Peking Duck @ Warwick Chinese Restaurant

For my mum's birthday last night, my mum took us to have Peking Duck at Warwick Chinese Restaurant. Unfortunately, we didn't have a camera with us (well, I didn't think of taking photos anyway). We've been to this restaurant on several occasions, and every time to have peking duck.

This is the best place in Perth to have peking duck. There are 3 courses for each duck for around $55. One duck can comfortably feed 5 or 6 adults for dinner. The peking duck menu at other restaurants give only one or two dishes for each duck for similar pricing. According to one of my friends who has eaten peking duck at several restaurants, both north and south of the river, Warwick Chinese Restaurant gives the best taste and best value. Rob and I even had peking duck in its hometown of Beijing during our honeymoon, at supposedly the best restaurant to have peking duck in Beijing called Quan Ju De (more info here and a review here), and we still prefer the one offered at Warwick. Kinda sad huh? Quan Ju De is a very elaborately decorated restaurant, with ridiculously dolled up greeters (see our honeymoon photos). Very superficial and pretentious, obviously to cater for foreigners (and no doubt charge a lot for them - we don't know how much because we went with a packaged tour with accommodation, meals and transport provided.) If we had a chance to go to Beijing again, we'd definitely go to where all the locals go to. The peking duck dish we had Quan Ju De only had one course, and that was the duck skin with pancake (described better below).

At Warwick, each duck is served with 3 courses.

The first course is the roasted crispy duck skin on a small round thin pancake. You basically take the thin pancake, spread the special sauce provided (similar to Hoisin) onto it, chuck a piece of skin on it (which has been cut to the right size for the pancake) and put a couple of vege sticks on top (celery, cucumber and spring onion sticks were provided), roll it up, and shove it into your mouth as elegantly as possible.

The second course is the yummy soup made with minced duck meat. I love this soup.

With the third course, you have the choice of sang choy bao or the noodles.

With sang choy bao, specially prepared minced duck meat is served with lettuce leaves. You basically make dumplings with the meat inside the lettuce leaves, and once again, try and elegantly consume them. You can try doing this with chopsticks, but I'd say a big 'good luck trying!'. God gave me a pair of hands with fingers and practicality is my middle name. And chopsticks are not the most practical utensils to eat with.

The noodle dish is either egg noodles or hokkien noodles cooked with the minced duck meat. Although the noodle dish was prepared quite nicely, I would recommend choosing sang choy bao as your third dish.