Peking duck...in Peking

I know I promised you a post about Beijing's most famous night market. That's coming. First I want to say a few words about what we had for dinner.

This is it, isn't it? The golden horn. China's national dish, or one of them anyway. And an animal that I don't get to eat often enough, partly because it's expensive and partly because Miss H has a thing for ducks and can't abide the thought of killing and eating the poor defenseless little rapists.

I am speaking, of course, of Peking duck.

Not my photo.

We were in Beijing: Miss H, Miss J, and I. We were hungry. Obviously the first order of business after we'd dumped our stuff off in our hotel rooms and gotten cleaned up was dinner, and a heaping mountain of it. There's something about flying across the Yellow Sea in business class and landing in the first communist country you've ever set foot in that makes you simply ravenous.

So we picked a name out of the hat—the Utopia Restaurant, a likely spot on the fourth floor of the Novotel Xin Qiao. I opened the menu and knew that I'd found my destiny.

Miss J, the little devil, talked me into ordering a whole duck instead of just half of one. This was Beijing, for Pete's sake. The capital of China. It was Chuseok. We'd be here only two days. It was ludicrously cheap, only ¥133 ($21) or so. I'd never tasted Peking duck before. I had a reputation to uphold. Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc. She rattled off at least a dozen insidiously compelling reasons why I should order the whole duck, so order it I did. It showed up at our table a few minutes later, still steaming.

Feast your eyes:

The two plates of duck (half a duck each) are in the middle of the picture. To the right is the small plate of cucumbers and onions. To the left is the container of flour pancakes, and to the far left is the bottle of Beijing Beer that I was washing all this down with.

After blankly staring at this bountiful spread for a few moments, I tentatively asked the waitress how to start demolishing it. She explained the protocol: first, you pick up one of the flour pancakes. Then you snatch a rich, tender hunk of fatty duck meat (with the skin still attached), dip it in the sugary garlic sauce, and lay it on the pancake. Top it off with some slices of cucumber and green onion and roll it up. Devour it in three bites. Repeat.

Aw man, it was gorgeous. I ate and ate and ate and ate, wondering all the while why the Masters of the Universe had not seen fit to inform me of such a wondrous dish as Peking duck.

It was an absolute feast. We talked, laughed, and nibbled for hours, taking things easy, making plans for the next day, reveling in our vacation time and our new exotic bailiwick. Stuffed to the gills, we finally waddled out of the restaurant, into the cool night air, to go in search of a rather disgusting dessert. But you'll hear all about that in the next post, DONGHUAMEN NIGHT MARKET.

Stay tuned...