iDen & Quanjude Beijing Duck House — Restaurant in Vancouver

Service: Excellent. The staff was attentive, and made me feel more relaxed than I was expecting… especially as a solo patron. I had Henry as my waiter, and he was great at guiding me through the menu, and with recommendations.

Atmosphere: Relaxed, no dress code. The waiters are dressed up, but I didn’t feel underdressed in business casual.

Food: Mixed, but a fun experience. If you’re doing the tasting menu, come hungry and leave yourself about 2.5 hours.

I ordered the $300 tasting menu. I did consider the $400 one, but couldn’t bring myself to try the Birds Nest soup…

The Pear Soup drink is excellent, I highly recommend it. It has a similar flavor profile to warm apple cider, but it’s different enough, and goes well with much of the meal, that it’s a must have in my opinion.

Appetizer: You’re served 4 bite sized items with a recommended eating order. The Sticky Rice with Lotus Root reminded me of bamboo chutes - fairly plain, but not bad. The Truffle and Matsuba Crab Meat was more like two bites for me. The flavors were pretty subtle, but I liked it - neither the truffle nor crab overpowered each other. The Smoked Sabai Fish with Plum Sauce was my favorite bite. It had excellent caramelization, sharp flavors, and a good mix of savory, sweet and fruity tartness. The Marinated Beef Tongue is back to a more subtle flavor, but I found it really tasty and tender. I wish this last bite were served in a spoon, so all the sauce stayed with the tongue.

Soup: I did not like this one much. It’s Double Boiled Sea Whelk with Matsutake, Scallops and Orchid. Put shortly, I think the meat was overcooked, dry and stringy, and the broth slightly under seasoned. If you’ve got a sensitive pallet, there’s definitely a lot of complexity to the soup, and a lot of ingredients I’m not familiar with… but to many, I think this would taste a lot like over-boiled chicken soup… but with a lot of different textures.

1st Entree Crispy Surinam Fish Maw in Aged Vinegar Sauce: This was really good and unique. It’s a fatty piece of meat that’s breaded and fried. It has a topping of parmesan, bubbles of salmon flavor (were they caviar?) & balsamic & oil slick under.

Here I got the milk tea. It’s a decent mix of sweet, bitter and creaminess, & fairly typical of boba tea.

2nd: Slow Cooked Wagyu Beef in Pineapple Sauce: It’s A5 Wagyu from Japan, but it’s a ‘tougher’ more flavorful stewing cut. It’s covered in a mild reduction sauce that did not cover up the rich beefy flavor. The Pinneapple sauce is more like a fine compote, and adds nice acidity and sweetness. There’s this fried wafer I didn’t care for… tasted like a burnt creme brûlée top. All combined (minus the wafer) and I enjoyed it. It focused on simple, nuanced flavors in a more Japanese style, which some might find a little boring. This is a good one if you like beef flavor first and foremost.

3rd, the Signature Beijing Duck, was a bit disappointing. It seemed rather plain to me. You get some skin that’s eaten like chips dipped in sugar, and a small amount of meat served fresh off the roast, and you eat it inside of these thin crepe like shells with a sweet (delicious) sauce and some veggies… it was fine, but even when I tried bits of the duck and skin without the whole roll, I found myself thankful I didn’t order the whole duck instead.

4th Entree: Fish Ball Soup: The ball is tender and flavorful, and the soup is bright and refreshing. I think this would have been better after the heavy and fatty Fish Maw instead of being the final dish before dessert. I’m glad I still had some drink left to cleanse mg pallet of the more normal fishy flavor.

The Passion Fruit and Raspberry Mouse Cake is sort of sweet, mildly tart, and a well balanced desert. I enjoyed it, and it was a good way to finsih off the meal.

Overall, a good and entertaining experience. I never expect to like everything, but I do think the soup was a big miss. I do recommend this place, but I think it would be more economical to go with a group of friends, and each order different entrees to share, instead of a...

Heard from various Chinese foodies that the food was mediocre and overpriced, this place was not worthy of a visit. My mum is visiting and we visited this chain in Beijing 10 years ago. I insisted to take mum there for our memory, realized that words of mouth from the locals was accurate.

It started with making the reservation. They put my name is “Lin” as that’s Mandarin. It only confused my guests.

They nicely sent me a reminder about the reservation, dress code and three hour parking. When we arrived the parking garage, it appeared to be a public parking with some lots reserved for the restaurants. When we used the parking machine, there was no option for the restaurant customer or three hours. We chose “until 10 pm” as we did not want to risk being by towed. Upon arrival, I checked with one of the staff, he said it was free as long as I parked in one of the lots reserved for restaurant and there was no need to pay. I showed him the ticket I paid and asked if they could validate for me. He said sorry and there was nothing they could do about it. We often pay our ticket first, and the restaurant will then validate our ticket or refund us by cash. I wished there could be more details about parking in the reservation reminder.

We put effort to dress up, but saw a lot of other customers were wearing casual wear. We could have done the same as well.

We were put into a long table for a party of seven. With three at each side and one at the edge. This seating arrangement was not the best, but it was good that one of my guests could not make. We wanted to make conversation easier and asked if we could have a round table instead, but they could not do it, or we had to limit our dining time within 2.5 hours as the guests they prepared to seat at the round table would come later. I did not understand how their logic worked, so I decided to remain at the long table.

We came here for the duck, but it did not live up to the name of Quan Ju De from Beijing. It was pretty dry as the meat was too thin/ not enough fat. It was also quite bland without much flavour. The skin was thick and the duck did not seem to be freshly cooked. The number of pancakes was also not enough for our party of six. I also wished there was cucumber served with the Peking duck. Even though they carved the Peking duck in front of you, to me, it was more about the entertainment.

Then, we ordered other dishes. There was a male manager who was helpful and gave recommendations. A few dishes he recommended turned out great: a starter of Shanghai braised fish, an angus beef dish, and the prawn. A fried rice he recommended was too dry and my guests did not eat much of it.

Overall, food was like what I heard - mediocre - with some dishes nicely done and others not so good. It seemed to be more about presentation than the quality of the food. They put dry ice under various dishes/ desserts. The first time we saw it, it was like wow 🤩, but then we got used to it.

For dessert, they went out of the Jasmine Tea Crème Brûlée. So, some of us ordered Almond Tofu instead.

Overall, service was mixed and disappointing. The male manager was excellent, but it was only him and he alone could only do so much. There were a lot of staff working, but every time I tried to get attention and looking around, none of them noticed. It was very confusing, as when I paid, I still had no idea who our server was. There was a female staff kept asking one of my guests who sat by the window about stuff, but obviously it was me who was in charge and going to pay. It was quite embarrassing for my guest. Quite often, I had to wait until the male manager caught my intention seeking for help. Salute 🫡 to him.

The washroom was also frustrating. My mum alerted me there was no toilet paper 🧻. And an hour later when I went, there was still no toilet paper. A nice lady customer kindly warned me about it once I entered. I shared what my mum told me with her, and she said someone at her table told her the same thing! I heard from my guests that there were things broken in...

For a Michelin star place I had high expectations and from reading reviews prior I had some skepticism but went in with an open mind.

We had a reservation for 6 people and were seated in a separate area on the right side of the host stand. The left side of the restaurant was packed with tables and a birthday party. Since we were the only table with people on the right side of the restaurant I didn’t expect to have any issues with service but it was terrible. Definitely felt some form of discrimination and favoritism towards other customers as we couldn’t even receive the bare minimum service. We felt very forgotten, we did not have a designated server and the staff that did attend to us made us feel very uncomfortable and didn’t seem to understand or know how to speak English. No one explained the menu, no one introduced dishes as they came out, no one came to check in on us, you could literally get better service at any casual restaurant without a Michelin star. When they were pouring water into our glasses and split it over one of us and on the table they didn’t even apologize. They didn’t say excuse me or any of the usual pleasantries. I also didn’t like the fact that every time I was mid bite eating off my plate a server would come move the plate I was eating off of to place a new plate of food in from of me. It was very jarring and I didn’t appreciate the risk of getting food on myself, like why couldn’t they just place the new plate of food in a different spot near me?

The food was nothing special in terms of taste. We ordered:

Malantou & Dried Tofu Salad in Spring Roll Wrapper: The dish only comes with 5 dumplings but we were a group of 6 and asked if we could add 1 more and would even pay for it so we could each have one but they immediately said they weren’t able to accommodate. Taste wise it was okay, very simple and bland.

Shanghai Style Smoked Fish with Plum Sauce: This was too sweet for my taste and there were so many tiny little bones. Maybe that’s normal for this dish traditionally but for Michelin I didn’t expect to have to look out for bones.

Angus Beef Cubes with Asparagus and Pecans: Probably the only dish I liked out of the entire meal we had. The meat was tender and the sauce was well balanced. The vegetables were crisp and cooked just right. Only downside there was only 1 pecan on the entire plate.

Duck Soup: 5 out of the 6 of us had a soup with only tofu and some specs of green onions while 1 of us had a soup full of tofu skins, seaweed, and toppings. For a Michelin star restaurant how did you not notice all the soups you served were not the same and a majority were missing a bunch of toppings?? Thankfully they were able to redo this course for us.

Signature Beijing Duck: Bland and dry. My biggest turn off was why on earth was the person cutting up our duck table side dressed in a crop top and yoga pants??!! I was so uncomfortable to see that in such a fancy place where servers wear white gloves. Not to mention there’s literally a sign at the front of the restaurant that says you can’t wear casual clothes to come into the restaurant!

Green Su Baked Sablefish with Scallion: Again, why is there so many bones in the fish???!! The fried ginger on top of the fish was an unpleasant stale hard texture and the fish skin was so off-puttingly slimy and super fishy.

Stif Fried Watercress with Su jiu: This dish took sooo long to come out. We had already received every other dish and this was the very last to come. Whhyyy??! It’s so simple and would have been great to eat with everything else we ordered but we didn’t get it until 20mins after we had finished everything.

Overall experience, I felt uncomfortable and neglected and would not recommend. It’s definitely not worth the price point in terms of service or food. 100% overhyped and you should...