Quanjude is a century-old restaurant based in Beijing which boasts the best roast duck in the country. One of its Shanghai outlets is located on downtown Huaihai Road.

Its storefront is somewhat narrow but still prominent because of a waitress dressed in the traditional royal attire of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) standing at the entrance. The dining room, on the fourth floor, is large and decorated in traditional Chinese style, with red wood folding screens and palace lanterns.

A little out of keeping with the whole nostalgic environment are the grand decorative tiles on the floor that bear images of Disney's Donald Duck.

At such a specialized restaurant as Quanjude, roast duck is always an essential dish for diners. Most of the dishes we ordered were related to duck. The restaurant offers several, prepared in slightly different ways and sold at different prices. Half a roast duck is also available.

A standard roasted duck is priced at 138 yuan (US$17) and can serve about four-six people. Diners who have ordered the roast duck will be shown the duck and how it is sliced into pieces by a chef. However, do not expect the whole duck on the pushcart to go onto your plate as chefs usually cut a few pieces with both skin and meat from the dark-red duck while leaving its skeleton untouched.

The roast duck meat is served together with thin pancakes, green onions and sweet sauce. Diners can wrap the duck, onions and sauce in a pancake and then nibble the mixture. This special way of eating roast duck was invented to alleviate the greasy taste of the meat and also make the ingredients more tasty and refreshing.

It is said that ducks at Quanjude are immersed in special condiments and roasted directly over flames stoked by fruit-tree wood for some 40 minutes. The roast duck slices we tried were temptingly presented: date-red and shining with oil. The taste was just as delectable as I had expected and immediately stimulated my appetite. It was served with thick, milky coloured duck bone soup, extremely delicious.

Red sauteed duck meat, livers and intestines (28 yuan, US$3) is another hot dish worthy of recommendation. This combination is similar in style to stir-fired chicken (gongbao jiding). Peanuts, green pepper and chili slices join all the other ingredients in perfect harmony. The dish appears very delicate, and has a slightly sweet and delectable flavour.

Quanjude also serves a creative dish named "Treasure" (9 yuan each, US$1), which looks like a small bird nest. The "nest" is made of crispy noodles and contains sauteed shrimp meat, sweet corn, diced cucumber, green pepper and chili slices. The "Treasure" is relatively mild, refreshing and tasty due to the mixture of textures.

The restaurant also offers a variety of ingredients to place inside the nest, including roast duck meat.

A vegetable dish of some kind seemed necessary with the almost all-duck dinner so we ordered steamed towel gourd served with mashed garlic. However, the dish was less impressive than the duck dishes we sampled and tasted rather greasy. In fact none of the vegetable dishes listed on the menu of Quanjude struck us as particularly tempting.

The average cost of a meal in the restaurant is about 70-90 yuan (US$9-11) per person.

Various sets of lunches including roast duck and other specialities of the restaurant are served there from Monday to Friday, mostly priced under 100 yuan (US$12). Quanjude also provides all-duck banquets of more than 80 dishes made of different parts of the duck.

Quanjude Restaurant
Locaton: 4F, No. 786, Huaihai Zhonglu
Tel: 5404-5799