The delivery came pretty quickly the hot food was still warm in their containers, so bonus points for that. When I popped open the lid on the container that held our half order of peking duck, however, my face fell immediately. The duck was deep fried, not roasted. And deep fried to a dry, chewy texture. There was no seasoning or flavoring on the skin, meaning it wasn\u2019t basted in whatever sauce that normally shellacs the skin of a peking duck. The skin was also totally tough and fried to a point that it was not crispy and was actually soggy with oil. This poor over-fried dried out bird bore absolutely no resemblance to peking duck.<\/p>\n

$\"Deep$

Deep fried and dried out peking duck<\/p><\/div>\n

I had placed the delivery on seamlessweb and asked in the special instructions section for them to bring six pancakes for the peking duck, since the normal order contains five pancakes. I guess they didn\u2019t take note of my special request, because only five pancakes arrived. At least they didn\u2019t charge me extra for the missing pancake. They did bring a ton of shredded scallions and julienned cucumbers for the duck though, which was nice. After smearing a pancake with a ton of hoisin sauce and adding a large handful of scallions\/cucumbers, I could almost pretend that the duck was moist and had some flavor.<\/p>\n

The extra scallions and cucumbers also came in handy for our order of cold noodles with sesame sauce. The sesame sauce was really thick, much thicker than I\u2019m used to, but the noodles were also a thicker variety so they pared well. Adding the fresh vegetables provided a crispy textural contrast to an otherwise soft dish. I enjoyed the noodles, but they weren\u2019t spectacular. It\u2019s hard to mess up this dish.<\/p>\n

$\"Cold$

Cold sesame noodles<\/p><\/div>\n

We also ordered two egg rolls, but they called us and told us they only had one left. Umm, ok? I guess they pre-make these and only have a certain number on hand. On the bill they brought with the delivery order, they only charged one egg roll, but since we paid through seamlessweb, and that order had two egg rolls, I don\u2019t know if it was fixed before it was charged to our credit card. I\u2019ll have to check our statement later and see. The egg roll itself was pretty good, as it had chunks of pork and shrimp in it, and it was still hot and crispy. I was disappointed they didn\u2019t have two because I didn\u2019t want to share with Josh!<\/p>\n

$\"Pretty$

Pretty decent egg roll<\/p><\/div>\n

We also got an order of sesame chicken, which was a bit dry. The chicken pieces seemed really bready and not very meaty. The sauce was pretty standard, more sweet than tangy, but they did sprinkle a lot of sesame seeds on top, which I liked. They also brought fried rice noodles on the side to put on top, and while in theory that was smart, so it wouldn\u2019t get soggy if it were pre-mixed with the chicken, but the steam in the container made them soggy anyway. It was kind of like putting pieces of chewy styrofoam on top. Not very appetizing.<\/p>\n

$\"Sesame$

Sesame chicken<\/p><\/div>\n

We don\u2019t crave Chinese food often (Josh does more than I do, since I grew up eating Chinese food basically every day) but it would be nice to have a standby place to order in from. I miss our place downtown, Empire Szechuan Village (it doesn\u2019t seem to be related to Empire Szechuan Kyoto), as their peking duck was fabulous and cooked right, not deep fried. We\u2019ll have to keep looking for a new place to try out, or else Josh will have to start making is own peking duck whenever he craves it. His version is pretty spectacular but it\u2019s very time consuming.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we don\u2019t have too many Chinese food options in our delivery area, and even less that serve peking duck. The food we got from Empire Szechuan Kyoto was pretty disappointing though. The only thing I really enjoyed was the egg roll, but I can get egg rolls anywhere. Our main dishes, the peking duck and the sesame chicken, both failed on many levels. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll be ordering in from here again.<\/p>\n

Empire Szechuan Kyoto
\n<\/a>193 Columbus Ave. between 68<\/em>^{th<\/em><\/sup> and 69<\/em>^{th<\/em><\/sup> St.
\nNew York, NY<\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"}}

Josh had a hankering for peking duck and we hadn\u2019t ordered in any Chinese food yet from our new place, so I did a find-a-food search on menupages. There weren\u2019t very many options that came up in the search, which I was kind of surprised about. Not knowing too much about each of the restaurants, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[120,23,121,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}