"Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant" by Charlie Hutchinson

Last night, the parents, Marie, and I bundled in to a cab and took a short ride over to the relatively new second location of the Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant, right on the 3^rd Ring Road in the Chaoyang district. Pop had been raving about this place since before we had arrived in Beijing. Da in Chinese means “fat,” while Dong is the eponymous founder of the restaurant. Among Beijinger’s and ex-pats alike, it is heralded as the best Peking duck in town. The wall of awards from every major newspaper in China, the Zagat guide, and Chinese and world culinary foundations declaring it the winner in every category imaginable is the first thing you see upon entry in to the two story building. So our expectations and excitement were pretty high.

After a brief wait (there were 15 tables ahead of us- and we only waited about 10 minutes) we were led in through the main first floor dining area to our table. If the first floor is any indication of the second, the restaurant is easily a 1000-seat facility. Wait staff, floor managers, duck carvers in high toques, and bussers were all doing the frenetic dance around tables, customers, and stacks of dishes that is so clearly a part of renao- the Chinese term for the crowded, boisterous, and steaming hot atmosphere of the restaurant dining room.

  

We ordered brined duck liver, Sichuan style sweet and sour shrimp, lotus leaves and ginkgo nuts, Chinese purple rice, an eggplant dish, chili tofu custard, and finally the roast duck.

After our drinks of beer (Mom), an excellent locally brewed non-alcoholic beer and the requisite chrysanthemum tea were served, our food began to arrive. First, the brined duck liver. I’m not sure exactly how it is prepared, but the taste and texture of the foie seem to be the product of a well-fed duck, but clearly one that has not undergone gavage, as in foie gras. The long brining removes most of the sulfur from the liver making for an extremely delicate and light organ flavor, and reduced fat content makes for a more brittle, light mouth-feel. After the liver has been brined, it then is most likely steamed over a broth containing star anise, which imparts the slightest hint of bitter licorice to the meat. In all, it is the best liver I’ve had.

As the wonderful delicacy of the foie melted away, the shrimp came. Fresh shrimp, tossed in corn starch and shallow fried to crisp perfection, in an orange, vinegar, Sichuan pepper, peanut and chili sauce. The shrimp were beautifully sliced so their backs opened like a floral display, and the interior meat was done just right- toothy and brackish and sweet. An interesting side attraction to the dish was the decorative garnish of a small fruit-bearing twig of the Sichuan pepper tree. It looked exactly like a tiny caper branch, but when I bit in to the small berry a combination of eucalyptus and juniper jumped out. None of the numbing power of the aged peppercorns was felt- it seems those volatile oils develop later.

Next to arrive was the purple rice. This wonderful dish is made with wild short grain rice steamed with black tea and then tossed with minced and stir-fried scallions, green garlic shoots, and run chang, a traditional Chinese sausage made with pork meat and duck liver. The result is a demure dish that again is toothy and a duff-like taste, but interspersed with the sharp saltiness of sausage. It was wonderful.

Following the mellowness of the rice came a surprising exhibition of sharp, bold flavor muted by the tenderness of slowly braised vegetable fiber. Eggplant carpaccio arrived, piled high and tossed with a smoky sweet spicy sauce. The sauce was oily, but the expert work in the kitchen did not end up with small spongy ring of oil. Instead, the thin slices melted away as we chewed them whole. From the size of the rings, it was composed of European rather than Chinese eggplant, with the skins still on.

I don’t think that lotus leaves are available in the U.S., but dagnamit, they should be. The lotus figures prominently in Buddhist imagery and symbol, representing in myriad ways the transcendence of the vulgar to the sublime. Likewise, the translucent pale leaves, looking much like trimmed artichoke petals, are slippery yet crisp, subtle yet definite, unique but somehow familiar. They are a rare treat. I had never had them prepared in a dish with gingko nut, but the pairing is exquisite. Gingko, prior to ripening and becoming the malodorous hell-in-a-nut, is rich, sweet, nutty, and has a- for lack of better descriptors- muddy/boggy taste. This may not sound as appealing as it actually is, but like everything else in the meal, it was delicious. The simplicity of the dish really shows how you can take two ingredients, and using nothing but a little oil, some water, and heat to bring out dozens of intricate flavors. This, on top of the appeal to the Buddhist imagery, makes the dish a meditation in itself.

The next dish to arrive was my favorite of the meal. Individual tofu custards arrived each in a soup spoon ringed by steamed broccoli florets flavored with a little soy sauce. The Chinese have an affinity for silken tofu, an extremely soft soy bean curd, just on the verge of being viscous. I detest the stuff. It feels like a mouthful of loogie, usually served in a fairly flavorless broth. So I was incredibly surprised to enjoy these little spoonfuls as much as I did. The chefs had taken a soy bean product, somewhere between the stage of soy milk and silken tofu, fortified it with a few egg yolks (and probably another powdered stabilizer), then steamed it into an inch and a half high custard, about an inch in diameter, with a deep well in the middle. This was filled with shredded dried baby shrimp, bonito, and chili oil. The idea was to put a floret in your mouth and drain the spoon, custard and all, then mix it in your mouth. The gooeyness (still quite loogie like, but a little firmer) was lessened by the fiber in the broccoli, and then the sharp and chewy shreds (the texture of shredded beef jerky) made little “surprises” for your moth. The flavor was fishy and spicy, the bitter sulfur of the broccoli muting the sweetness of the tofu and egg. What was so fun about this dish is that it was a beautiful demonstration of kou gan, literally translated from Mandarin to be “mouthfeel.” An easy example of this major element of is the frequency with which you see bone shards left in meat after butchery in China. These are not seen as evidence of inexpert flaws in skill, but are rather a highly desired effect, done solely so that your mouth will have something else to do than just taste. Where mouthfeel to Europeans means the degree to which a sauce or liquid coats the mouth and tongue, or the weight of a dish has on your perception of the dish as a whole, to Chinese it means something which incorporates all the more senses in to the meal.

Finally, the main event- Beijing roast duck. Traditional duck raised and heavily fatted just prior to being killed, plucked and the innards removed. It is then hung to dry for several hours. A glaze of honey, vinegar, sherry, cornstarch, ginger and scallion is brought to a boil then spooned over the duck, which is then dried again so the glaze adheres well. It is then roasted in such a way that the majority of the fat renders leaving a skin crispier than a potato chip, the meat tender and flavorful. The bird is carved into stock card thickness chunks, which are dipped in plum sauce, garnished with julienned spring onion and cucumber and wrapped in bing, a paper-thin flour pancake. It is delicious, but very greasy and huge chunks of fat still cling between the skin and meat. The founder of this restaurant however, after studying in the west, developed a new way of raising the ducks so that the meat becomes marbled with fat rather than requiring the overfeeding to develop a layer of subcutaneous fat that serves as the transport of the delicious duck flavor. In addition to the three traditional garnishes above, this restaurant provides Chinese red radish, grated garlic, salt, and two pickled relishes.

The meal ended with ba si, a delicious Chinese dessert a throwback to my childhood. The chef will take several apple wedges, roll them in cornstarch, dip them in boiling lightly caramelized sugar and bring them to the table. The cornstarch provides a base layer for the sugar to adhere to, which in turn cooks the apple through, and in the minute or so it takes to run the plate to the table, the sugar begins to cool just enough that when you pull four dumpling, long strands of sugar trail behind. You quickly dip the wedges in to ice water which instantly seizes the sugar into a hard candy shell, leaving the enclosed apple boiling hot and just on the hard side of gooey.

Wonderful.