Peking duck Moscow restaurant

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Peking duck Moscow restaurant

I got so caught in the blog's technical part these days that I'm starting to freak out from all these HTML codes. As a result the story about our recent visit to Peking duck restaurant has been waiting for a long week to be shared. It's finally time to enjoy some writing.

After my 11-year-old brother took 8th place in a recipe competition for the World Nutella day we felt like celebrating. He is fine with sushi and pizza, but he had no idea about Chinese food. So I thought why not get him to try it and see his reaction. If I was picking a Chinese place for myself I'd go try the Druzhba restaurant in the Chinese shopping center. It seems to be a replacing Chinatown in Moscow and the restaurant seems to be quite authentic from the online reviews. The fact it doesn't have any website could also be a good sign, though a questionable one.

For a family dinner I had to think about a more comfortable place adapted to European taste, so we went to the Peking duck on Noviy Arbat 22. We started the green tea and my favorite plum wine.

While I was wondering around with my camera, Michael seemed occupied with the menu and finally selected shrimp fried dumpling. "6 or 12?" our naive waiter asked him 6 or 12. Not surprisingly he hot 12 and still felt uncomfortable giving out one to taste. The dumplings were tasty with golden crust and juicy minced shrimps inside. The dough felt a bit thicker than it's supposed to be, but Michael seemed quite happy with it.

I got caramelized eggplants in soya sauce. I couldn't help continuing cravings for this dish since I had it in Paris Chinese place with my Insead friend. Yes, they were good. And no, they were not the same. Once I'll have to visit the Paris place again. I'll just need to figure out where exactly it was located...

All time spring rolls. Michael unexpectedly liked them, so I didn't get much. The sauce lacked the spice but nobody seemed disappointed. They have just suffered from my Thai green curry which was far too spicy for "a normal person".

More eggplants - crispy fried this time.

Finally the Peking duck came.

With its paper thin pancakes, spring onions and sweet bean sauce. I'm still eating meat free, but the fact the duck was gone in under 5 minutes makes me think that I must be missing something.

For dessert we got our beloved caramelized fruits. Interestingly, these fruits along with the plum wine seem to be an attribute of particularly Moscow Chinese places. When I was telling my Chinese friends in Insead about those, they always seemed confused and not sure what I was talking about.