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| - Came to QJD for dinner, located inside the Courtyard Marriott hotel. Parking outside is usually full, so best to park in the covered lot accessible from the back. No need to pay, just go in through the hotel and give your license plate number to one of the staff inside the restaurant.
The restaurant is beautifully decorated and the ambiance is that of a high-end Chinese restaurant. The staff is friendly and generally attentive. The food is pretty decent, however, at this price point, I was expecting better.
We ordered the QJD premium roast duck set ($88), the signature crispy pigeon fish with sweet and sour sauce ($49), Chinese broccoli with ginger sauce ($16), and for dessert the duckling-shaped crispy puff stuffed with date paste ($22 for 6 pcs).
The roast duck is quite good, with the meat being very tender and not overly fatty. However, I prefer my roast duck skin to be more crispy. The pancakes were made extremely thin, allowing the taste of the duck meat to shine through without being masked by the wrap. But the duck here is so much more expensive than other places serving similar Peking-style duck, and it's not much better.
The crispy fish was very tender and delicious. They even made it look like a squirrel, which was very cute. However, at almost $50 for this super tiny fish, it really wasn't worth it. And being deep fried and smothered in s&s sauce, a cheap tilapia would have tasted just as good as this special pigeon fish.
The duck-shaped puff with date paste was again cute, but a little dry. At this price, I can buy out the entire tray of date pastries at the local Chinese bakery store and still have enough money left for half a dozen egg tarts!
The food here is decent but far too overpriced for what you get. What really irritated me is seeing that they charge for extra sauce, scallions, and cucumber strips ($1.39 each). After charging $88 for the duck, is it really necessary to nickel and dime customers over a little extra sauce? What's worse is, the scallions were all dried out and not even fresh. I wouldn't request more even if it were free, like at every other restaurant!
This place was good to try once, but at this price point, there are so many better restaurants. Unlikely I'll return again.
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