For years, FANCY has been known for its consistently good and well executed Cantonese cooking, a persistent pack house irrespective of time and day and ‘ lack of parking space’!!
This evening, armed with a super early reservation……which we hope would result in more available parking spots, our party of 5 give this local favorite a long overdue re-visit.
We ordered the following dishes:
- Deep fried crunchy fins and bone skeleton of Dover Sole topped with stirred fry fish filet cut
from the whole fish.
- Sweet and Sour Pork
- Stirred fry sliced beef with oyster sauce marinade and Chinese Kale ( Gai-Lan )
- Fried Silver Thread Anchovies and long beans with peppered seasoned salt batter
- Peking Duck 2 ways - Traditional wrap with crispy skin and Lettuce wrap with stirred fry diced
meat and mixed crunchy vegetables
Our meal started off with a huge welcoming bang….the result brought about by one of the best tasting and perfectly seasoned and cooked fish dishes I have had for a while. Succulent, moist, chewy, loaded with umami and shrouded with amazing wok-hay smoky aroma, this is one hell of a stirred fry creation! The crunchy and lip smacking deep fried bones were addictively good!
Sweet and Sour pork was one of the better rendition in town. Crunchy with the right amount of well balanced, tangy sweet glaze coating.
Seasoning of the stirred fry beef was exactly to my liking, the degree of caramelization spot-on.
The cooking and timing of the Gai-Lan preparation was impeccable.
The crunchy, deep fried String Beans and Anchovies possessed the right amount of savory salty-ness and mouth tingling spiciness. Very enjoyable!
Sadly, the arrival of our ‘ Piece de resistance ‘ dishes - Peking duck 2 ways, totally ruined our aforementioned pleasurable experience! Rather than thin and crispy, our carved duck skin was irregular, CHEWY and totally lacking the desired crispiness. This was made worse by the ultra-thick, Indian Chapati like wrapper they provided. Are we creating a duck skin wrap or a duck skin ‘ sandwich , we wonder?! As if this was not bad enough, they followed up by literally ‘ pouring salt onto the wound’ by giving us a disaster of a lettuce wrap second course. The stirred fry product was way too salty, the meat tasting stale, the result…inedible!
Oh well!! This totally inconsistent meal of ours is one great example of ‘ You win some…You lose some ‘!!
Am I being overly sensitive or what? Almost every Chinese meal I had recently I found to be inconsistent, quality on a downhill trend when compared to a few months ago?! Too many ’ post-Covid ’ opening diluting the already thin talent-pool?: please include [City, Neighborhood] in your post title above. If the topic is about a specific eatery, please click the ‘Add Location’ button to enter the address, so your topic shows up in the Topic Map.
