Peking Duck House

A couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the Peking Duck House for—well, you can probably guess.

The ways of this restaurant are a bit mysterious. When I called for a reservation, they claimed not to take them for parties fewer than six, but plenty of two-tops seemed to be waltzing right in (past the long line) to pre-reserved tables.

Our party of three waited at least half-an-hour to be seated at around 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. When we left, less than 90 minutes later, the walk-in line was even longer. As I noted in a previous review, this restaurant is geared to turning tables with military precision, though the food they serve, by its nature, takes a while to eat.

Most parties seemed to order the house special. For a fixed price of $36.50 per person, you get  a whole Peking duck (as long as you have at least three people) and some number of additional appetizers and entrées, depending on party size. The amount of food is obscene: even with four people, instead of three, I doubt we could have finished it.

After the appetizers (above), the duck (below) was presented tableside, then whisked away to be carved. There seems to be one chef who does nothing else.

After the superb duck, the entrées (above) seemed almost superfluous. It would probably be better if they were served separately, but as the restaurant wants to turn tables, they were served at the same time as the duck, which made for an awfully crowded table. A dessert of fresh sliced fruit (left) went barely touched.

If you can look past the factory atmosphere, the Peking Duck House remains an essential restaurant for its signature ingredient, which it prepares as well as anyone.

Peking Duck House (28 Mott Street between Pell and Mosco Streets, Chinatown)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *½

Oriental Garden

I have an unwriten list of one-of-these-days restaurants. Oriental Garden landed on that list after Frank Bruni awarded two stars in the Times almost eighteen months ago, but I only got around to trying it last weekend.

Say what you want about Bruni, but when it comes to recommending casual restaurants with great food, he’s as good as they come. At Oriental Garden, Bruni got it right. He should review this kind of restaurant every week, and leave fine dining to the folks who actually enjoy it.

At first, Oriental Garden can be a little off-putting. The large water tanks crammed with creatures awaiting their doom aren’t as appetizing as the restaurant thinks. When the staff need to weigh a king crab, the scale sits on the floor in the vestibule. Reservations aren’t taken, and there is practically no waiting space to speak of. Tables are crammed together, and the décor is not much better than any generic Chinese restaurant that you’ve seen.

The menu is confusing, and far too long. Like many Chinese restaurants, Oriental Garden seems to serve every dish you’ve ever heard of, and it’s hard to figure out what the restaurant really does well. Ordering felt like throwing at a dart board.

 
Seafood in bird’s nest (left); Lobster with noodles (right)

The Seafood in Bird’s Nest just sounded good, and so it was: a bounty of sea creatures — shrimp, scallops, conch, cuttlefish — all immaculately prepared without over-seasoning or additional distractions. We chose the Lobster with Noodles merely because we saw it at an adjacent table, and it looked good, and so it was. Two dart throws, and two hits.

We marveled at the food that came out to other tables, including king crab, jumbo prawns, multiple preparations of lobster, and a grilled fluke expertly filleted tableside. We also marveled at the guy sitting by himself who ordered chicken with cashews. What was he doing here?

We waited to be seated for about fifteen minutes at around 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. The wait was not pleasant, but once seated the service was competent and fast. The wine list offers about a dozen reds and a dozen whites, none of them Chinese, but all of them quite reasonably priced.

Oriental Garden (14 Elizabeth Street between Bayard and Canal Streets, Chinatown)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: Minimal
Overall: *½

Peking Duck House

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Peking Duck House.

Peking Duck House is a restaurant you visit for only one dish. Their own website puts it admirably: “It’s all about the duck!”

I visited the uptown location (236 E 53rd St. between Second & Third Avenues) a couple of months ago, only to find out that my guest didn’t care for duck. He could have saved me a lot of trouble by mentioning that before we went inside—in which case I’d have chosen somewhere else. Mind you, it wasn’t a bad meal as Chinese food goes. But I wanted the duck, and the restaurant doesn’t serve it in portions for one.

Last night I visited the Chinatown branch. My friend said she was longing for Peking Duck, so I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed again. You can order the whole duck for $43, but in my experience it’s too much duck for two diners to polish off. But for $35 a head, you get soup, a plate of appetizers, half of a duck, a second entrée, fried rice, and fresh fruit for dessert. If that sounds like a lot of food—well, it is.

We were happy to have Shrimp Sizzling Rice Soup as an option. The shrimp gave the soup an unexpected crunchiness. Many Chinese restaurants offer just the usual Egg Drop or Hot & Sour soups, either of which is instantly forgotten. But we won’t forget the sizzling shrimp.

An appetizer plate came with a spring roll, a vegetable dumpling, barbecued beef on a skewer, and the highlight: Chopped Chicken and Pinenuts on a bed of fresh lettuce, which you roll up and eat like a taco. This was a new appetizer to me, and I might just go back and get a whole order of it.

As our dinner included only half a Peking Duck, we were deprived of the usual spectacle of tableside carving. Instead, the kitchen brought out two of the housemade pancakes for each of us, already stuffed with duck, scallions, cucumbers, and special sauce. That succulent duck ran rings around the pale imitation of it that I had at Buddakan a few weeks ago.

I’m not a big eater, and I could have gone home full at that point, but a second entrée was coming. We chose the Peking Lobster with ginger and scallions. It was a whole lobster, still in the shell, but cracked and split open for easy access to the meat. I’m afraid we ate very little of it, but not due to any flaw of the dish. (My friend took most of it home.) A generous fresh fruit platter likewise went mostly untouched.

This excellent repast was just $35 a head. Beers were a whopping $3.50 each. I saw wine at some tables, but I was not offered a wine list, even after I asked about it.

While I would happily recommend the food, the service wins no awards. When I arrived, it was a full ten minutes before anyone took a drink order. And don’t expect them to notice if your drink runs out—you have to flag them down. The restaurant is designed to turn tables in a hurry, so once you’ve placed your order, you can expect the courses to come trooping out of the kitchen with military precision. After a 2004 renovation, the décor is slightly better than Chintatown’s Plain Jane standard, but still pretty dull, especially after you get past the first few tables up front. Tables are packed fairly tightly together, although a less-crowded downstairs dining room seems to offer more elbow room.

I didn’t write  a review of my visit to the uptown location, but as I recall the service there was a bit more polished.

Peking Duck House (28 Mott Street between Pell and Mosco Streets, Chinatown)

Food: **
Service: Fair
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: *½

Dim Sum Go Go

Mario Batali once said that there would be no losers when the Michelin New York guide came out—only winners. (His reasoning was that since this was the first guide, no one could “lose” by being de-listed or stripped of a star; there was only the upside of being listed, or getting starred.)

Well, one of the winners—for me, at least—was Dim Sum Go Go, which I tried tonight, mainly because it was the closest Chinatown restaurant in the guide to where I live.

Dim Sum Go Go (originally named that way, because it offered Dim Sum to go) has a funky, but obviously on-the-cheap, interior that’s a step above the usual Chinatown décor that comes out of a Hollywood backlot. Most of the people eating there are caucasian, and I’m not sure if that’s a bad sign. The restaurant was fairly crowded, but I was seated immediately.

Your server presents two menus, one for dim sum, and one for everything else. The “everything else” menu looks like a typical Chinese menu, while the dim sum menu is a loose sheet of paper. You place your order by checking a box next to the items you want, and a pencil is provided for this purpose. Prices are indicated by Chinese symbols, and you have to find a code at the bottom of the page to interpret them. Individual dim sum orders (3 pieces) are mostly $2.50 or $2.90 at lunch, $3.45 or $3.95 at dinner. You can have a dim sum platter or vegetarian dim sum platter (10 pieces) for $9.95/$10.95. Dumpling soup with Shark Fin is $6.00/$6.95.

I suspected that a dim sum platter wouldn’t be enough on its own, so I ordered that plus Duck Dumplings and Pumkin [sic] Cakes. The drawback of the dim sum platter is that you have no idea what you’re getting. I recognized shrimp, duck, and stuffed mushroom dumplings. The others were a wild fantasy of colors and shapes, and they were all at least interesting. Several were a bit slippery, and given my mediocre chopstick skills, did not easily make the trip from plate to mouth.

I wouldn’t recommend the pumkin cakes for a solo diner. You get three cakes about 4×2×½ inches. It’s basically like eating the filling of a pumpkin pie, without the crust. About one of these is enough, before the cloying sweetness of the dish becomes overwhelming. The main menu describes it as a dessert (which I think is more appropriate), but the dim sum menu doesn’t indicate this. I wasn’t quite full yet, so I ordered a real dessert: Tapioca with Egg Yolk, and this was wonderful.

Service was just adequate. You don’t have a server assigned to your table; you just need to flag down one of the “roving” servers. Water was offered only on request, and servers had trouble keeping water glasses full, both at my table and at others. The server who took my initial order was so busy that he didn’t even think to ask if I wanted a beverage.

William Grimes awarded one star to Dim Sum Go Go in 2001, and in his view the main menu—which I did not try—is actually superior to the dim sum. I can’t judge that, but I’ll say that a meal of just dim sum is a bit cloying. Next time, I think I’ll do dim sum as an appetizer, and then order another main course. At a total of $29.75 (incl. tax & tip) for nineteen pieces, Dim Sum Go Go was certainly kind to the wallet.

Dim Sum Go Go (5 East Broadway at Chatham Square, Chinatown)

Food: *
Service: Fair
Ambiance: Satisfactory
Overall: *