Careful tho, the $180 Manhattan place isn't always just hype, it's a different style of duck. A lot of the fancy spots do the Cantonese roast duck where they pump air under the skin and dry it for hours so the skin puffs up like glass. Flushing spots mostly do the Beijing style where you get the pancakes, scallions, hoisin and they carve it at the table for you. So you're kind of comparing two different things. Both can be great, it just depends what you're in the mood for. Next time try a Cantonese spot in Chinatown like on Mott or Bayard and see if the skin hits different.

Wait, the guy flipped them so the arrow points backward? That seems like it would make the pad scoop instead of shed, and I would bet money on faster wear, not less. I have seen that cupped wear you are talking about on rental cruisers, that weird angled edge that looks like someone took a bite out of the pad. But flipping them on the backing plate means the pad material is leading with a sharp edge, and every bit of grit gets pushed under it instead of riding over. Unless the pad shape is different than I am picturing, that just sounds like trading one wear pattern for a worse one. Did you take a caliper to those pads after the 200 miles, or was it just eyeballing them at the stand?