I went to DucKing at Jaya One for our monthsary dinner on Friday night. DucKing (“The Different One”) seems to be wordplay on the story The Ugly Duckling (which turned out to be a swan if you forgot your Hans Christian Andersen).
DucKing is packed pretty much all the time – we waited 15 minutes for our turn to be seated, but the waitress was gracious enough to let us in when she couldn’t contact the previous two ahead of us on the queue list. There seem to be some problems with communication though – I got four calls during dinner saying that my seat is ready and I told them each time that I was already inside.
Price for this menu: RM 1,500 ++. I have been trying to spot this when I saw it on Cheesie’s blog and true enough; it’s in there. Haha!
I ordered INTIS (RM 78) an Argentinean Merlot meaning Sun God. It’s the cheapest wine on the menu – I haven’t started working yet, tomorrow is my first day at work so we figured we needed to conserve our funds. My girlfriend went for the Chinese tea, although she had a small amount (slightly more than thimble sized) of red wine as well.
You can’t go to an establishment named DucKing and not order duck so for the appetizer, we had the Marinated Duck Tongue with X.O Sauce (RM 16.80). It tasted surprisingly good, I can’t remember ever having duck tongue before. This one is served with the tendon (bone?) under the tongue intact, and the slight crunchiness adds to the appeal.
Next on the menu was the Beijing Duck Two Varieties. I ordered 1/2 a duck. It’s RM 38.80 for 1/2 a duck and RM 62.80 for a whole duck. I love Peking Duck, especially the process that goes with it. Unfortunately, DucKing does not have the chef carve the skin off the duck in front of you.
Peking Duck comes in four (4) dishes – the crispy roasted duck skin, the paper-thin flour wrap, spring onions and other vegetables for garnish and flavor, and the sauce itself.
Basically, you take one flour wrap and place a piece (or two) of crispy roasted duck skin on top before adding some spring onions and dousing it with sauce. It is then wrapped like a tortilla. There is some debate about whether the sauce goes on first, but I prefer it just before I wrap up the entire thing.
The Peking Duck at DucKing is great! I love the soft, fragile flour wrap. I’m amazed at how tissue paper-thin it is. Excellent.
Beijing Duck is usually served in two or three courses – the skin in wrap, the meat cooked with vegetables and the bones in soup. Most establishments nowadays do away with the third installment though. DucKing gives you the choice of a wide range of preparations for the second course – we opted for the Deep Fried Bun with Roasted Duck Meat & Black Pepper Sauce (RM Included in the price of Beijing Duck).
The vegetable component of the food pyramid is completed with Braised Baby Kailan with Crab Meat (RM 28.80). DucKing cooks this dish with egg and starch and they’re very generous with the crab meat – it’s definitely proportionate with the price. There are huge chunks of whole crab meat inside the dish. Very nice indeed.
For the last dish, we indulged in the Braised Abalone with Shimeji Mushroom and Broccoli (RM 72.80). The abalone is indeed cooked to perfection and matches the sauce well. The mushroom is paired perfectly with the abalone and came out juicy and tender. I used the broccoli to mop up the sauce, that’s how good it was.
DucKing does a very brisk business and the food is good, although it comes out very fast, suggesting mass production (or a chef with really deft fingers). The bill came up to a total of RM 280.85 but the bulk of that is from the wine and the abalone.
Happy monthsary, dear! Love always.
Yes, that is our couple t-shirt and also the distinctive look of a bulge in my abdomen from eating excessively these few weeks. 😉
