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| - I came here with my family for a birthday dinner. We made the reservation one day prior and were able to get a table, although we had to settle for a super early time (5 PM).
The restaurant is spacious, bright and clean, and is obviously meant to be more of an upscale restaurant. I liked some of the unique touches they had, namely the floral centrepieces on each table and the little duck-shaped chopsticks holders.
Because our dinner time was so early, the restaurant was not very busy, so there were a lot of empty tables and staff who were just idling around with nothing to do. On the one hand, it was good because they were very attentive towards us, but I also noticed some staff clustered together along one side the room just chatting to each other, and it seemed a bit unprofessional to me.
We obviously had to order the duck, and we got the premium "peony duck" set which, if you aren't already aware, is the dish that's all over Instagram where the duck slices are arranged in the shape of a flower. At $118, this is one DAMN expensive duck... and the only main differences I can tell between this and the other premium set ($88) is a) the way the duck is presented; and b) the 6 little sesame buns you get with the peony set. Apparently the peony duck is also larger - 8 lbs vs 4 lbs for the other set. I thought the duck was fine and it was better than what I've had at some other places (but also not distinguishable from duck at other, cheaper places), but was it mind-blowing and worth $118? I don't think so. Especially given that they don't make a second dish out of the remaining duck (e.g. lettuce wraps). They just cut up the rest of the duck and give it to you to eat however you want. They also package up the duck bones for you to take home and make soup. I will say though that the duck is quite large and filling, and they give you a lot of flour wraps (24) which is plenty. The sesame buns are... kind of terrible. I am not sure if it was because we let them sit and cool for too long (we were too focused on the duck), but I found the buns to be very very dry and unpleasant.
I am not sure if they do this with both duck sets, but they did a mini... ceremony thing when our duck rolled out, where they hit a little gong and said some Chinese phrases that went over my head. It was kind of cute and entertaining though.
We also got the braised Japanese tofu cake with scallop sauce ($16.99), plain stir fried peeled shrimps ($28.99) and the sweet and sour pork ($21.99). The sweet and sour pork is definitely not worth it because it's just standard sweet and sour pork, except plated beside a hollowed-out pineapple... like, thanks for charging me an extra $15 for that. The shrimps were good and tasted fresh, were light in flavour, and were not too oily. I also really liked the tofu - the batter around each piece of tofu was very light, and the scallop sauce was delicious and savoury.
This is the kind of place that's cool to try once if you have a special occasion, but I wouldn't return here regularly. Overall though I had a pretty pleasant experience, and everyone in my party seemed to enjoy it.
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