Bird abloom

After making news during APEC, a peony-styled presentation of Peking duck joins the menu at a popular restaurant chain, Liu Zhihua reports.

Many visitors to China's capital make a point of visiting a Quanjude restaurant to enjoy its trademark Peking roast duck. Now the restaurant group offers more enticements, having updated its menu earlier this month to showcase its culinary heritage dating back to 1864.

The new menu consists of 50 fixed dishes for all restaurant branches and 40 select dishes in different branches, some labeled as part of an "all-duck banquet". Peking roast duck is still No 1, but it's supported by more than 400 duck dishes developed in the chain's repertoire over the past century and a half.

The new star is the recently renowned creation "peony duck", or Peking roast duck that resembles a fully opened peony blossom. The "petals" are breast meat that has been delicately sliced and layered to form the flower, while the green stalk and leaves are a clever mosaic of towel-gourd seedlings, which have been boiled and are also edible.

The delicacy made headlines when it was first served at a state banquet during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing last November, as the main course for leaders from more than 20 member economies. Now, after adjusting the kitchen workflow for this elaborate presentation, Quanjude has made the peony duck available in all of its 13 branches in Beijing, according to Sun Zhongmin, director with the group's dish innovation center.

"Chinese people like the peony and the culture symbolism it bears, so we created the dish. Everyone deserves to have access to the new dish, not only the leaders," Sun says. "The dish also represents Quanjude's culinary technique and determination to preserve Chinese culture."

The birds used for all of Quanjude's roast-duck dishes are a particular species fed in specific ways to make them fatty, so that after being roasted, the duck skin will be dark-date colored and deliciously crisp, and the meat will be tender and tasty, Sun says.

The new menu also embraces a touch of high technology: After reading a brief introduction of the flavor and history of each dish, diners can scan the 2-D barcodes on the menu to get detailed information about the top 10 most popular dishes in Quanjude restaurants, including their history and how they are cooked.

It's just one way the restaurant hopes to help preserve and promote Chinese culinary heritage, restaurant publicist Liu Hui says.

Contact the writer at liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/28/2015 page19)