My mom was in Houston visiting my super preggo sister, my aunt, and my grandmother last week, and returned on Tuesday. To celebrate her return (before she goes right back in a couple of weeks, haha) my parents took my brother, Taylor, Sean, and I all out to dinner at Lotus Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Vienna.

As we always tend to do when we go to Chinese restaurants, we leave the ordering to the expert (my fittingly Chinese mama). She rustled up some peking duck, lamb, seafood stirfry, kung pow chicken & shrimp, and a veggie dish made with morning glory (?), and it was all delicious. Especially the duck. Because peking duck is the bomb diggity.

Even if it wasn’t quite as good as it is at the Peking Gourmet Inn. But, of course, what is?
Unnnnfortunately, the duck is the only thing that I actually managed to get a picture of, because I just plum forgot to take photos of anything else before it was all demolished.

Blogger fail. Oh well, at least you can take my word that it was tasty stuff! (Though never as good as my mom’s home cooking, I say suck-uppily.) 😉

The proof is in the pudding empty plate.
Peking duck is probably one of my all-time favorite specialty dishes–out of any kind of ethnic cuisine! Granted, I may be at least 50% biased due to my genetics, but surprisingly enough, I actually tend not to eat a ton of Chinese food unless I’m at my parent’s house. Probably due to the fact that I grew up eating so much of it? I dunno. But when I’m craving ethnic food, I tend to go for Thai or Indian instead. But offer me a chance at some peking duck, and pad thai and palak paneer might as well not even exist.
What’s your favorite kind of ethnic cuisine? Your favorite dish?