Duck Hunt

[philadining]

This is one for the, ahem, veteran philly eaters out there.

Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, there was a Thai restaurant on South Street, I want to say on the south side of the 500 or 600 block (near Mars!) It had one of those generic Thai restaurant names: "The King of Siam" sticks in my head, but it might have been some variation of that. At some point, it moved to Chinatown, to Arch street between 9th and 10th, on the south side of the street, almost across from "Siam Cuisine" but a little further east, but didn't last long there.

That restaurant featured the single best duck preparation I have ever had, and I've made it my lifelong quest to eat just about every duck that appears on a menu. It was a roasted half of a duck, with an intense sauce flavored with szechuan peppercorn, black pepper and garlic. I just can't get that flavor out of my mind.

I know this is a LONG shot, but I can't help hoping that by some miracle someone remembers that place and knows that the chef moved to XXX or opened his/her own place called XXX, and of course still serves the duck....

Sound familiar to anyone? Or has anybody spotted a similar item on a menu? There's plenty of duck with garlic sauce around, but it was that combo of szechuan peppercorn and black pepper that made this so memorable. A had a friend who was attending the Restaurant School at the time, and I discovered that her friends would wax rhapsodic about that duck too, so I know it had a bit of a rep in the Philly culinary scene back in those days.

I've just made myself really hungry....

[KatieLoeb]

Duck season! Wabbit season! Duck season! Wabbit season!....

Sorry - I go all Loony Tunes whenever I see the words Duck Hunt.

Being another sucker for the "if-there's-duck-on-the-menu-I-will-surely-order-it", I'm intrigued by the description. I don't remember the restaurant on South Street but the location you mentioned on Arch sounds vaguely familiar. I remember wondering to myself which Thai restaurant was there first and how pissed off the owners must've been when the second guy opened right on the same block. King of Siam also sounds vaguely familiar too, but that might be a Braodway reference in the back of my head.

Maybe if you call Chef Kamol Phutlek at Nan and ask they might know. He's been around forever and would surely remember the competition from back then. Whether or not he remembers the dish in question is another story, but could probably give you a lead or two.

[spikemom]

I'll bet this is the restaurant you're talking about (see Elaine Tait review below, from the Inquirer archives). Unfortunately, there isn't much detail about the duck dish.

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

December 8, 1985

Section: FEATURES FOOD

Edition: FINAL

Page: M01

Memo:DINING OUT

THAI MENU IS SERVED IN ELEGANCE

Elaine Tait, Inquirer Restaurant Critic

Picture a romantic dining room with expensive, seashell-motif chandeliers overhead, plush pale carpeting underfoot and a soothing color scheme of old rose and gentle jade.

Imagine tall pink tapers, silk flowers and artistically folded napkins on each table. Add soft background music.

You'd expect such sybaritic trappings in a pricey French restaurant, but at The King and I, the food is the complex, appealing fare of Thailand and the check will probably be no higher than you'd get in a no-frills neighborhood spot.

Thai food is new to a lot of Philadelphians, and the menu at the new South Street restaurant doesn't always make it terribly easy to know what you'll be getting. An appetizer called Por Peer Krob, for example, is described as ''shrimp and pork stuffing, bean thread and bean sprout." What the menu should also say is that the stuffing, which is subtle in flavor and pleasantly crunchy, comes wrapped inside the thinnest rice pasta for a deep- fried appetizer similar to Chinese spring roll.

There seems to be a similarity among the seasonings in many of the dishes, as well as a light hand with the hot spices. Even the dishes described as spicy were tame, so if you want fire in your food, it would be wise to request it.

You don't have to love shrimp to enjoy a meal here, but it wouldn't hurt, since so many dishes are lavished with this popular ingredient. Goong Gabork, another of the restaurant's appetizers, brought large shrimp bundled in thin rice pasta for frying and served with a sweet and mild red pepper sauce. Tomyum Goong had lots of small shrimp and fresh button mushrooms in a spicy soup sharpened with lots of hot pepper and lemon grass. Goong Graree, one of the entrees listed as a specialty here, served up medium-sized, sauteed shrimp in a Thai curry sauce mellowed with coconut milk.

A number of entrees are offered with your choice of pork, beef or chicken. Pahd Khing, ordered with pork, brought an abundance of lean, delicious pork slices in a sauce rather gently flavored with ginger and onion. Beef was the meat choice for Gang Garree, a mistake, I'm convinced, since the thinly sliced beef in the peppery Thai curry was dry and woody.

More dishes seem mild than fiery here, a surprise to one accustomed to the majority of palate-searing dishes at Thai restaurants elsewhere around town. An appetizer of rotund steamed mussels had an elusive, lemony flavor and a topping in which green pepper was fairly subdued. An entree of chicken, mushrooms and green pepper arrived in a gentle sweet-and-sour sauce garnished with thin curls of cucumber.

Most non-seafood dishes are made with small, thin slices of meat. An exception is Pedyung, duck skillfully roasted to keep the flesh wonderfully moist yet make the skin as crunchy as the fried rice wrappings on the appetizers here. The duck is offered with a choice of sauces, including one with black pepper and garlic in which both ingredients had been so thoroughly tamed as to be unrecognizable.

Entrees arrive with steamed rice in elaborately decorated "silver" tureens. There is no dessert list and no liquor license, but your bottle from home (beer is perfect with some of the spicier dishes) will be chilled and nicely poured into the restaurant's attractive goblets.

The King and I is less than two months old, which may account for fairly sparsely populated dining rooms during two recent visits. Service by the one- man staff was extremely attentive without being intrusive.

THE KING AND I

536 South Street; 215 627-8000.

Open: Dinner, weekdays from 5 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday to midnight, Sunday 4 to 10 p.m.

Price range: $6.95 to $12.95

[philadining]

I'll bet this is the restaurant you're talking about (see Elaine Tait review below, from the Inquirer archives). Unfortunately, there isn't much detail about the duck dish.

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

December 8, 1985

....

THE KING AND I

536 South Street;

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Now THAT is impressive sleuthing! Big thanks, spikemom! That's the place, and it's nice to know that I was on the right track. It was indeed a pretty nice spot, a bit more elegant than most Thai restaurants at the time. If only the review had mentioned the chef's name!

I really don't think it was the novelty of the food, or my less-experienced palate, but I remember most of the Thai places being a bit more thrilling back in the late 80s. There was another favorite, a couple of years later, on the 100 block of South Street, (which has been through several incarnations since) with another generic Thai name, that our crowd simply referred to as "The BTR" for "bitchin' Thai restaurant." They made a masaman beef curry that was stewed slowly for many hours in a little crockpot, and when they ran out, there was no making more until the next day. The masochist in me keeps ordering this dish everywhere I go, and I'm always disappointed, nothing approaches the richness and texture of the big, falling-apart chunks of meat in their peanutty curry.

I know it's only torturing myself to obsess about these things, sometimes one's favorite restaurants close, one's favorite dishes disappear, but I'm sorry, I will NOT go gently into that good night....

[spikemom]

Could your BTR have been Bangkok House, a BYO at 117 South Street?

[philadining]

Could your BTR have been Bangkok House, a BYO at 117 South Street?

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Yes, I'm sure that's it, but it changed menus (and ownership i presume) years ago, although they kept the name for a while. It's called something else now, and I haven't seen that type of masaman anywhere else, although I got close in San Francisco once....

For several years it seemed as if there were a federal law that all Thai places had to have "Bangkok" "Siam" "Orchid" or "King" in the name somewhere, tax abatements if you used two or three of those words. There's a bit more variety these days, but I still have to stop for a minute and sort-out which one we're talking about!

[chefreit]

Duck season!  Wabbit season!  Duck season!  Wabbit season!....

Sorry - I go all Loony Tunes whenever I see the words Duck Hunt. 

Being another sucker for the "if-there's-duck-on-the-menu-I-will-surely-order-it", I'm intrigued by the description.  I don't remember the restaurant on South Street but the location you mentioned on Arch sounds vaguely familiar.  I remember wondering to myself which Thai restaurant was there first and how pissed off the owners must've been when the second guy opened right on the same block.  King of Siam also sounds vaguely familiar too, but that might be a Braodway reference in the back of my head. 

Maybe if you call Chef Kamol Phutlek at Nan and ask they might know.  He's been around forever and would surely remember the competition from back then.  Whether or not he remembers the dish in question is another story, but could probably give you a lead or two.

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HEY GUYS!

JERSEY is in the HOUSE!

[philadining]

HEY GUYS! JERSEY is in the HOUSE!

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Look out! somebody might start throwing rose petals or something.... Chefreit rides with a rowdy crew....