SGV: Peking Duck and Lobster at Ji Rong

 

For Lunar New Year this year, I gathered some friends at Ji Rong to celebrate. They’re famous for their Peking Duck.

One order fed the 11 of us though I felt we should have gotten another duck at the end. It also comes with duck bone broth (not shown). First you start with a Chinese “tortilla” or wrapper, spread on the hoisin sauce, add a piece of meat or skin — or both!!, plus the scallion and cucumber. Wrap it up and eat!

Proper Peking duck has super crispy skin. I was also happy the duck meat was very flavorful.

 

Our appetizer combo actually arrived after the duck and all our appetizers. Still, we made short work of the pork elbow, cold poached chicken, jellyfish, chicken hearts, broccoli and veggie appetizer. I liked the jelly fish and chicken best!

When our server said to order 2-3 more items, I just ordered all three of the turnovers, dumplings and buns. The turnovers are what I call Chinese hand pies. They’re stuffed with green chives. They’re also vegetarian friendly.

 

I liked the xiao long bao aka mini steamed buns or soup dumplings. These had enough soup and were gone in a blink of an eye.

We got an order of bao – the pork and string bean ones. These were fluffy and along with our endless appetizers, kept us busy until the lobster arrived.

 

 

We got a couple orders of the lamb skewers. The meat was good, somewhere between tender and done. With lots of cumin.

 

Besides duck, we got a lobster. Our server seemed worried that I’d think at $22/pound, it’d be too expensive. But there were 11 of us! This lobster was almost 5 pounds so it put us over $100. Since we each got a couple of pieces, I thought it was actually a pretty good deal.

The lobster was so fresh and I liked the black pepper. It was a little different from the Newport Seafood, Boston Lobster , New Century and 626 Lobster spots as there were no chile peppers. Still on that level though! And I appreciated that they arranged the lobster to slightly resemble one versus just jumbling it up on a plate.

 

As if we didn’t have enough food, we also got the spicy shrimp. The sauce was really great though I found the shrimp a tad mushy. There was one shrimp left at the end of the night but I was so full I didn’t eat it. I regret that now.

 

 

We got two veggie dishes including the mushroom medley. This dish even came with tiny strips of pork. I also appreciated the pea sprouts to mix it up a bit.

 

The other veggie we got were the pea sprouts though in this case, these were pea tendrils. They were much appreciated with all the protein.

 

I ordered seafood chow mein as our starch. It turned out to be one of our favorite dishes. The noodles were cooked well and there were a ton of flavor. I’m glad they weren’t greasy.

I can’t wait to go to Ji Rong again. Maybe I’ll order two ducks! And with a huge menu, there are plenty of other dishes I want to try. Bonus, reservations were easy to make and the private room does have a minimum but we made that easily. Order the duck an hour ahead.

Ji Rong

8450 Valley Blvd., Ste 115, Rosemead, CA 91770  —  (626) 280-8600

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