PeiKing Roasted Duck in Lanting, Regent Formosa

One day, my friend “Master Ju” had dinner with me in a Korean restaurant. Suddenly he came out an idea. “How about bring your camera and we can taste all good roasted ducks in Taipei”. Of course! It is such a good deal because Master Ju is famous gourmand, following him we can have “special”.

He called his friend Mandy, who is the service director in Regent Formosa Hotel, and set up the dinner appointment. Why Ju chose Lanting was because Lanting serves roasted duck with real PeiKing style. In Taipei, there are many restaurants selling roasted duck, however, mostly they are Cantonese style. The differences between Peiking and Cantonese roasted duck are – Peiking style needs to “feed the duck” like the way French people make foie gras, and when roasting, the chef pour water inside the duck, which creates the boiling effect. Cantonese roasted duck is different, it will be described later in another article.

The décor is nice in Lanting, combined Japanese, Chinese design and add on modern elements.

With beautiful Chinese calligraphy in glass, make lighting hallway

First, we had some cold appetizers

Szechuan Style Pork Salad

Using marbled pork (from pig cheek), boiled, sliced thin and on top of bean sprouts which were taken off head and root (they were called silver sprouts). If the flavor can be enhanced more by adding more Szechuan pepper, it will be good.

Sauteed Julienne PengHu Loufah and Chinese Wolfberry (Lycium chinensis)

Here they used PengHu Loufah, which is almost same as Cantonese species, with harder flesh so it can be made as juliennes. Some wolfberry decorated the dish. But we think it was too plain, without flavor.

Chef slicing the roasted duck- Table service

PeiKing Roasted Duck in Plate

How could I say? It is the most disappointment in the dinner….The duck roasted good, the skin was crispy, meat was juicy. But…they are not slices, they are chunks !! Each piece was about 1 cm thick.
And look the presentation, it is just like Cantonese duck rice. Peiking roasted duck should be sliced thin, carefully separated in round plate like a flower….

So I am blessing for the poor duck, Amen!

Steamed Whole-wheat Chinese Crepes

It seems like new fashion for using whole-wheat Chinese crepe accomplish the roasted duck. The sauce is good though

Steamed Fish with Scallion Juliennes

Typical HongKong style, red snapper steamed just about medium (can’t be well-done cause the flesh will be hard!) and finally topping the scallion juliennes, poured the fish sauce made by hot oil, soy sauce and stock. Then the hot sauce will cook the fish to finish)

Mango and Coconut flavored Konjac, Dark Sugar Syrup

Using “Ai-Wen” Mango, but not very sweet, maybe ripe mango is too soft to cut like the way shown in photo. The konjac tasted interesting, I guess this dessert’s inspiration is from Japanese “ Kuro tou katsu nagashi”(Jelly made by allowroot starch with black sugar sauce) .