Peking Duck flies from China

Few places can pull off a Peking Duck well in India, but as part of a buffet? Not so sure. The Chinese New Year festival at Residency, Crowne Plaza has pulled it off. Executive chef Deva Kumar has come back to Chennai after more than half a decade and he has used all of his experience from all over India to recreate the magic at this iconic hotel without chopping up all the onions! Pun Intended. 

 

There could have been no better way to start than with a Chinese chef, specially flown down, to explain the Peking Duck as he served it. Hearing him explain the painstaking process only built the appetite that made gulping down the pancakes stuffed with this duck with some cucumber and scallion, pretty easy. The plum sauce on the duck and the Hoisin sauce in the pancake along with the beautifully prepared duck with a hint of crispness in the skin balanced out the slight sweetness of the pancakes, that were rolled for us when served, so we didn't have to dirty our hands. 

A piece each of the four dim sum for the day along with a beautiful bao made our next course. As usual, they were light and easy on the tummy, but strong enough for the tongue. My favourite was the prawn dim sum, shaped like a leaf with a juicy prawn almost filling the entire dim sum. The stand out was the bao. Though called the bok choy and mushroom bao, the hero was the garlic. The mushrooms and bok choy just tempered down the garlic to serve up a extremely soft bao emitting the aroma of a freshly baked fermented dough. 

Having taken it light till now, the rice with the Kung Pao chicken and stir fried Chinese greens would have dealt a blow, but it didn't. The rice failed to live it up. The Chinese greens, again with a nice hint of garlic in the sauce was fabulous, and the Kung Pao with its strong saltiness which should have been toned down with the rice, was able to hold on to its own without the rice to accompany it. I don't know what was wrong with the rice, but it didn't match up to the rest of the meal. Coming to think of it, so didn't the soup! I barely even remember having it. 

Priced at Rs. 2200 all inclusive for the buffet and the special menu is on till the 24th of Feb. With some live music, celeb spotting and the Peking Duck flown in from China visiting, sounds like a cool deal.