Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Duck Restaurant

Found a duck restaurant in Wanchai. Quite an interesting and unique restaurant featuring duck and wine. If you are interested in Peking duck and any other duck dishes, and enjoy a glass of wine with food, this is an ideal restaurant for you.  Pinot Duck is located in Wanchai, not far away from MTR.  As its name denotes, the menu is full of duck. Although it serves Chinese food, the restaurant interior is very western style.  The menu is different from any traditional Beijing restaurant and its selling point is Peking Duck X Wine.  So it has quite a wide and good range of wine for your choice.

For lunch, there are sets ranging from HK$138 with a starter, main course and a drink. You can opt to add a little fee for a soup or salad. Bottle of water is free of charge.  

Starter - Duck Wrap in rice paper (Vietnamese style). Well presented, with cucumber inside and cabbage outside.  


Starter - Duck Wrap in steamed bread (Chinese style). Also very well presented, with cucumber and slices of green onion.


For the main course, my friend had a cold cut while I preferred something hot. However we decided to share everything.  

Duck Slices with Cold Noodle
Thick slices of duck meat. Nicely marinated, very delicious. Amount is just right. Not too heavy, and not too oily. Yummy and healthy!

Duck Meat Fried Rice
Very colourful with big lumps of duck meat. Lovely - I like it! I must say, this is a great place for duck lovers.

The restaurant is nicely designed and it is quite spacious between tables so everyone would have a relaxing eating environment. The waiters are friendly. We asked for a dinner menu for reference and found 90% of the dishes are duck - roast Peking duck, 八寶鴨 baked duck, duck soup, duck noodle, duck rice, duck...everything. The waiter suggested us to order half duck for 2-3 people and a full duck for 4 people or more. The cost of one Peking duck is HK$500.

Set Lunch: HK$138 (US17.8) + 10% service charge.
The set lunch includes free bottled water and a drink (coffee or tea)
Can opt to add HK$30 for a soup/salad

Pinot Duck
18 Luen Fat Street
Wanchai, Hong Kong

There is one in Stanley Plaza as well.

Hong Kong Food Blog - Duck Restaurant

Monday, April 2, 2018

Beijing House in Wanchai

The Beijing House recently opened a new restaurant in Hopewell Centre which is nearby my home, so I decided to go and try. Unexpected, the food came abnormally fast. All 6 dishes arrived within 5 minutes after we placed the order. 

The Beijing House claimed to be very authentic and all ingredients and chefs are from Beijing. Indeed, the food taste were all good, although the food temperature were relatively warm, rather than hot.  

Black Fungus 涼伴黑木耳

Black fungus is a healthy starter. It is not only unique to Beijing food, it is available in Shanghai, Sichuan and most of the northern cuisine restaurants.  You may notice there is a fish tang under the table, and we could see fishes swimming.

Stir Fried Daoxiao Noodles 刀削面
Daoxiao Noodles is a local characteristic traditional pasta of Datong City in Shanxi Province. It is one of the “Top Ten Chinese Noodles” popular in northern China. The operation process: the flour and lumps, the left hand to lift the dough, the right hand to take the arc knife, the surface one by one to cut into the boiling water pot. If you eat this in Shanxi, you may even see the chef's live demonstration. A very interesting process.

Stir Fried Shrimps 清炒蝦仁
Beijing has no coastline, so we believe these are river water shrimps. In fact, the simplest cooking method requires the highest cooking skill and the freshest ingredients. This is a live example of such. Very well done!

Stir Fried Lettuce 清炒萵筍
If I would have to translate the Chinese name directly, I would say it is some kind of bamboo shoot. But the menu says lettuce.  I believe this is some kind of vegetable available in north China only. As in Hong Kong we seldom could find this in the market.  Again, simple cooking method, fresh ingredient and high cooking skill.  Simply stir fried and dished up with transparent gravy.  Some restaurants like to cut it into thin and long slices, but the Beijing Home cut it into small lumps - another feeling in the mouth, which is good!

Beijing Duck 北京填鴨
Beijing Duck is the signature dish. We can order one at HK$400 or half at HK$210. We wanted to try more dishes, so we ordered for half. Although it came in 5 minutes only, the breads were hot and fresh from the steamer. Since we ordered for half, we lack the fun of having the chef do the duck cutting demonstration in front of us.

Beijing Dumplings白菜餃子
(Did not take photo)
It was just lumps of white, hence did not take photo. There were 8 of them, so each of us can share 2.

The Beijing Home decoration has quite an old Beijing feel.

The general dining experience here is fair to good. Generally fast is better than slow. But when all 6 dishes arrive within 5 minutes, our table seemed too small to accomodate them and that encouraged us to eat fast in order to get rid of some of the empty dishes. I would say if the dishes arrived within longer intervals, we would have more time to enjoy the taste of the foods.

The food menu has many items but some of the names you won't know what they are, even with the English description.  Desserts are not quite traditional. They have caramelized bananas/apples....a long list of caramelized items but lack of some of the most traditional Beijing dessert such as rolling donkey or 碗豆黄.

Beijing Home
7/F Hopewell Centre
Wanchai, Hong Kong

Total cost: HK$820 (US$105) for 4 people (including tea and 10% service charge)

In fact, there was a set menu for 4 costing HK$1,028 but we preferred to go a la carte so we can eat the right amount and choice of food that we want. And it ended up cheaper as well!

Hong Kong Food Blog - Beijing Home