Reach for the stars

"If the ducks are too small, they won't have enough fat. If they are too old, the meat starts to become chewy," Li says.

Li uses jujube wood to roast the duck, and to complement the flavor, he adds Chinese dates into his special sauce.

The pancakes are handmade in-house and are rolled out two at a time and then steamed in batches of 10.

Both the ducks and the sauces are placed on calabash-shaped plates. Diners can watch the whole process from the roasting to the slicing and plating as part of the show put on by the chefs.

Li likes to study traditional dishes that are rare to find. "For many of the old dishes, there are only a few records left in existence, but the recipes can be as short as a few words. To replicate a dish takes a lot of time-consuming research and experimentation," Li says.

He also believes the flavors of these original dishes can be adapted to the tastes of contemporary diners. He once studied a recipe for marinated duck feet which had been lost for decades. The original version used raw marinated duck feet, but Li updated the dish by boiling them before they were marinated, deboned and steamed.