weinoo

Reliability in the restaurant biz. There’s something to be said about a restaurant that you can rely upon. Especially if that something you rely upon is a particular dish that you want to be good each and every time you order it. When I was working "the line" at a hot downtown restaurant back in the mid-90s, that was something that was drilled into my head by the chef/owner over and over. Make the dish the same way every time. That's what the customer comes back for - the same damn dish again and again. In NYC’s Chinatown, there is just such a place. Strangely, or perhaps not so much, it’s eponymously named after its most famous dish, Peking Duck. Now, you have to understand; I eat in Chinatown – a lot. Most of it’s C and below level stuff, though I do have some faves (can you say Great NY Noodletown?). We live in Chinatown and I often get annoyed by Chinatown and its profusion of crappy restaurants using the cheapest raw materials they can find. But I love Peking Duck House. Believe me when I say that Peking Duck isn’t one of those dishes that you can just “throw together” or “whip up” at home. It involves inflation of the duck's skin, scalding with boiling water, hanging, dripping, roasting, pancake making – basically, it's just too damn much work. This ain’t no 30-minute meal, if you get my drift. So enter Peking Duck House. It has been in business for over 25 years at 28 Mott St. in NYC (there’s also a midtown location, to which I have not been), and I recently reacquainted myself with the place, after a long hiatus, when a friend wanted to go out for…guess what? So off we went, 3 or 4 of us from my building. And all I can say is this place totally rocks - at least for the Peking Duck. I’m not responsible for the rest of your order. Remember, the whole of Chinatown is fairly mediocre; the whys of that are a subject for another post (lousy cooks, shitty ingredients – you be the judge). The way the menu at Peking Duck House is set up, they try to trick you into ordering a lot more food, for a lot more money, than you really need. The “special house dinner,” or the “Peking Duck dinner” are just money grabbers, so do as I do. Order a whole Peking duck, a couple of apps – say pickled cabbage and mock dock made from tofu skin, a safe vegetable dish (forget about stuff like snow pea leaves – not gonna happen) and another stir fry and you’ll easily have enough food for 4 people. And it’ll end up a lot cheaper than the dinners they put together for you. What emerges from the kitchen around 15 or 20 minutes later is a thing of beauty. All glistening, drippy, and mahogany. Of course they show it to you, and then a guy with really good cleaver skills expertly cuts the meat and skin off the bone, till all that’s left is the carcass. A few times I’ve ask for the carcass to go, and get some strange and annoyed looks, but that’s duck soup…and here’s our duck, all cut up and ready to go… Then it’s all up to you, brushing your pancake with hoisin sauce, getting the right percentage of meat vs. skin, adding the scallion flourish, the rolling up of the package and taking that first bite of one of the still great dishes in Chinatown.

My report above is about the weekday lunch service; we just walked in at 2 P.M. - no problem.

[Moderator note: The original Momofuku Ssam Bar topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Momofuku Ssam Bar (2008-2009)] Recently, I waxed rhapsodic about the Peking Duck at Peking Duck House here in Chinatown. Now, while that duck may be the be-all and end-all as far as Peking Duck is concerned, it is not, by any means, the only duck in town. There are literally dozens of places where you can get a roasted duck in Chinatown, mostly under $20, and even if you head farther north, you’re bound to run into a Chinese joint where roasted meats, duck included, are on the menu. Usually, these places are serving your roast duck over a plate of plain white rice, topped with a little salty, fatty sauce that makes everything taste good. Sometimes, they’ll incorporate it into a soup, as in roast duck wonton soup at Great NY Noodletown. Trust me – it’s all good. There’s very little you can do wrong to a duck, other than overcook the crap out of it, and most Chinese roasteries have it down to a science; oh, the breast will not be all nice and rosy red, because to do that would mean ending up with undercooked legs, thighs and wings, but in general the duck is good. So where am I headed with all this? A while ago, back in May, Momofuku Ssam Bar (Ssam Bar topic - 2006 - 2011) began serving an all-duck lunch; let’s call it their rotisserie duck program, for want of a better term; there are also a few non-duck items on the menu. I hadn’t been yet and with Significant Eater in town for her three-day weekend, what better time to make a go of it than this past Friday afternoon? After all, Ssam Bar and it’s older sibling, Noodle Bar, have long been lunch favorites of ours, so off we went. The “new” Ssam Bar has expanded into the space that was once Milk Bar, which is now across the street. I was a little confused when we first walked into the Ssam Bar space from 2nd Avenue, but one of the lovely staff pointed the way for us. You order at the counter in the former Milk Bar space, with the menu above, and then they deliver the food to wherever you end up sitting – your choice. From our seats (well, mine, at least), I had a good view of the rotisserie contraption. It was late in service, so only one or two duckies were left spinning, getting all golden and delicious in the process. Of course, for old time’s sake, we had to order the pork buns (perhaps the dish that elevated David Chang to cult-star status), and they were better than ever, with a nice slab of fatty meat nestled in the silky bun... Another small plate we tried, simply called Broccoli Salad, had the broccoli tossed with a slightly funky smoked bluefish vinaigrette and topped with pieces of crispy duck skin, taking the crucifer to a new level... We then shared two of the large plates; the first one out was a Duck Sandwich. I couldn’t quite figure out what part of the duck they were using; perhaps slices of the thigh or maybe a house made mild duck sausage? Served on excellent bread, and lightly toasted and slathered with a mildly spicy mayo, with shredded lettuce and peppadews adding a nice crunch… Our other lunch plate was the Rotisserie Duck over Rice, served with an all-you-can-add condiment tray including fried crispy shallots and a duck-fat scallion sauce. The nice portion of breast is cooked to a luscious rosy red and hides some pulled dark meat underneath. There’s a handful of greens (watercress here) and for an additional buck a stack of lettuce leaves… And after a little manipulation of ingredients, a juicy, delicious wrap is born… Guess what? They disappeared just as quickly. It appears as if David Chang has done it again, with a roasted duck as good as any in Chinatown, and perhaps just a little more special.

In salads, I often just use avocado as the "oil." In other words, as I toss the salad with my "impeccably clean hands," I smash up the avo and it becomes the dressing, along with perhaps some freshly squeezed lemon juice or other acid...even the tomatoes, if they're good, can become the acidic component. I know that the Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines have been mentioned a lot as being great for vegetarians. I haven't yet seen dishes that require very little cooking, like tabbouleh or cacik (cucumber-yogurt soup) or the great bean salads, using canned beans. Of course, when I go "vegetarian," which tends to last for a meal or so, I love thinking Italian. Caprese, of course, but pasta e fagioli is great too. The vegetable/pasta dishes of southern Italy are satisfying and healthy as well, and just a little grating of a fine Parmesan of Pecorino goes a long way to boost flavor.

Here's a recent topic specifically about the Niagara Falls area...click for Niagara Falls area topic.

Of course it does. Even though there are those who would argue .

I used to think many vegetables were better by being briefly blanched, but thinly slicing and salting, or lightly pickling, works just as well - in some cases, depending on the final use, even better.

I'm actually in DC this week, and was thinking of doing a walk-in tonight. Will be heading back to NYC tomorrow, but thanks for the offer. Looks very interesting.

How about slicing them very thinly on the diagonal, salting them for about an hour, rinse and dry, then toss them with olive oil and lemon juice and shave a bunch of pecorino or parmesan over the top. In other words, instead of adding them to a salad, they become the salad.

This past Sunday, Mark Bittman gave us a sneak peak at Ferran Adrià's next cookbook, "The Family Meal...," in the New York Times' magazine section. Apparently, like all great chefs, F.A. really likes good, simple food...and who doesn't? Of course, the book isn't without "controversy," at least in Bittman's eyes. You see, F.A. believes that every good cook should have at their disposal things like homemade stocks, condiments and even some sauces. I'll bet many of us do - I always have some good stock in my freezer. Bittman specifically writes about sofrito, and how it's not something that one would normally throw together for a weeknight meal; but in Coleman Andrews' classic Catalan Cuisine, Andrews suggests that sofrito is something that many Catalan cooks make a big batch of and keep in their refrigerators for just such a purpose. No matter the "controversy," I am looking forward to this book, and I'm wondering if it'll become part of your collection as well.

As an American, I'd suggest The Key to Chinese Cooking is a pretty good book for any collection. Additionally, those Time-Life Foods of the World books were an invaluable resource when I first started cooking.

I do go to another place in Chinatown when I want a specific dish. That dish is Peking Duck, and Peking Duck House does it right.

Have I mentioned Curtis Stone?

I will definitely give Cantoon Garden a try. O.K. 218 is...O.K. but I think the suckling pig at Ny Noodletown is one of the best roasted meats in Chinatown. As far as the noodles are concerned, I really meant to say the shrimp/pork wontons are excellent...the noodles, not made in house, are just OK. There are some off-menu dishes that are wonderful; at least off ala carte menu, and those lamb chops are one of them. I basically try to stay away from the stir-fries. I was there recently and ordered for a party of 15 - everyone loved it and it was less than $20 a person. Both the fried squid and the fried shrimp were stellar as well. The whole Special chicken was juicy and delicious. Whoever was working the deep fryer than night knew what they were doing. But, let's face it...the problem in Chinatown is consistency. I've had great and not great meals at Oriental Garden. Great and not great dishes at Congee Village. That's why it becomes so hard to recommend Chinatown in general.

I've gotten to a point where the cheap, hole-in-the-wall places (which I've written about fairly extensively in the past), from hand-pulled noodles to 5 for a dollar dumplings, to cheung fun carts, et.al. do my stomach more harm than good, so I bypass them 95% of the time. Whether it's the cheap as can be ingredients, overuse of oil, lack of any care in the kitchen or whatever, I just can't rate them that highly. My last experience at Oriental Garden was less than stellar and less than cheap, so why bother? When I want a decent, tasty meal IN CHINATOWN, Great NY Noodletown is still my go-to and still sits well with me. Simple, decent roasted meats, noodles and wontons. And for a crowd, if you order correctly, I still like Congee Village.

I imagine this would be fairly hard to screw up. Just don't use lemon juice concentrate, start with 50/50 red peppers to artichokes, add the other ingredients sparingly and then taste, taste, taste.

It is not, not by a long shot.

I don't have any neighborhood faves, because there aren't any, but Ayada in Elmhurst has blown me away.

I have this thing which looks like the one above, but is slightly different. It works okay, but I think it will work even better with plain old wooden popsicle sticks (anyone have a good source for those?). Here's a raspberry popsicle; the alcohol component is Kirsch, but only 1 T per pint of puree. And I imagine that the grapefruit/Campari sorbet that I often make will be just fine as popsicles. The nice thing about sorbets with Campari is that you don't need much booze and the Campari flavor shines right through.

Yes, the canned beans are great too. Once again, I highly recommend Goy'a line.

You might glean some info from this recent topic. The goya products are uniformly pretty good and reasonable; e.g. tuna, mackerel, cod, squid, etc. I don't know about the quality of a lot of the product, but the Asian groceries around here carry a ridiculous amount of canned goods at cheap prices.

Today, Sifton gives Empellon a 1* review in the Times - but in a piece that clearly reads like a 2. I haven't been yet, but it certainly appears as if he deducted a star for the noise/party level. But the review makes me want to try it - and soon. Like on a Tuesday, early.

But how do you know it was the bad mussel?

Funny thing is, I walked over to the South Street Seaport today in hopes of trying this joint out (I had failed to see reread this topic in the past week or two). I guess Bobby and Curtis and Steve and whoever are just not that great at judging what kind of a restaurant America really needs most. Perhaps Stone would do better on Australia's Next Great Restaurant. Also, anyone who ever actually eats at the South Street Seaport - if you're reading eGullet, you should know better.

I think you can hardly count Fisherman's Friend as a candy. It's medicine.