Ming Palace, Corus Hotel: London Roast & Peking Duck

By Aiman Azri

Fabulous fowl: Relying on meat sourced from a Europe-based, family-run farm where ducks roam freely, Ming Palace's new London Roast Duck and London Peking Duck menu is worth winging on over to Corus Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

These are ducks raised right, hand-reared and fed on a natural, nourishing diet of maize, soybeans and wheat to ensure the meat is thoroughly tender and clean-tasting. Corus Hotel's flagship Chinese restaurant accords them with equal respect, putting them through a painstaking preparation process for pristine poultry pleasure.

Ming Palace first marinates the duck, infusing it with the aromatic nuances of five-spice powder, salt, plum sauce and spring onions. Air is pumped into the duck, expanding its skin before it's hung for six to eight hours and oven-cooked for up to 45 minutes.

This result is what customers savour when they order the London Roast Duck (RM188 nett for a whole duck of approximately 2.5 kilograms, or RM98 nett for half a duck). It's rich and robust, bursting with intense flavour but free of gaminess - savoury and sweet in complexities, endowed with crisp skin that's bliss to crunch through, completed with the same house-made plum sauce that the duck was marinated with.

Ming Palace also promises the duck as part of a three-course meal in the London Peking Duck set, wedding Western-bred duck with Asian inflections for RM198 nett. In this set, you'll still enjoy a platter of roast duck, plus the bonus of three different dishes that utilise the rest of the duck.

The first course is the classic Peking Duck appetiser of crispy duck skin rolled up with cucumber and scallions, served with hoisin sauce. Bao buns are also offered - slice them up and insert the duck skin for a snack of fluffy-crackly textural contrasts.

The second course features flesh to sink your teeth into - stir-fried duck fillets with ginger and spring onion for a fragrant sharpness that buoys and bolsters the protein, keeping us enthusiastically munching. If you prefer a spicy dish, you can have the duck stir-fried with chilli peppers and salt.

The third course also showcases two possibilities to choose from - either traditional fried rice with duck meat (a sure-fire smash, addictive without being greasy, with many morsels of meat to relish amid the firm grains) or the more unorthodox fried spaghetti with duck fillet (the flavour is comfortingly Chinese, with a soy sauce base that evokes yee mee, executed with a beautiful balance that does justice to this inspired recipe with heaps of oomph).

We've been to Ming Palace multiple times in the past year, enjoying each visit. The London Roast Duck and London Peking Duck menu makes a lovely restaurant even better. Many thanks to Corus Hotel Kuala Lumpur for having us back.

Ming Palace
Corus Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur.
Daily, 12pm-230pm, 630pm-1030pm.
Reservations: 03-2161-8888, extension 188; or email fnb@corushotel-kl.com

This post first appeared on eatdrinkkl.com