Captain Atas celebrates his milestone birthday @ Peach Garden

We ended the 食字路口 eight hours later at Thomson Plaza's Peach Garden where we celebrated the Captain's 30th birthday and polished off the last dish, Peking Duck with much relish.

The waitress humored me and folded this again for me

I had eaten there for my birthday some years ago with my Grandmother who had not been incapacitated then so I had very precious memories of that place. We had Peking Duck then too, so that's why I could remember that that restaurant had the dish that the birthday boy wanted.

While the restaurant was not crowded for a Saturday night, there were three tables celebrating birthdays on that day. Peach Garden is part of the eponymous chain of restaurants renowned for its service, and as usual of Chinese restaurants, expect to pay more if the service is good. We were rather hesitant about ordering the dishes, even though we had pooled together S$50 each at the start of the day. We ordered on the recommendation of the Kellerin, the homemade tofu with crab gravy and bok choy, Peking duck, mushroom with spinach and braised chicken. 

Preparing the pretty plate of Peking Duck

The Peking duck was truly the Pièce de résistance of the entire meal. What I missed was the old practice of cutting and serving up the duck at your table, so you can see the Kellerinen dash the slices of crispy duck  skin with hoisin sauce before enveloping them in delicate folds of crepe. I also missed their putting the spring onion and cucumber into the folds. Now they give us the option to adding that yourself. Remember to eat with the Keropok (crisp) because it adds another dimension to the texture. As they would call it, a delicious play of textures.

I felt that the chicken and the duck (they took the remainder of the duck back,  hacked it down and served it as a stirfry) were pretty alright, but I especially liked the homemade tofu with crab gravy. The tofu pieces had the beguiling taste of lard and the crab was smooth and sweet (not the usual watery kind from already dead crabs). I think I like Peach Garden more than Lei Garden, which we had for dinner yesterday. Lei Garden charged us for tea service (S$2 per head) and I don't think they served the remainder of the Peking duck that another table ordered.