Chinese delight: Beijing Duck House, Bergenfield, NJ

This post is just going to be a lot of babble, being that I don't know and can't pronounce the name of most of what I ate last night. But it was so good that it's absolutely worth blogging about.

Moooo. That's how I felt after dinner last night with my friend's extended Chinese family. Instead of the cliche Chinatown destinations, we headed for Bergenfield, NJ to a family favorite where Uncle Francis knew just about everyone there, including the manager and chef. :)

Everything was shared on a big, rickety lazy Susan in the middle of the table. The first dish - first of way way way too many - was a large plate with smoked fluke, spicy cabbage salad, those black ruffled mushrooms, marinated tofu and something I'm blanking on at the moment. The cabbage was delish...in a chili vinegar. That's the only dish I know for sure when it came, since it was first. The rest are a melange of delicious food. We had a bbq-type flavor roasted pork belly that you stuff into these little sesame pockets with some spinach. One of the best things I've ever tasted. It was warm and juicy and delightful. Some sort of funky Asian veggie and mushroom dish, that had a sort of celery-esque flavor. Good stuff. A whole fish in soy sauce with herbs arrived, as did Peking duck, served with the wraps, sweet hoisin sauce and scallions and cucumbers for a DIY wrap. Shaolon Bao (which I've totally misspelled but can pronounce!!) are juicy Shanghai style pork and crab dumplings that you eat in a soup spoon with dark soy and shredded ginger, sipping at the dumpling like a bowl of soup, then eating the whole thing. These things are seriously good shiz-nit. But the piece de resistence, the dish that the owner didn't serve to another customer and only gave us us, was pieces of blue claw crab (in the shell) and rice cake in a pork and black bean sauce.

What is rice cake? It's a cake made out of glutinous rice and sliced thinly into something that resembles thumb-sized noodles. When I first had it, I loved it, and this just reinforced my affinity for this traditional Shanghai food. The crab was yummy and my fingers may still be sticky from picking out all the meat. SOOOOOO DAMN GOOD.

Anyway, we were stuffed, needless to say, and yet there was still a bit more. A traditional rice pudding, which was stuffed with sweet red beans and pieces of fruit embedded in it. I can't really explain what it looked like. It's not creamy and spiced like American rice pudding. Instead it's a glutinous rice-based concoction. I don't know. It was good...and that's that.

Holy food batman. I'm not overly intimidated, but I think I'd struggle to both find this place again, as well as order without my friend's family around. But it sure was tasty!!!!