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| - The signage really does catch your eye as you drive by on Sheppard Av. PEKING MAN in large, faux-Asian font on a bright red back drop. That's definitely a holdover from the 70s or 80s. After struggling to find an actual entrance (you see, it may be listed as being on Sheppard, but you have to turn on Ambrose to actually get to the storefront. If you're heading east and miss Ambrose, there's no chance to U-turn til Leslie, unless you want to run over city-owned flowers in the median.), we finally parked the car in front of some convenience store in the same strip mall/mini-industrial park building area. Given the PEKING MAN sign is all you can see from the main road, I don't know how other businesses can persist here.
The moment we went past the doors, we were greeted with a motorcycle arcade machine. What is this, Chuck E. Chan? Ah ha, ha., there's a Chuck E. Cheese down the road. A waitress came up and we were promptly seated and presented with these ghastly menus, with cartoon depictions of, presumably, a Peking man in various states of labour (labour as in work, not Chinamen giving birth!).
On to the food! A family of five orders the following for dinner: Bamboo and Dried Scallop Soup, Deep-fried Soft Shell Crab, Peking Duck Special, Lobster fried in salt and pepper, and Shanghai Noodles with beef. I'll spare you the details, because there are no details. It was all bland. It was as if everything was frozen for Walt Disney's first meal after being brought back to life from his cryogenic sleep. The soup wasn't watered down, but it tasted like it was. The crab and the lobster were fried in the same tasteless junk probably used to grease door hinges. The duck was somewhat of a saving grace. First course, slightly crispy duck skin (though not nearly crispy enough to my liking), with fine slices of duck meat, to be wrapped in rice paper. Spare yourself from attack of the living bland and eat the duck straight up without the wrapping. Second course, stir-fried duck meat. More meh. Basically, anything these guys actually cook gets turned from gold into lead.
Ariel G. may want to take that trip down memory lane, but this meal was a memory I'd rather repress.
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