When Anna started #duckfest1 I don’t think she realised what an amazing event she had created. The first event at Old Kingdom was huge and it got many thinking that far we may be from the holy land of peking ducks, but by golly were we going to comb through melbourne and find the best peking duck there was in our own backyard.

Due to my holidays back to Singapore and Malaysia, I missed out on the #duckfest2 which happened at Quan Jude. No reports on that, but judging from what I heard from my fellow duckfest eaters, I won’t be heading there anytime soon.

Instead, I found myself at Gold Leaf Chinese Restaurant in Preston, glass of Pinot in hand, all ready to settle into #duckfest3.

A table of 10, the waiter showed up and disappeared equally quickly as we waved him off with a “Duck Banquet please, for 10!” Gold Leaf Preston offers a duck banquet at $58 dollars per person, and as an added bonus, depending on the number of people at your table, they also offer you free pinot noir to accompany your duck. (They like to emphasize the free, but we all know the age-old trick of ‘building it into the price’) With a full table of 10, we scored ourselves 4 bottles of pinot noir, which were cracked open and disappeared very quickly down our all too eager throats.

Unfortunately I forgot to take notes. So I have no idea anymore what the first dish was. I do remember that it was some sort of a prawn roll and we commented on how odd it was for a duck banquet to be opened with prawns. It was wrapped in fried noodles and was rather crunchy and tasty, even if it did result in many of us making a mess on the table. You crunch in, and a million tiny pieces of that fried noodles fall out. Not a sexy look.

The soup then followed, which strikes me as odd. Normally the soup comes after the duck has been cut and served. I don’t know if there’s a science to it, but in my own world I’ve always thought that the order of the dishes were done in order to create an illusion that the whole duck was used in your dishes, thus justifying the price you pay for it. Perhaps I was wrong? No matter. The soup was tasty but lacking in ingredients. It was in front of me, so I ate it but really my attention was on this little trolley that had magically rolled up behind me.

And as I watched curiously, the waiter very calmly started steaming the pancakes on the little trolley. Such a little gesture, but boy was I impressed at the fact that they do it at your table! It ensures that the pancakes reach you piping hot, after all the travel distance is about arm’s length?

When the pancakes were done, the steaming station disappeared and was replaced with a duck carving station.

In front of my very eyes, the duck was skillfully stripped of its skin and some of its meat that was then rolled up into pancakes by another waiter. Not having to wrap it yourself does mean waiting for them to do it, and that night they had many pairs of hungry eyes staring at them pleading silently for them to hurry up!

Watching them roll up the pancakes made me think back to the jolly waiter and his QUARTER PAST THREE.

Ah sweet ducky bliss. The pancakes were well made, the duck skin perfection. Probably one of the best, if not the best peking duck I’ve had in awhile. We each had 3 pancake rolls but I wistfully wish that the quantity had been more like the never ending platters of duck that we had over at Old Kingdom. Restrain? What’s that?

While we were eating, the trolley had done another costume change. It was now a San Choi Bao preparation station. The waiter even cheekily asked me if I wanted him to stop and pose for his ‘in action’ shot. He had taken note of the whirring and whizzing of cameras at the table.

To be honest, I don’t remember this as particularly memorable. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either.

The very last course was fried rice. They also finished off the banquet with the remainders of your duck which were mainly bits and bones by now.

Which were unfortunately, cold and rather unappetizing. I didn’t think too much of it, but then again, it is bits and bones.

The fried rice on the other hand was yummy! It wasn’t overly greasy like how fried rice tends to be at chinese restaurants but I didn’t take too much of it as somehow, somewhere along the way, I had actually started feeling full.

With the meal finished, our waiter very kindly offered us all a small glass of Tawny. It was quite pleasant and just the thing to wrap the meal up with. But nothing beats dessert to wrap things up. Also included in the banquet, we were busy speculating what dessert might be when we were informed that dessert would be our pick from the regular dessert menu, which means everybody would be able to try different things. Yay!

I went with the coconut jelly which I had thought would really just mean Nata De Coco. But I was quite wrong as the waiter brought me three towering towers of pure white coconut jelly. No photos as it didn’t photograph well, and looked quite boring. Instead, here’s a photo of Anna’s dessert: Mango pudding.

We were also lucky ducks for Penny had brought along carrot cake (home made!) to share and it was quite divine. A funny story for you: Penny had removed a quarter of the cake after baking for taste testing prior to sealing the top off with foil. When our waiter lifted off the foil cover, he was shocked speechless by the missing quarter as he must have thought that a kitchen hand had taken a slice out while the cake was in the kitchen fridge. The look of horror on his face set the table off and it was quite awhile before peace ensued once more. We did explain to him later on that the cake had came like that, and not to worry but for a split second the poor fellow must have been wondering how to break the news to us.

And Penny claims she can’t bake. Yeah right.

It was a beautiful night out and thank you so much to all fellow #duckfest eaters as it was really an enjoyable night. This was my first time to a Gold Leaf restaurant and I liked it so much that I followed this visit up very shortly with a visit to Gold Leaf in Springvale for their yumcha. It was absolutely delightful but that’s another blog post for another time.

Here’s looking forward to #duckfest4!

Gold Leaf, Preston
Address: 419 High St, Preston, 3072
Tel: (03) 9470 2882