Delectable Duck To-Die-For

Duck de Chine

When a city has a signature dish, competition is fierce, and nowhere is the contest more cutthroat than in Beijing, where the specialty Peking Duck’s thin, crispy skin and tender, moist meat has garnered a fan base spanning from Yuan Dynasty emperors to today’s travelling gastronome. With a host of criteria to consider, from hang roasting to pan roasting, and accompanying comestibles like chilli vs sugar, it can be a daunting prospect to choose in a field as wide as the city is large. So, where do we love? Answer, 1949 Hidden City’s delicious Duck De Chine.

Father-son chef duo Peter and Wilson Lam have been lauded as purveyors of the town’s best duck, reportedly achieving the consistently faultless results through a combination of old, new, Chinese and French roasting techniques. Their birds are hand-selected for age and weight (no older than 43 days-old or heavier than 2kgs, thank you very much), then baked in an old-fashioned applewood oven to enhance sweetness.

Served on fresh pancakes with scallions and homemade hoisin sauce, the roast duck is the obvious default choice, but you can opt for one of the more European-style preparations such as confit, before sipping post-dinner bubbles at China’s first Bollinger Champagne Bar. Despite the traditional exterior, it’s all about industrial orientalism inside, with exposed beams and bricks, draped scarlet lanterns, charcoal-clad staff and a floor to ceiling lotus motif proving the perfect backdrop to that perfect bite.