Sunday, July 02, 2006

Peking Eastern House in Rockville, MD

This is mostly going to be a picture post because I suck at translating the names of these Chinese dishes- so apologies in advance.
I went with some relatives yesterday to the Peking Eastern House in Rockville for lunch.
It wasn't very crowded- three other large parties were there eating and us. Started with some nice cold appetizers. We had some spicy marinated tendon and cold noodles in spicy oil, soy sauce, and ginger.
The first big dish was Lion's Head Meatballs. They are pork meatballs slow cooked with cabbage. I may be biased, but these are the best meatballs across the board- Italians are too heavy, Swedish ones are way too small. I challenge any meatball to combat and I assure you a Lion's Head will destroy it.
Next up were Pipa Tofu. A Pipa is a Chinese musical instrument, and I'm not sure why the tofu was named after it. This dish was really good. The outside skin is fried, but remains very light, and the inside is soft and delicious. The sauce had black beans in it. I think I ate a third of this plate with my rice.


We also had a fish dish recommended by our waitress. My uncle called it fish risotto, because the fish was cut up into delicate bite size pieces sauteed in a light sauce with peas, carrots and pine nuts.










The pièce de résistance of the restaurant was it's scallion/sesame seed pancake, no more like pizza. This took the longest to prepare, and it was worth it. It's really delicious. This is what Marco Polo stole from the Chinese that became Pizza in the West. See, the Chinese invented pretty much all of Italian cuisine: pasta, pizza and meatballs.

Peking Eastern House
16041 Frederick Rd
Rockville, MD 20855-2217
Phone: 301-527-8558

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:35 PM

    That is the best looking sesame pancake I've ever seen. The one at the Fried Dumpling restuarant on Eldridge St. in NYC is great, but likely because they put wonderful pickeled vegetables and beef or tuna inside.

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  2. yeah. sometimes when the restaurant is busy, you have to order this pancake in advance of arriving at the place to eat. it's so good, it needs no other items inside- the pancake stands alone.

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  3. you also can't tell by the picture that well, but it's about 3 cm thick!

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  4. place moved to gaithersburg

    Phone(301) 963-1426
    617 S Frederick Ave
    Gaithersburg, MD 20877

    ReplyDelete