Years after the glowing review from a major D.C. paper — and of late at least one scathing review from The Washington Post — the debate rages over whether the Bush family’s favorite Chinese place, Peking Gourmet Inn, lives up to its reputation. What’s indisputable is that the Tsui family has created a better-than-usual Chinese restaurant. They use premium ingredients and unusual techniques (double-cooking, flambéing), and they even grow some hard-to-find Chinese vegetables on their own farm. Patriarch Eddie Tsui started the place in 1978 to highlight Northern Chinese cooking, and planned from the start to make Peking duck the featured dish. So why fight it? Get the Peking duck. It comes to your table with a server, who expertly slices and portions out the meat. It’s served American style: skin and meat separately, fat removed. (You can ask for it Beijing style — all intact, fat included.) If you’re not a duck person, try the black pepper shrimp, crisp lamb chops or the garlic sprouts with chicken.
Full bar. Serving lunch and dinner daily.
"A behemoth restaurant with a Beijing-size ego, Peking Gourmet Inn isn't so much resting on its laurels as it is snoozing on them."
— Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post, May 15, 2011
Years after the glowing review from a major D.C. paper — and of late at least one scathing review from The Washington Post — the debate rages over whether the Bush family’s favorite Chinese place, Peking Gourmet Inn, lives up to its reputation. What’s indisputable is that the Tsui family has created a better-than-usual Chinese restaurant. They use premium ingredients and unusual techniques (double-cooking, flambéing), and they even grow some hard-to-find Chinese vegetables on their own farm. Patriarch Eddie Tsui started the place in 1978 to highlight Northern Chinese cooking, and planned from the start to make Peking duck the featured dish. So why fight it? Get the Peking duck. It comes to your table with a server, who expertly slices and portions out the meat. It’s served American style: skin and meat separately, fat removed. (You can ask for it Beijing style — all intact, fat included.) If you’re not a duck person, try the black pepper shrimp, crisp lamb chops or the garlic sprouts with chicken.
Full bar. Serving lunch and dinner daily.
"A behemoth restaurant with a Beijing-size ego, Peking Gourmet Inn isn't so much resting on its laurels as it is snoozing on them."
— Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post, May 15, 2011