Justin S.
Yelp
Friends and I decided to try the Chinese New Year Special Prix Fixe at Margeaux, with Chef Doris Huang. With advanced reservation, my party of 5 received seating immediately. The menu, at $98 / person, included the following
Starters:
- Scallion Pancakes
- Shumai and/or Peking Ravioli (aka potstickers, can mix and match)
Entree (Duck 3 ways):
- Peking Duck
- Fried noodles w/duck
- Duck bone soup
Dessert:
Sweetheart cake
First, the starters. The shumai had way too much powder in the filling, making it feel dry and pasty. It tasted like something you'd find at a mediocre dim sum place in Quincy - the kind where only pensioners go because it's cheap. The scallion pancake was a jaw workout. It was way too thick and tough - not flaky, just chewy and hard. It was crispy, but not the desirable pan-fried crispy, but a deep-fried crispy that only exacerbated the toughness.
The service also was a mess. A server spilled a cocktail (an accident, understandable). In his attempt to correct his mistake, he spilled more, decided to get the cocktail remade, but left without cleaning the spill. I had to flag down another server to clean the table.
Exacerbating the service was the arrival of the first duck entree. Or, rather, the lack of it for 45 minutes. Only after flagging down a server did the entree promptly appear. The peking duck did not have crispy skin - its defining charactertistic. It was indistinguishable from your average roast duck at the Chinese BBQ store, like Hong Kong Eatery in Chinatown. The scallion arrived artistically arranged as flowers. However, they were also as thick as 1/8" steel dowels at Home Depot. They need to be julienned you don't just taste an entire damned sprig of scallion.
The other two entrees took another 75 minutes to arrive. Again, only after flagging down a server did they promptly appear. The soup was lukewarm. It was clearly sitting around, ready to serve. The noodles tasted like fried noodles with duck - nothing more special than the sort I could find at the neighborhood Thai restaurant. The portion sizes, which resembled small entrees, only added insult to injury.
The sweetheart cake dessert was comparable to what I could have purchased at one of the myriad of bakeries in Chinatown for a few dollars.
Overall, this has been quite far the most egregious waste of money I have encountered in recent memory. What did I expect from a French place attempting to host a Chinese dinner?