Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck, Singapore

We share an excellent Peking duck meal with a popular food blogger in Singapore.

Back when we were planning to come to Singapore, I reached out to a few Singaporean food bloggers that I wanted to meet in person. Unfortunately, they were going to be out of town that weekend that we were coming. I commented about this to our friend Mike, who told us to contact LK, the blogger behind the popular blog Food For Tots. LK happened to be a Malaysian from Penang, living in Singapore.

So I sent LK an email and, after a few rounds back and forth, arranged to meet up at the Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck Restaurant in the Paragon Mall on Orchard Road. We arrived there, not too many hours past our dim sum meal at Noble House. Though we had never met before, we did know what each other looked like from our respective About pages. (Aren’t About pages helpful? ;-) ) Then we entered the restaurant where we were shown to our table.

You Gotta Get the Duck

LK and her husband said they had heard good things about this restaurant but haven’t had the Peking duck yet because this kind of meal calls for a larger party than just the two of them. So when we contacted them about a meetup, they thought that it would be a good excuse to try out the duck. They made the reservations, and the duck was served not long after we were seated.

Like any good Peking duck restaurant, the chef will carve up the duck right at the table. First he removed just the skin off the breast, which he did with deftness and skill. The shards of roasted duck skin were thin and crispy, like duck-flavored tortilla chips.

Next came a couple of platters of duck slices featuring both skin and duck meat:

Notice on this cut that the fat hasn’t completely rendered out of the duck – there is still a nice, juicy, delicious layer of duck fat between the crisp skin and the tender meat. It makes for a deliriously good bite when that melted duck fat envelops your tongue.

The duck was served with shredded green onions and sticks of raw cucumber along with the obligatory hoisin sauce. Instead of the typical steamed bun to wrap the duck and veggies, Imperial Treasure served up some small, thin crepes. All the better; you don’t fill up on bread, so you can eat more! :D

The remainder of the duck meat was taken back and then incorporated into a wonderfully tasty duck meat and noodle dish. The dish wasn’t just a homey mish-mash of ingredients, but it was subtle and sophisticated. The noodles had good flavor on their own while the vegetables were prepared simply to showcase their flavors. Unfortunately, I did not get a good picture of the dish to show you how good it looked :-(

Other Excellent Dishes

Though we were there to sample the duck, we also ordered a few other dishes. Here are deep-fried silverfish, battered up and fried crispy like tempura.

A couple of dishes were recommendations by the wait staff. This dish of bamboo clams and asparagus looks simple, but the clams were prepared stunningly well. They weren’t chewy at all, but tender – almost like cod or other white fish. Definitely a highlight dish that we’d want to try again.

Also recommended was this tofu, spinach and mushroom dish. You can’t really see in this picture, but there are two different kinds of tofu in this dish. The bottom layer is actually a tofu incorporated with blended spinach. Served with the fresh mushrooms on top, this dish was a revelation.

We were quite stuffed by the end of the meal, and had a hard time deciding what, if anything, to get for dessert. But again the wait staff was very helpful. They suggested this trio of dessert creams. Bottom left is the roasted walnut cream. Bottom right is an almond cream which was thickened with egg white. The top dish, though is the winner. DURIAN cream.

Oh. My. God. So good. Soo goood.

This meal wouldn’t be possible without our gracious hosts. Throughout dinner, we “talked shop” a bit about food blogging, but mostly just discussed what life in Singapore is like. LK and her husband are very kind and friendly folks, and we are honored to have met them. Do check out the excellent Food For Tots website and check out her impressive breadth of recipes. Let them know Nate and Annie sent you!

Aloha, Nate