Years ago when I heard a friend heap praise upon the roast Peking duck at Silks Place Yilan (蘭城晶英酒店), I wasted no time in making a booking to try it out. While there were a few things I didn't like about that meal, I thought a few of the dishes were truly outstanding. I even thought the duck sushi was one of the best things I ate that year, and possibly merits a visit to the Red Lantern (紅樓) restaurant just by itself. So when we decided to come to Yilan this week, I decided to make a return visit to the restaurant. After all, Sankala has never tried this Peking duck. Due to our smaller group compared to my last visit, I chose to reserve just the basic Cherry Valley roasted duck cuisine in five ways (櫻桃霸王鴨五吃). As we were coming on a week night and not on a busy weekend, we were able to be seated within the restaurant proper instead of being shoved into the big function room. The level of service, though, didn't seem to be much different. Every single table was here to have the duck, which meant that a certain number of courses were being served across a large number of tables. The service has become factory assembly line-like, which is to say very mechanical. I also ordered up a couple of extra dishes since there were no vegetables included in the set, and also got some fried rice in case dad didn't feel full after just the duck.
