Ripe for the Peking
MANILA, Philippines - I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t like Chinese food. I grew up on Chinese food; milestones in my life — birthdays, graduations, my first job, my first paycheck, among many other “firsts” — were marked by blowouts at some Chinese restaurant. We never ran out of new Chinese restos or dishes to try. Trying Chinese food outside the Philippines has always been a treat. Like the time, many decades and dim sums and Chinese birthday noodles ago, when I joined a media inaugural flight to Beijing (Peking), home of what else but the Peking roast duck! Almost synonymous with Beijing, the much-prized Peking duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, some 600 years ago. Our gracious Chinese hosts did not disappoint and they took us to this humongous restaurant where they served us nothing but Peking duck — from appetizer to soup to main dish (nope, they didn’t come up with a duck dessert) — we could have left the place quacking or waddling. Which is not to say we didn’t have a Peking good time!
Now, if you want the real deal when it comes to Peking duck — and a lot more of not-your-typical Chinese dishes — go to Peking Garden, which recently opened at the 4th level of Greenbelt 5, Makati (moving from its old home in Glorietta).
“We cook our Peking duck in such a way that its skin is really crispy, the meat is juicy, and it’s got less fat,” says Peking Garden manager Archie Au, who hails from Hong Kong and has a long and colorful food history. “It’s roasted for 40 minutes in our big oven which can cook 12 to 15 pieces of duck at any one time. The standard weight for Peking Garden’s Peking duck, which comes from the northern part of China, is 3.5 kilos, while Hong Kong’s is only 3.3 k. Our Peking duck here is bigger and less oily than in Hong Kong.”
Archie has this foodnote to share, “In northern China, where the weather is cold, food is heavy and oily to keep people warm.”
He lets us in on this hot secret: “We cook our duck by roasting 80 percent and deep-frying 20 percent so the skin comes out more crispy with reduced fat. Here, we use every part of the duck. In Hong Kong, only the breast and legs are used, not the skin of the back. Here, we roast even the skin of the back.”
At Peking Garden, you can have your pancake (to wrap juicy morsels of your Peking duck in) and eat it, too. “Our pancake is very smooth, we use a special kind of flour that’s hard to imitate,” says Archie with a hint of pride.
Along with Peking duck, certified best-sellers of the house are the shark’s fin soup, prawns with salted egg, steamed lapu-lapu, and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, according to Nonoy Opiana, Peking Garden supervisor who’s been with the restaurant since 1995.
The beggar’s chicken has a rich following, too, and must be ordered in advance as it takes quite a long time to cook. But trust me, this intriguing, tender, tasty chicken — stuffed with herbs, wrapped in lotus leaves, laced with dark soy sauce, Chinese rice wine, and ginger juice, and clay-baked — is worth begging for.
“At Peking Garden, we serve not just food from Northern China,” says Archie. “We serve the best of Chinese cuisine — Cantonese, Szechuan, Hunanese, Shanghainese.”
Whatever part of China the dishes come from, when you’re at Peking Garden, expect a food trip like no other. A good place to start is the appetizers. Aside from the usual cold cuts, order something that’s hot like the sliced pork with hot garlic sauce or the shredded chicken in chili sauce. Of course, they’re just moderately hot, you don’t have to call the Tsinoy volunteer fire brigade to put out the fire.
On top of the appetizers, Peking Garden’s very hefty menu is divided into the following categories: shark’s fin; soup (there’s something fishy here, like the fish with shredded radish and ham soup); abalone and sea cucumber; crispy rice (rice and shine with the crispy rice with sea cucumber); poultry (a fried and tested favorite is the deep-fried chicken with wild pepper or the pan-fried boneless chicken Peking style); pork (for pig’s sake, try the braised pig’s knuckle with vegetables served with cuapao or what we like to call open siopao); beef and lamb (hot faves are the sizzling lamb and the sizzling beef with spring onions); bean curd (bean there, done that, but do try the steamed stuffed bean curd wrapped in lotus leaf); vegetables (veg out on the shredded abalone with eggplant in hot pot); noodle (there are oodles of noodle dishes like the fried handmade noodles with spareribs); rice (there are a hundred and one ways to enjoy your fried rice); dim sum (there’s a toothsome variety of your favorite dim sum).
If the food at Peking Garden tastes familiar — probably like what you’ve eaten in some of Hong Kong’s fine restos — it’s because the Peking Garden kitchen boasts five seasoned chefs from Hong Kong, working with highly trained and experienced Pinoy cooks.
Surrounded by good food and the company of good friends, we just couldn’t ask for more. But more of Peking Garden’s great offerings we surely got. And they came in this grand Peking order: seafood potage (a medley of minced shrimps, fish, dried scallops, crabmeat, and fresh spinach that can give you a gustatory high) to warm our bellies and our hearts; honey fish fillet butterfly shape; sea whelk with green mustard; scrambled egg white with dried scallops which we happily doused with vinegar; salt and pepper silver fish with golden mushroom which was easily everybody’s favorite; seared US beef fillet salad smothered with garlic; drunken crabs in spicy sauce which sent us all heady and light-hearted to food heaven. As if that wasn’t enough, we had fried rice with seaweeds, fresh pineapple, asparagus, and carrots as a perfect ending to a perfect meal. To round it all off, we had mongo and banana balls for dessert.
Peking Garden can cook up a feast — from appetizers to soup to main dishes to rice to dim sum to dessert) starting at P6,780 for 12 persons to P23,980 for 12 persons.
At Peking Garden, you don’t need an excuse to party. This resto sure has a lot to quack about.
* * *
Peking Garden has a bigger and brighter new home at the 4th level of Greenbelt 5, Makati. It is open for lunch starting at 11:30 and for dinner starting at 6 p.m., Monday through Sunday. For inquiries, call Peking Garden Greenbelt 5 at 729-0567, 729-0719, 729-0820 and TriNoma at 901-0502, 901-0507, 901-0531.
