Your fingers will get sticky. Your tongue will turn fiery-numb, provided that you order well. Over the course of an evening here, you will in all likelihood swill too many pots of too-strong tea – or far better, a few too many lagers. And if you’re at all like me, you will love every second at this first Canadian outpost of a top Beijing-based Peking duck chain. You will love it because of the Dungeness crab, steamed to tender and then doused with torrents of chile oil and Szechuan peppercorns. You’ll love it because of the sweet potato sticks that are battered with savory salted duck yolks, and because of the mountains of creamy scrambled eggs that come studded with fat, steamed shrimp. But the best reason to come here, the reason that half of Markham queues up outside Dayali most evenings, is for Dayali’s famous Peking duck. Get the Gold Medal Roast Duck for $38.88. Roll the duck skin – the crazy-crisp, psychotropic little shards that look like polished mahogany – through the dish of white sugar, mop them through the hoisin sauce and then wrap them with some meat and scallion slivers and cucumber into a tissue-thin Chinese pancake. Drink your beer. Lick your fingers. Gambei!
