Old Beijing 老北京

Rating: 4⭐

Ordered: huge variety. 
- Peking duck
- Hainanese chicken
- truffle coated beef 
- pork ribs
- fish of some sort
- lobster tofu
- vegetable???
- pippis??
- dragonfruit and lychee drink 

We came here with some of my family friends for a new years lunch. There were about 17 people. I was there mostly because the restaurant is a stone's throw from my apartment. And plus I got a lot of free food. 

I don't really know how to rate a big table of food like this when I wasn't the one ordering and also we had such a large group. My parents say that usually this place operates a yum cha at lunch hour, but obviously we booked a room so we had wayyy too many dishes. 

We started with a basket of entrees. They were alright - some cold chicken, savoury jelly of some sort, some preserved mushroom of some sort and some berry of some sort. We all got this drink which I think was dragonfruit and lychee with soda water, which was pretty good. 

In terms of main courses, Peking duck was great as usual. Peking duck doesn't ever really go wrong. We also had these little lobster tart things, which looked really pretty but didn't taste the greatest. There was also bread with condensed milk. There was also some shellfish-type thing with sliced cucumber in chilli oil, which was luckily a tolerable level of spice. Also alright. 

Later on we got more hot food delivered. There was truffle beef, which was actually SO good. Loved that shit, only just a bit hard to chew at times. The pippis(?) with Shanghai donut was really good too, the sauce was amazingly delicious. There was a fish, which was alright. The Hainanese chicken was solid. The vegetables were solid. I didn't get to try the lobster tofu because I was so full.

For dessert there was the obligatory plate of fruit, and we also got a stand of various Chinese sticky rice desserts. They were alright, but again I was almost too full to eat them. 

I ended up taking all the leftovers home. Yippee. Free food for the rest of the week for sure. 

For a Chinese meal with a lot of people where I didn't get to order food, the dishes were surprisingly all solid. There wasn't anything particularly amazing about this place but everything was nicely done. Not sure how the food here is when not in a group of 17 people though.