Originally Posted by
trueblu
Good to know, so it seems it was just a London thing to offer crispy aromatic duck instead of Peking duck until fairly recently. Still seems odd that Cantonese restaurants have been offering Peking duck but not other either Beijing or Zhejiang dishes (depending on whether you think the dish is from one of those areas).
Back then in SF, the crispy aromatic duck, charred bbq pork and the crispy aromatic pork were so commonly offered throughout Cantonese Delis (for lack of a better word), while available in restaurants were never prominently offered on the menu. Now, to this day, there is still a Cantonese Deli (no idea what to call these store fronts with hanging meats) where I'll drop to pick up some roasted duck, roasted pork (siu yook), bbq pork (char sieu) and mini fried chicken drumsticks. I had grown up eating these and still love and crave them as much today as when I was 10 years old.
Originally Posted by
trueblu
My first ever Chinese meal was actually in SF Chinatown in the 1980s when I was 10 years old...strange to believe that I had never had Chinese food (as far as I can recall, and certainly not in a restaurant) before then. My uncle ordered a bunch of dishes, but the only one I can clearly remember was shark fin soup (I was a boy, and eating shark!!). I was a fan of the dish until my 20s when I wised up and stopped ordering.
Through the years, I've had the pleasure to introduce many friends and business associates to Chinese cuisine and sometimes forget that most hadn't grown up with the many nuances and intricacies of what, in my very humble estimation, is the greatest cuisine in the world. With all due deference to the French (would surely disagree with my assessment here) and Italian cuisines, whom my ancestors would likewise vehemently disagree. But, when it comes to sheer richness of flavors and dishes, the Chinese cuisine has no peer, far as I'm concerned.