No duck noodles this time

Had dinner with The Fam tonight. It was raining quite heavily (it's been raining quite a bit the last few days, and I'm happy!), which meant no dining out in the open. We ended up at the Imperial Duck restaurant near the Stutong Market, and almost every table was already occupied. When I was studying in Sydney, I had a coursemate who would tell us how her family would prepare roast duck noodles for their Chinese New Year open house. I wanted roast duck noodles tonight, but no. No roast duck noodles for me. We had these instead:

Roast duck. But of course. You don't go to a roast duck specialist restaurant and not order roast duck. It's prolly even some sort of unspoken rule that you have to order duck. Kidding. But really, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Like, you don't go to KFC and expect to have roast duck. No. For roast duck you go to a roast duck specialist, and for good juicy tender succulent roast duck you go to Imperial Duck. End of roast duck soliloquy. Moving on to the next dish...

... stirfried asparagus. This was pretty expensive, but I guess it's justified since the asparagus was prolly imported. This was alright. I prefer my asparagus minimalist style, i.e. blanched till just tender and accompanied with some garlic, and I found this particular dish a little overdone. Too many other ingredients fighting for centre stage. The prawns were really good though; not overcooked, still juicy and tasty and with that al dente crispiness that proves they've been cooked to perfection. Good prawns.

This was a surprise, as I wasn't expecting fish tonight. Cod with lotus flowers and black fungi. The first bite was quite amazing, all fishy and bursting with sesame oil goodness. The subsequent bites weren't as tasty, I don't know why. I don't like lotus flowers and I don't like black fungi, but I like this fish. It's not rough in texture and it doesn't stick to your teeth the way some fish do, if you know what I mean. Good fish. Adding cod to the list of fish I actually enjoy eating.

The deep fried tofu was good, though rather bland. It usually comes drowned drenched in a sweet sticky gravy, but here they separate the two, which is good if you enjoy your tofu all blistering hot and crunchy and not soggy. Upon breaking into the tofu squares, I noticed that it consisted of thin slices of tofu mixed with capsicum, and I don't quite get this. Why not just cut the tofu into squares/cubes/rectangles and then deep fry? Won't that be less time-consuming? We had a little discussion about this, and came to the conclusion that they were prolly charging you for this fancy tofu-cutting technique. Pretty impressive. The batter was really good and crunchy. I actually liked that this dish was quite bland. You can always add soy sauce to a bland dish, but you can't always ctrl+z an overly-seasoned one.

My drink: milk tea. Tea not thick enough, but not too bad. Not overly sweet once you let the ice melt and dilute. Quite refreshing.

Satisfactory dinner, although more expensive than other restaurants. You could prolly have a really good spread at other restaurants for the same amount, although I suppose their roast duck is one of the better ones you can get in this town.

I still want my roast duck noodles though. Will return to try one day in the very near future. Hopefully.