By Davina Tham / Staff ReporterTwo weeks ago, I ate a duck’s foot for the first time at Ya Ge (雅閣), the Michelin-starred fine-dining Cantonese restaurant located in the Mandarin Oriental. As the bird’s delicate bones clattered to my plate, I realized that despite never having eaten a duck’s foot before, there was something familiar and comforting about the way it tasted after all. A steamed dumpling stuffed with crab meat, shrimp, egg white and black truffle (NT$360) is an easy standout. Black truffle has become a lazy shorthand for luxury, indiscriminately deployed in marked-up versions of basic dishes — black truffle French fries or scrambled eggs, to name a few. Like its understated interior, Ya Ge knows how to produce a showstopper in the most unassuming places.
