The duck's just the start of chef's broad Chinese menu

An odd thing happens when you order the Peking duck at Jing Yaa Tang: When the armada of plates arrives at the table, it's not the succulent meat that draws your eye first - it's the pancakes. They look almost fluffy, curling slightly at the edges. You know right away that you won't be struggling to pull them apart while that delicious meat gets cold.

"We make them in-house," says Li Dong, the chef de cuisine. "They are rolled out two at a time and cooked in batches of 10." They have a short shelf life, he explains, which is why not everybody takes the trouble.

Li is just as fussy about the ducks themselves. "The quality has to start at the source, and we buy our birds from one of the top duck farms in China," he says. "They must be 40 to 45 days old, and between 2 and 2.5 kilograms - smaller birds are too lean. But you don't want ducks that are too old either - those are soup ducks!"