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| - It seems like the bad reviews for this place were mainly because of the pricing of the menu. The reviews with 1-2 stars seem to say that Chinese food shouldn't be expensive. It makes me sad that people have categorized Chinese food into cheap eats and that the general impression of Chinese food is that it should not be expensive. Maybe the countless Chinese take-away places popping up all over America have helped reinforced this stereotype.
First of all, in terms of the price and atmosphere at Wing Lei, it is no different than if you dined at a very nice Chinese restaurant in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. In fact, it is very common to have Chinese restaurants like these and in this price range (and sometimes even more expensive) in Asia. Chinese food does not only belong to the cheap take-away food category. If there can be an expensive steak house, the same is said for a very good Chinese restaurant. Wing Lei reminded us alot of the very good Chinese restaurants we've been to in several parts of Asia and we were impressed as to how close Wing Lei tries to execute their concept.
We had the 6-course peking duck tasting menu and loved every bit of it. We also thought that for $88 per person it was quite a good deal. In fact, we imagined that doing this same tasting menu in an equally fancy restaurant in Singapore or Hong Kong would have cost us more. We had the duck meat and skin served on an incredibly soft bun, duck salad, duck wonton with broth, stir-fried duck with veg, egg noodles with duck, and mango sorbet for dessert. The amount of food was definitely more than substantial and we were already very full before dessert.
The service was also good, friendly, and professional. We asked if they had Thai birds eye chilli (we love our food spicy!) and the server said they would ask the kitchen to chop some of the fresh chillis for us.
Overall we were impressed with Wing Lei. It was definitely a well deserved Michelin star they received.
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