Ok, I'll get straight to the point on this one. It was a pretty big bummer. After reading all the reviews, I kind of knew what to expect and it was exactly what everyone else wrote back. Get the duck but skip everything else. DaDong is a famous peking duck chain in China so when it opened here in NYC, Jen, Kevin and I had to try it as part of our duck club.
The location should have been the first tip off that it would be a bit underwhelming - I mean it's in Bryant Park which isn't really known as a culinary wonderland. It's pretty fancy pants which is fine but it was much more fine dining than I expected. To me, the best Chinese food will always be more of a mom and pop hole in the wall kind of place. I knew it was going to be expensive but the sticker shock of some of the prices was still pretty real - the whole duck was $98 and most of the larger entrees were in the $30+ range. All of us had read the reviews before and knew that the non-duck dishes weren't anything to write home about but we still felt like we should try some of them so we got the mashed eggplant ($8), sea salt and lime seared waygu beef ($34), cold avocado noodles ($12), sauteed pea shoots ($16) and of course the whole duck.
The mashed eggplant was super underwhelming - it was just eggplant puree on a wafer. I've never seen this in any other Chinese restaurant and the portion was super tiny - like 1 bite person. The waygu beef, while tender and melt in your mouth was offensively small for something over $30. We could cut it into maybe 5 small pieces total. I mean one person could have eaten the whole thing and still be hungry. The cold noodles were bland and not memorable at all. Luckily the pea shoots, as usual, were delicious but it was a very small portion considering how much more you usually get at other Chinese restaurants. Finally came the main attraction - the whole duck. They don't carve it table side instead someone is carving it in the middle of the restaurant and they bring it over to you. They give you all the usual accoutrements to eat the duck: thin pancakes, sliced scallion, hoisin sauce, and sliced cucumber. They even give you something different here with sugar, sliced cantaloupe, and these puffy buns to stuff them in. They give you lots of skin, meat and the legs. Was the duck good? Yes it was pretty damn tasty and all the things they give you also make it work - for example, the pancake skin was nice and thin but not too thin that it can't hold everything in it. Was it the best duck I've ever had? Probably not. The duck here was very very lean, which I guess is good for you health wise but the best part of the duck is some of the fat that goes with it. It wasn't dry but it was missing an element of moistness/slight greasy-ness that you come to expect and love when you eat duck.
Since the food wasn't very filling, we left room for dessert and that was kind of eh too. Nothing really spoke to us but we got the Chocolate Frost ($12) which was shattered pieces of chocolate leaves with some cherries but it turned out there were only 2 cherries on it. I should have known not to order dessert because frankly Asians are not very well known or good at desserts.
Despite the overall disappointment, I'm glad I can say I went, crossed it off my list and will likely noy come again. While the duck was tasty, it just wasn't worth the money and there are way cheaper, more authentic and better options in NYC. I am curious how different the chains are in China as Kevin said they were quite good there so I'm curious if they will make tweaks to this as the resounding response by the culinary world has been pretty meh. Total bill: $119/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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