What is Peking Duck?

北京烤鸭 is a performance. The duck arrives at the table whole, mahogany-brown and gleaming, and the carver — always a specialist, never the person who took your order — works with the speed of long practice, separating the skin from the meat in precise, confident strokes. Each slice should be a strip of skin with just enough meat attached to give it substance. The skin alone goes on the first plate. That’s what you’re paying for. The meat — the part of the duck that Westerners think of as “the duck” — is often the second course, stir-fried or souped, sometimes taken back to the kitchen because the carver has moved on to the next table.

Assembly is part of the experience. Take a pancake (荷叶饼, hé yè bǐng — lotus leaf pancake, thin and steamed), lay it flat on your plate. Add a slice or two of duck skin, a smear of sweet bean sauce or hoisin, two or three slivers each of cucumber and scallion. Fold — not roll — into a packet roughly the size of a large bite. Eat it in one or two bites. The contrast is everything: crisp skin, soft pancake, cool cucumber, sharp scallion, sweet-salty sauce. A poorly made Peking duck has chewy, flabby skin and a pancake that tastes like steamed flour. A good one makes you understand why people fly to Beijing for dinner.

The practicalities: the two most famous Peking duck restaurants in Beijing are 全聚德 (Quánjùdé, the historic brand, now considered tourist-heavy and inconsistent) and 大董 (Dà Dǒng, the modern upscale interpretation, more expensive but more reliable). Locals have their own favorites that don’t appear in guidebooks. The duck is carved in front of you, but the kitchen uses the carcass to make a milky white soup (鸭架汤, yā jià tāng) that arrives at the end of the meal — it’s included but many tourists don’t know to expect it. A whole duck serves four to six people. Half ducks are sometimes available but the skin-to-meat ratio suffers. This is not a solo meal.