January 25, 2018
Beijing
FEAST
I went to dinner at the mall near my hotel, and as recent experience on this FEAST has taught me, mall options are often very strong. Taste of DaDong is a popular place in Beijing known for its Peking duck, as well as dishes from Shenyang, a large city northeast of Beijing close to North Korea.
I ordered a cup of piping hot maitake soup, and the duck multi-course meal for one. I also put in for a glass of passion fruit juice just for the heck of it.
Taste of Dadong
Roast duck dinner:
The main course was the roast-duck package. The starters were pieces of duck on the bone, preserved strawberries and black fungus. These were very interesting to say the least. That they were all different in texture and flavor, so that was pretty cool.
The star of the meal, though, was clearly the roast duck. Wow, the breast and skin were the most perfectly cooked I've ever seen, the skin crisp, the meat tender and juicy. It was served with hoisin sauce, garlic, crispy veg and paper-thin rice wrappers; you put those all together and you end up with a perfect, Asian soft taco. Along with the breast, some dark meat was also served, as well as the head. The dark meat was delicious!
The maitake soup came out first. The clear broth was dynamite and piping hot. The mushrooms were also very good, but the soup could've used a crunchy element like scallion or radish.
Maitake soup:
It might've been gimmicky, but the dessert served was fun: cotton candy with an aged, candied cherry in the middle. I would totally come back to this place or to any of the other Dadong locations; he's actually opened a place in NYC, so that's a good thing.
Cotton candy: