Auntie Mei had run her noodle stall at the end of the night market, under a string of red lanterns, for thirty years, and in all that time she had not changed a single thing about it. Every customer got exactly the same bowl of noodles and exactly the same joke: "Careful, the noodles are hot, but my jokes are cold!" People groaned, and people came back every week, which she took as proof that the system worked. Wise people had told her more than once to raise her prices, print a menu and take some photographs; she had listened politely and done none of it.
One evening a man in an expensive coat ordered the cheapest noodles on the menu and began to write in a tiny notebook. Auntie Mei noticed the notebook, and she noticed his shiny shoes, which had clearly never met a puddle, but she gave him the same bowl and the same joke as everybody else. He ate slowly, with the concentration of a man defusing a bomb. When he had finished the last drop of broth, he put down his chopsticks and said, "I am a famous food critic. What is your secret?" Auntie Mei shrugged and wiped the counter. "Hot broth, hungry people, and I don't change for anybody," she said.
He gave her five stars. She never read the review; her regular customers told her about it, twice, with a pride that embarrassed her. The next week the line was twice as long, and Auntie Mei, who had always believed that a joke is only as good as its consistency, told the same joke, and the whole queue, which had come for a legend, groaned like family.