Sha Tin 18

So another Peking duck place, what's so special about it? What's with the buzz on this hotel restaurant located in the middle of ... hummm .... Sha Tin / Tai Wai right beside The Chinese University of Hong Kong? I was here to find out. We actually walked in without a booking at around 9pm and soon after we were seated we asked for the whole Peking duck for the three of us. We were kindly informed that since we did not book in advance, longer wait time was required to prepare the duck. How long? Well, they said 1 hour but we got our duck within 20 mins, so what a larger buffer time they imposed to manage diner's expectation!



Excuse the blurred image below but I wanted to show how the implement an open kitchen structure into a Chinese restaurant. I think this is one of the first or few Chinese Restos in Hong Kong that open up its entire kitchen. (at least to my knowledge)

According to the staff, they hire chefs directly from Beijing to handle the Peking duck which apparently was prepared in a special ways, so they claimed. I still have to research a bit how different it was prepared but they do serve it in a very different way(s). It was my first time to experience this serving method or arrangement. This is the so-called Peking way if I am correct. Right? :)

First was the skin, a thin layer of the skin (without any meat) which was very crispy and literally melt in your mouth! Well, those were fat that just melted in your mouth. Instead of wrapping this in the pancake, we were suggested to eat them with just a sprinkle of sugar, one of the three side sauces that came along.

Second serving was pure meat, breast meat to be exact. Slight dry but remained very flavorful and firm to the bite. This one you can eat by itself or wrap in a pancake.

The third serving was the dark meat with skin. Juicy and tender, thumbs up!

The rest of the duck / meat was chopped up to prepare the minced duck with lettuce wrap. It was overly salty if you ask me, I needed to add extra sweet sauce to balance the flavors.

Oh yes, a bigger lettuce wrap would be nice! Really tough to shove the minced fillings into a spoon size lettuce!

In additional the various wraps, part of the duck was made into a tofu soup. Flavor was not as strong as it looked but using every bit of the duck in one meal was the way to go!

Although just the three of us, we were still pretty hungry for some reasons so we ordered Wok-fried Choy Sum, garlic and crispy Pork Fat. Yes you are right, Crispy Pork Fat, diced up into little cubes! Definitely not for the light hearted! Not exactly what I called a healthy veggie dish but it was surprising de-'lightful.' The Crispy Pork Fat was firm to the bite and tasted like pork, not as fatty or greasy as I expected it to be. A bit too salty but fair enough.

Steamed Pork Ribs, Preserved Black Olives and Chenchuan noodles. One of my favourite dish but here the so-called diced preserved black olives were too big in my opinion, the size would make every bite every salty.

Time for desserts! One can walk up to the dessert area and pick your sweets.

We started out sweet courses with a purple rice pudding.

However, I think it was a little bit too sweet and too firm from over chilling.

The more interesting dessert was the Red Dates Steamed Cake. However,  it was overly moist in the center and made me feel like it was a pudding that I was having. Flavors were ... confusing, part sweet and part ... floral aroma. Hard to describe, give it a try yourself.

Likes:

• Peking Duck - 3 ways and 3 serving arrangement, the Peking style
• Crispy Pork Fat! - Firm to the bite and porky

Dislikes:

• Steamed Pork Ribs, Preserved Black Olives and Chenchuan noodles: the preserved black olives can be smaller to avoid overly salty flavors.
• Red Dates Steamed Cake - Overly soggy and mushy, more like a pudding than cake in my opinion

Avg Spending: HKD 200 - 300 per person

Sha Tin 18
4/F, Hyatt Regency Hong Kong, Sha Tin,
18 Chak Cheung Street, Sha Tin
Tel: 3723 7932
http://www.hongkong.shatin.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/


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