Xiangling

"Coming, coming! Here's your Stir-Fried Filet! And your Mora Meat. And Fried Radish Balls, as you ordered."

In Liyue, there's a place called Chihu Rock, and there stands a restaurant known as Wanmin Restaurant.

One must remain focused if they want to keep moving forward on the bustling streets of Liyue.

Unsuspecting newcomers to this place are often lured away by wonderful culinary aromas or lead to peek inside stores by curious sounds.

Xiangling, who is both chef and waitress at the restaurant, delivers steaming, delicious dishes to the tables.

"Sit anywhere you'd like. I can make whatever you want, even if it's not on the menu!"

The workers at Wanmin Restaurant can recognize a regular, if not by their face, then by the first sentence out of their mouths.

A customer that orders without needing a menu has been at least a few times before. However, if they ask "Is Xiangling the chef today?" then they're definitely a regular.

Xiangling has destroyed many a wok in her time. Either the insides would become irreversibly charred from the heat of a Pyro Slime, or cracks would appear due to flash-freezing from a Mist Flower — or, at some step in Xiangling's unconventional cooking process, a small-scale explosion would reduce it to scrap metal. After some heavy consideration on the part of Xiangling's father, he ultimately decided not to banish his daughter from the kitchen, despite the destruction she caused.

As reckless, imaginative, and uninhibited as she may be, it was exactly these traits that led her to create her most successful dishes. "Maybe this isn't so bad..." He tried to convince himself.

Suffice to say that payment for a new wok is a regular feature of the restaurant's monthly ledger.

"There are many secrets to cooking; the most important of which is passion."

When Xiangling decided to learn to be a chef, her father handed her his own handwritten cooking journal, his life's work. That line was written on the title page.

If she was any other person, she would likely have regarded it as some cheesy inspirational quote. However, Xiangling regarded it as a priceless treasure.

To her, her father only secured his footing in the forever-ongoing war between the Li and Yue cuisines by upholding that principle.

However, at that time, the conflict between the two styles was white-hot, with many restaurants feeling the pressure that arose from it. Wanmin Restaurant was no exception.

"Good food is good food, period!"

The monopoly on luxurious ingredients such as matsutake and crabs infuriated Xiangling, her angry response to which was to take over in the kitchen.

It was time for her to build upon the foundation her father gave her and make some changes.

"I'm gonna make super-delicious dishes out of any ingredient!"

Xiangling's liveliness is disastrous for the hilichurls of Jueyun Karst. They one day awoke to find their fighting clubs gone.

Of course, the flora in Dihua Marsh did not fare any better.

After all the work she put in, she finally created some new recipes, such as Hilichurl Club BBQ Fish and Horsetail Sticky Rice and Meat...

She'd never create anything new if she just stuck to the recipes of her predecessors.

One must break with common conception if they are to carve their own path.

When Xiangling finally created her crowning achievement, the Chef's Special Cold-Dressed Fowl, her father paid the price, needing to resort to simple white congee for two days following.

"Mint and Qingxin Flower seem to induce diarrhea..."

She learned a valuable experience to add to her journal.

Strange. She ate her own dishes, but nothing ever happened to her. Xiangling did feel guilty though.

Maybe it was because she was young and healthy, or had somehow built up a resistance to certain toxins... One may never know.

Whenever a customer asks what exactly was the perplexing creature that follows Xiangling around is, she tells them the story:

There was a sudden downpour one day when Xiangling was on her way to fetch some Violetgrass. Halfway there, she was already tired and hungry. She stumbled into a cave, and came across a strange shrine.

So she sat down by the shrine, and took out two pieces of spicy cornbread.

She gobbled down one, but left the other one on the shrine, intending to eat a little later, but then promptly fell asleep.

When she woke up, the other spicy cornbread was gone and a mysterious creature was sitting in front of her, staring.

"Was it good?"

It nodded.

"More?" She took out some jerky from her backpack.

The mysterious creature nodded once again.

This was how Xiangling made a new friend. It seemed to be drawn to Xiangling's cooking, as the creature started following Xiangling around wherever she went.

Xiangling named it "Guoba," after her favorite childhood snack.

After sampling every dish there was in Liyue, Xiangling's culinary skills drastically improved. Her specialty spicy dishes earned the praise of even her father, a veteran chef with over two decades of experience.

She created her unique and complex flavor profile through a generous helping of chili peppers mixed with fruits and herbs for increased aroma. She also created what became the signature dish of Wanmin Restaurant: Black-Back Perch Stew, which combines the richness, color and strong flavors of Li cuisine with the fresh aromas and nutritional content of Yue cuisine.

Some have tried to copy her recipes, but try as they might they can never quite reproduce the way her cooking tastes.

"Braise fresh Violetgrass overnight. Dry, then grind to a fine powder. Sprinkle into any dish for an aromatic boost."

This is one of Xiangling's secret recipes, arrived at through a painstaking process of trial and error.

In Xiangling's case, that means countless bouts of diarrhea, countless bruised knees bashed on rocky cliffs, and countless wasted potfuls of food that didn't quite turn out as expected.

This map of Teyvat is lined with dense notations in various colors, and if you read closely, you can find the places where Xiangling has been, and where she intends to go in future.

"The shellfish of the shallows around Guyun Stone Forest are unmatched in their freshness. They say that 'here be sea monsters'?"

"Sea monster meat tastes great. Should look for Beidou to go fight another one. Will steaming them with eggs make them taste better?"

"There's a dragon in Mondstadt? Great! I just need three days of provisions to get there."

"Valberries are sweet. Lots here. I'll bring a basket. Take some back. See if they'll grow."

"This Mondstadt restaurant's Sautéed Matsutake is way too luxurious! They should just sell the matsutake. Ooh, what if I fry some with Jueyun Chili? Sounds good already. Might as well borrow a kitchen tomorrow and give it a go."

"Haven't found the dragon yet. Am I in the right place?"

"You can make something super delicious out of any kind of ingredient."

Xiangling earned the approval of a Vision by shouldering this ideal in a wholehearted and unreserved manner. Even when she would make dishes that could be called "horrifying," her desire to keep trying to match ingredients would never waver.

"Ugh... Qingxin Fried Lizard is actually kinda bad. I think lizards should just be stone-grilled in future."

"Slime fried rice is also rather ordinary. Maybe we'll try putting mushrooms in a slime jus next time."

Though her friends fell around her during the epic battles with the taste of her dishes and advised her to turn back, Xiangling never stopped thinking about how to turn these "special" ingredients into delicious food.

In Xiangling's innocent and persistent heart, as long as they were not poisonous, there were no good or bad ingredients.

Her Vision, after all, proves that even the gods approve of such thinking.