Quan Ju De, Shanghai

Sad to say, I've not tried the original Quan Ju De peking duck in Beijing (yet), but I hear the Shanghai branch comes pretty close. The ducks here are still roasted traditionally in wood-fired ovens and the skin is ever so crisp.

We started off with some cold braised beancurd to douse the summer heat.

Crispy pig intestines fried with dried chilies and Sichuan peppers were next. Spicy and crispy, these were like eating crackers.

The grilled lamb shank looked a lot smaller in the menu, but here it was anyway. The meat was quite tender and succulent which made this a pretty delectable bite.

The deep-fried scallop cakes came as nice little pretty parcels topped with almond flakes.

Encased in the batter were large whole scallops. Not too bad, but the batter was a tad bit heavy which sort of made you bored of it after awhile.

This bird was what we really here for.

Each slice of skin was crisped to perfection, there wasn't even a trace of fat under it. All the oil had melted away to leave behind an ultra crunchy piece of skin. Wrapped in these steaming hot pancakes and topped with some raw spring onions and sweet sauce, I can't imagine how much better the Beijing branch is.

They offered us some complimentary buns to eat with the duck slices but I felt that these were just too filling and prefered the pancake wraps instead.

The last course of duck millet porridge and duck soup was tasty, but by then we were slightly too full to appreciate this in its entirety. Oh well, there's always a next time no?

D