I sat down at my table, and was greeted by the waitress. Granted, I probabaly got a few funny looks (from the other guests) dinning at the QuanJude by myself, where most other tables had several people. I was given a menu, and on the very first page - "Peking Roast Duck - $168 rmb". Of course, I came for the duck, and it's the duck that I ordered.
After browsing through the rest of the menu, I ordered the Peking Duck full course, and a vegetable dish (Chinese Brocoli) which cost about $30 Yuan. At the start of the meal, the waitress lets you know ahead of time that a 10% gratuity will be added to the bill total. That Peking duck meal cost me about $230 yuan.
About Tipping and Gratuities in China
It's not customary or even allowed in many cases for patrons to leave a tip, but I suppose QuanJuDe is an exception. I've been to various restaurants, bars, and massage parlors in China, where tipping is absolutely forbidden. Certain places go as far as to fire their employee should they ever accept a gratuity.
At QuanJuDe, all the hostess and waitresses were females (except I saw one male waiter), and cooks who carved the duck for customers were all guys.
I asked a nice Waitress to take this photo for me.
In the background is my duck waiting to be carved,
and the cook is ready to get down to busines!
I waited about 10 minutes or so, and my Peking roast duck was ready to be served. A cook pushes a cart with a large serving platter, and carving knife. A golden brown roasted Peking duck sits in the large platter. The Beijing Roast duck was carved right in front of me. The duck was a beautiful, golden color, and it looked and smelled great.
The cook is busy carving the Peking duck.
Serving the Peking Duck
The cook first shaves off a thin section of skin from the Peking duck breast, cuts it into small pieces, and served this to me first. I believe this is supposed to be the best part of the duck, so it should be eaten by itself without wrapping. This top skin from the duck breast was thin, and had almost no fat attached to it.
See the 8 or 9 thin pieces of duck skin? That's carved
from the breast of the duck, and it's the best part.
I dipped it in the brown sauce, and it was slightly crunchy. With my first bite, the duck skin almost melted in my mouth. Afterwards, the waitress asked if I needed a demonstration on how to roll the duck in pancakes. Although I've had Peking duck before, I asked her to demonstrate how to make a roll with the roasted Peking duck meat and pancakes. See below:
The waitress demonstrating how to wrap
the peking duck meat in pancakes.
Look at all the duck meat!
I ate the 115,226,039th Peking Duck!
At the conclusion of my diner, I also received a souvenir card, that tells me how many ducks have been served. On that card, it tells me the exact number of duck that I was being served. Apparently, the Peking duck I ate was duck number 115,226,039! That’s quite an amazing and interesting statistic, that has been tracked since 1864. The $230 rmb I paid also included a mandatory 10% gratuity. After paying the cashier, I headed back to my hotel. |
