By dawn on opening day, the Su Causeway had decided that Old Wu’s mid-life crisis was charming.
The new diner clung to its railing like a limpet, all brass struts and bolted beams, hovering half over water and half over the slow stream of pedestrians. A short flight of steps diverged from the main flow of traffic, leading out onto a little platform no wider than a respectable tablecloth.
Overhead, a sign of hammered copper proclaimed in bold characters:
蘇堤吳師傅
CHEF WU OF SU’S
Below that, in smaller script, someone (Sammi) had painted: “Tea, Stew, & Philosophical Snacks.”
The Causeway had generously allowed Old Wu to drill four anchor points into its stone ribs, so the platform hung like a balcony from a palace. Thick braces dove down at playful angles, connecting to pipes that hissed gentle-white steam. The whole thing looked wildly precarious; the internal math—double-checked by Eriko three times, plus one nervous dream—said it was as stable as a proverb.
The centerpiece of the diner was the steampunky grille-oven.
It sat at the back of the platform, taller than Wu himself: an iron contraption with a belly like a temple cauldron, fronted by a door shaped like a grinning tiger. Brass chimneys sprouted from its top, curling into stylized clouds; a ring of gauges trembled faintly as if excited. Inside, glowing charcoal met a network of narrow pipes. When Wu stomped a pedal, a bellows hidden in the floor woke up and sent a gust of hot air singing through the system. Flames brightened; a soft, satisfied chuff came from somewhere, like a dragon clearing its throat.
Next to it, a polished steel counter gleamed. Three stools were bolted directly into the platform, just in case the Causeway got ticklish.
At first light, Old Wu brewed tea for the Causeway itself, pouring a libation directly onto the stone before the day’s crowds arrived.
“You’ve held my shop this long,” he said, bowing to the bridge. “Today you hold my restaurant too.”
Under his feet, the old stones gave a pleased, solid hum.
Opening Ceremony, Unofficial
By mid-morning, a small line had formed: regulars from Wu’s old tea shop, curious passersby, a monk who claimed to be here only for “research into gustatory karma.”
And, right on time, Sammi and Eriko.
Sammi arrived first, of course, practically vibrating, a hand-printed flyer still in her fist. The flyer showed an impossibly heroic portrait of Wu ladling stew, under the dramatic title:
“THE GREAT WESTERN MYSTERY STEW (NOT YET BANNED BY ANY MINISTRY)”
Eriko followed at a more measured pace, notebook tucked under her arm, her hair already collecting the ambient steam like an abstract halo.
“I see we’re taking our responsibilities seriously,” she said, nodding at Sammi’s ink-smudged fingers.
“This is public service journalism,” Sammi declared. “The people must know about noodles. Or… whatever shape this stew uses.”
Old Wu spotted them and brightened. His beard had acquired a few more grey threads since the Great Shaking, but his eyes were younger than ever.
“Ah! My structural engineer and my publicist,” he boomed. “Come, sit, sit! I have reserved the best stools for you.”
There were only three stools. It was, objectively, a very high honor.
Eriko sat with the careful grace of someone who had personally checked the load-bearing calculations. Sammi hopped up without looking, entirely confident the universe would catch her. The platform swayed just a whisper, then steadied.
Beneath them, the lake lapped at the Causeway’s stones, curious.
A Dish From “Far Far West”
“So,” Sammi said, planting her elbows on the counter. “Tell us about this legendary stew from the ‘far far west.’ Is that a distance, a direction, or an exaggeration?”
Wu’s face went solemn, as if she’d asked about an ancestral shrine.
“Farther than the caravans go,” he said. “Beyond the maps in the customs office, beyond where the paper dragons even bother to patrol. A place the old chroniclers never recorded because every time they tried, the ink refused to dry.”
Eriko’s pen twitched in her hand. “Ink refusal?”
“So they say.” Wu shrugged. “Words slid off the page. The records curled up and rolled away. Bureaucrats had nightmares of recipe pages escaping their ledgers. Eventually they stamped it ‘Not Our Jurisdiction’ and stopped asking questions.”
“Wise of them,” Sammi murmured. “But we will absolutely ask more questions.”
Wu chuckled. “Of course you will.”
He turned to the grille-oven, stomped the bellows pedal. The tiger-door laughed in iron. A smoky, fragrant heat spilled out—not just of herbs and meat, but something harder to name, like distance and fog.
From one of the rear pipes, a copper hook descended, bearing a suspended pot: blackened clay with bands of brass, etched all over with tiny unfamiliar runes. The liquid inside burbled thickly, its surface a slow whirl of browns and reds, speared by glimmers of gold.
Eriko leaned forward. The steam rose past her face, and for a second her eyes unfocused.
“Did you see something?” Sammi whispered.
“Yes,” Eriko said slowly. “No. Possibly. There was… a street I don’t know. Buildings with flat roofs. Lanterns shaped like cages. People eating out of… bowls with handles.” She blinked. “Now it’s gone.”
“The stew shows where it’s from to those who might someday go there,” Wu said simply, ladling with reverence. “But only in brief courtesy. Never enough for the chroniclers.”
He filled two bowls—deep, sturdy pottery, painted with little stylized dragons that might have been borrowed from the oven’s personality.
The stew did not look shy.
Thick, glossy broth clung to chunks of meat and root vegetables. Red flecks floated like tiny banners; a swirl of cream traced a spiral on top, dissolving as they watched. The smell was an orchestral thing: roasted peppers, slow-cooked marrow, a sweet smokiness that reminded Sammi of airship docks and festival bonfires.
She inhaled, eyes going wide. “I love it already.”
Eriko’s brows knit. “The aroma profile is… unusual.”
“Is that a good unusual?” Wu asked, amused.
“It’s an… as-yet-unmodeled unusual,” Eriko said. “Which is very promising.”
Sammi’s Review: First Bite
“Don’t think too hard,” Sammi advised, grabbing a spoon. “That’s my job. As a professional over-thinker, I hereby bite first.”
She scooped up a generous spoonful—meat, potato, a glossy ribbon of pepper—and blew on it theatrically.
The first taste was heat.
Not the sharp stab of chili alone, but a layered warmth that rolled across her tongue, building, settling, then blooming again at the back of her throat. The meat (beef? something cousin to it) was so tender it put all her metaphors in jeopardy: it didn’t melt exactly, but it agreed to stop being solid.
The vegetables were soft without surrendering, each one carrying its own note—earthy root, sweet carrot, something green and slightly bitter that cut through the richness like a witty comment.
Out past all that, the smoke. Not campfire, not incense; the ghost of wood burned under a sky she didn’t recognize. For a moment—just a moment—she saw herself behind unfamiliar glass, watching rain hit a different kind of street.
She swallowed. The vision folded, like a letter refolded along its creases and tucked away.
“Sammi?” Eriko asked, alert.
Sammi put the spoon carefully down. “Okay,” she said hoarsely. “I have several opinions.”
“Good?” Wu asked, slightly anxious.
“Chef Wu,” Sammi said solemnly, “this tastes like you bribed distance to come sit in my mouth and tell travel stories.”
Wu beamed. “Ah! The correct reaction.”
She grabbed her pen and the margin of the paper placemat, already scrawling: ‘Wu’s Western Stew: like a love letter from a city that hasn’t been built yet.’
Eriko’s Study: Second Bite
Eriko lifted her own spoon more cautiously. She studied it the way she would a new equation: component parts, probable interactions, the line where reality might bend.
She tasted.
The heat hit her more slowly; she felt it as expansion rather than explosion, like the first breath after leaving a crowded room. Underneath it, she found structure.
“Mmm,” she said, surprised into an unselfconscious sound. “There’s… cumin? And something seedlike. Coriander?”
“You have a good tongue,” Wu said. “Yes. Plus a dried fruit from the west—looks like a little red crescent. I don’t know its name; the trader just called it ‘the thing that makes the pot remember.’”
Eriko chased one of the crescents with her spoon, caught it, chewed.
There it was again, that odd lurch in perception. Not a vision this time, but a sense of… dislocation. The feeling of sitting in a place and knowing that, according to the map in your head, you should be somewhere else entirely.
Her mind immediately began building diagrams.
“If you charted these flavors on a compass of the known world,” she murmured, half to herself, “they would not align with any of the usual axes. North–south, east–west; they’re all wrong. This stew suggests another coordinate system.”
Sammi paused mid-bite. “A stew with its own geometry?”
Eriko nodded, eyes brightening. “Exactly. A taste-space that doesn’t care about our borders. Perhaps that’s why the chroniclers couldn’t fix it on the page. Their ink is calibrated for our map.”
“I feel a pamphlet coming on,” Sammi muttered happily.
“Several,” Eriko said. “And a paper. Possibly a small argument with the Ministry of Distances.”
The monk at the next stool leaned in. “Excuse me,” he said politely, “but if this stew implies the existence of unrecorded lands, does eating it create karmic obligations toward those lands?”
Eriko’s expression lit up like a lantern. “What an excellent question.”
Sammi took another huge spoonful and said through a mouthful, “We’ll definitely have to visit, so yes?”
The Diner and the Bridge Approve
As bowls were refilled—Wu refused to let them stop at one—the little diner came fully alive.
The grille-oven chuffed and glowed, happy to be central. The copper chimneys vented aromatic steam that made passersby stop mid-stride, blink, and suddenly change direction toward the stools.
Old tea-shop regulars tasted cautiously, then with widening eyes. “Why does this remind me of my first trip away from home?” one wondered aloud.
“Because your sense of adventure is simmered in beef stock,” Sammi offered.
The Causeway listened, deeply pleased. It enjoyed being a route, a passage. But to host a restaurant that served geography inside a bowl—that delighted it on some stony, conceptual level.
So, it thought, letting the weight of the diner sit comfortably on its rail. We now have a place here that remembers where even I have not been. Good. The world should not end at my edges.
Below, the lake sampled some stray droplets that had splashed over the side. It tasted of places beyond its basin, beyond its gravity.
Interesting, it murmured, a ring of little ripples marking its approval. I may have to expand my collection of reflections.
Legacy Tea & Future Stew
Between stew rounds, Wu still moved with the old tea-master’s precision.
For legacy customers—those who had known his cramped, earnest shop under the arch—he brewed their favorite leaves in side-handled pots and served them with the same quiet ceremony as always.
But now, next to the clay teapots, there were tall pewter mugs for stew. Some regulars ordered both, lining them up like past and future in liquid form.
“Tea for the memories,” one old man sighed. “Stew for the regrets I haven’t had yet.”
Sammi’s pen nearly broke from the speed of her scribbling.
Eriko, meanwhile, had filled an entire page with curves and arrows, mapping “taste-vectors” radiating outward from Hangzhou.
“So if ordinary soy-and-ginger broth sits here,” she said, tapping a central point, “Wu’s stew sits… here.” She pointed to a spot far outside her carefully ruled grid, then circled it. “Somewhere the Song chroniclers never imagined, but that nevertheless touches us through the tongue.”
“And through the causeway,” Wu added. “A merchant from the west brought me a pot once and cooked me this dish on that very stone”—he thumped the railing affectionately—“before marching off with his caravan. I never learned the town’s name. But afterwards the bridge felt… longer.”
The Causeway gave a dignified little shiver of agreement.
A Toast to the Unwritten Map
By the time the sun began to slide down toward the hills, “Chef Wu of Su’s” was officially a success. The three stools had rotated half the district through; the stew pot was nearing its bottom, thick with the last, most intense flavors.
Wu ladled one final small serving for each of them: Sammi, Eriko, and the monk who had asked about karmic geography.
He topped off their cups of tea as well. The steam from both bowls and cups rose together, twining in the golden light like two intertwined diagrams.
“To the Great Shaking,” Wu said, raising his bowl, “without which I would still be merely Old Wu, pouring tea on solid ground.”
“To Chef Wu of Su’s,” Sammi said. “May your platform remain dramatically unsafe-looking and actually very safe forever.”
“To the parts of the world we haven’t drawn yet,” Eriko added, eyes on her map. “And to the dishes that get here before the cartographers.”
They clinked their ceramic bowls gently. Somewhere in the depths of the grille-oven, the tiger-door rattled in approval.
Far out on the water, a faint echo of drums drifted from the palace quarter—the tail end of some minor ceremony. The Thearch, no doubt, was dining on twenty-four properly documented dishes, every one recorded in the archives.
Up here on the railing of the Su Causeway, three bowls of undocumented stew warmed three sets of hands, and a new footnote in the city’s story quietly wrote itself:
On this date, Chef Wu of Su’s began serving a certain Western stew which no chronicler successfully described, but which changed the bridge’s idea of where it ended.
Sammi licked her spoon, blissful. “We definitely have to write about this.”
Eriko nodded, eyes shining. “Yes. And then fail to fully describe it in accordance with tradition.”
The Causeway thrummed, somewhere between a chuckle and a purr.
The lake, for once, caught no lies in their words—only anticipation.
And in the midst of steam, spices, and the sound of distant wheels on stone, “Chef Wu of Su’s” took its first firm root on the side of the world, serving tea to the past and stew to the future, perfectly balanced above the water—just where Sammi and Eriko liked to live.
