Peking Duck - why do they take my duck away? When I go eat at Peking Duck restaurants, they always bring a delicious duck over, present it to me and friends or me and family members, then they proceed to slice a few pieces onto the little buns, add some hoison sauce, veggies, and then distribute to us to eat.

Then, it almost seems shocking, they take our duck away.

It's like...half a duck is taken away from us...mysteriously back into the kitchen.

So now we have to order another duck ...then a third duck... + some sauteed dishes to fill us all up.

So my question is:  Why does this happen?  Is only a small part of a duck edible?  Are we being ripped off?  E.g., Are they keeping the duck for themselves for some purpose?  Making soups comes to mind.  

Are they making duck soup with the duck that we should have eaten?

But then here's another interesting obversvation:  I notice that Peking Duck service stations at buffets actually throws away big parts of the duck, after slicing up a few pieces to make the buns for people standing on line.

So...perhaps it is just a fact that most of the duck is inedible.  But I would just like some information from this forum.

Thanks in advance!
In several of the restaurants I've ordered peking duck at they offer it as part of three courses. They will first present the duck and cut off slices of the skin (with only a small amount of meat), this is then used with the pancakes.

They will then take the duck away away and create a noodle dish with the remaining meat. Finally they use the everything left to make a duck soup (dishes may vary from place to place).

It's quite possible that the restaurant you went to only offers the dishes separately.