store encountered the epidemic, the most obvious change was that after 12 o'clock in the evening, the number of diners who came to shop suddenly decreased.
After the Chinese New Year this year, "Aqi Night Supper" was closed for more than a month due to the epidemic in Renhe and Liangzhu.
html At the end of April, the store was briefly open for four days, and was forced to close for a week because of the activities of sub-close contacts. It was officially opened on May 4th.However, the epidemic has also brought many unexpected surprises. For example, many people came to Aqi's place for dinner. After dinner, at around 8 o'clock, people who had late-night snacks started to pick up.
Aqi felt that he should seize the wave of business after the evening.
"There won't be many people after 12 o'clock anyway." He simply closed the door early at night and rested.
’s wife Su Qi worked in the store during the day, and she was busy until noon without realizing it. Many people saw that the store was occupied during the day, so they came to ask: Can they cook a bowl of noodles?
Maybe it’s because the weather is getting hotter and people are more willing to eat out, so Ah Qi has added business hours from 9 am to 1 pm. However, he was still sleeping soundly at noon, and only Su Qi was burning.
During the few days when
was briefly opened at the end of April, Aqi sold less than 50 bowls of noodles a day; this month after returning in May, business was not very satisfactory either.
However, starting in June, the business of "Aqi Night Supper" returned to normal levels.
"It costs 1,800 yuan to purchase goods every day, but now we can sell more than 200 bowls of noodles every day."
It's really good, this is hope.
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