Why Duck Is on Each Restaurant Menu These Days

Like bell bottoms, shrimp cocktail, 3-D motion pictures, Espresso Martinis, and vinyl LPs, what’s outdated is usually new once more. As Meals & Wine’s restaurant editor, I eat out on a really common foundation, and I couldn’t assist however discover that the outdated stalwart protein that’s duck — whether or not it’s a duck breast, confit leg, or foie gras — has been showing in all places lately, typically displacing menu cornerstones like hen or steak. And whilst you in all probability gained’t discover me rocking some bell bottoms any time quickly, it’s secure to say that duck is within the culinary zeitgeist proper now, waddling onto menus throughout the nation.

From the dry-aged crown of duck on the Brooklyn brasserie Francie and the old-school canard à la presse at Pasjoli in Los Angeles to the large, duck-focused part of the menu on the fashionable French bistro Obélix in Chicago and the (optionally caviar-laden) Peking duck on the San Francisco restaurant Z & Y Peking Duck, it’s clear that we live in a full-blown duckaissance. 

Duck has after all been part of culinary traditions around the globe for hundreds of years. There’s Peking-style duck, the bistro commonplace duck confit, and foie gras in all its varieties. Additionally, see duck à l’orange, the traditional French dish that legendary meals author Paula Wolfert described in her 1983 cookbook The Cooking of Southwest France as an “outdated gourmand warhorse” — that’s seemingly due a comeback of its personal. 2017 F&W Finest New Chef Angie Mar’s duck flambé graced the quilt of our December 2018 challenge. Or then there’s at all times the duck press — alternatively often called canard à la presse or canard à la rouennaise — which appears to be having its personal second.

“The duck press is a dish close to and pricey to my coronary heart,” says 2014 F&W Finest New Chef Dave Beran, the place it’s been the “showpiece” at his Santa Monica, California, restaurant Pasjoli ever because it opened in 2019. He served it in 2011 whereas he was govt chef at Subsequent in Chicago in the course of the Paris 1906 menu, and in addition had it on the menu at his now-closed L.A. restaurant Dialogue. Out there in solely a handful of eating places in America lately, the canard à la presse is an old-fashioned French presentation, seemingly most well-known on the 400-plus-year-old restaurant La Tour d’Argent in Paris (which by the way was the inspiration for the movie Ratatouille).

On this traditional dish, a duck, cooked medium-rare, has its legs and breasts eliminated, and the carcass is crushed with a robust vise — typically performed tableside — yielding a wealthy blood- and organ-infused sauce that’s then additional diminished. A part of the status is the rarity; these presses are costly, uncommon, and tough to supply.

Diners who order the duck at La Tour d’Argent obtain a postcard with a serial quantity. In keeping with the New York Instances, the five hundred,000th duck was served in 1976, the millionth in 2003. A latest Yelp photograph from March 2024 denotes 1,183,815 duck dinners. Pasjoli additionally supplies a postcard with a serial quantity; theirs is as much as 19,000. It is going to take some work to catch up. 

In keeping with Robert Courtine’s The Hundred Glories of French Cooking, it was rumored within the Nineties at La Tour d’Argent, the canard à la presse “took three ducklings for each one which was served,” however issues are slightly extra sustainable at Pasjoli, the place the breast is served alongside the duck confit that graces a salad with crispy duck pores and skin, and in addition will get integrated right into a bread pudding. “The magic of this dish is there isn’t any waste,” says Beran. 

“We find yourself with the course being one to at least one, within the sense that each half is used for every order. It is uncommon to discover a dish that’s basically a closed loop with each half being showcased in its personal manner.” 

This form of sustainability and moral focus is at play at a whole lot of locations that serve duck. Like at Francie in Brooklyn, with its roasted crown of duck — mainly a duck with its legs and wings eliminated for different functions — that is delivered to the desk on a platter surrounded by herbs and flowers for a second of spectacle. Complete geese are butchered on the restaurant, the crown is dry-aged for round 30 days, after which the remainder of the duck will get put to make use of in different dishes. 

“For the reason that chicken gave its life for the restaurant, we really feel it’s essential to make the most of the complete chicken,” says Francie chef and co-owner Chris Cipollone. “Bones go to jus, fats will get rendered, and the leg meat goes into varied preparations just like the pappardelle Bolognese and the duck mortadella.” 

If any restaurant understands duck properly, it’d simply be the trendy French restaurant Obélix in Chicago, with a menu that runs the gamut of duck-based dishes. A number of highlights embrace foie gras macarons, a dry-aged duck breast accompanied by a smoked duck sausage, a brochette with duck coronary heart and pores and skin, and an particularly duck-forward salade Lyonnaise with duck confit, duck fats croutons, and a duck egg, naturally. 

“Utilizing entire animals means being artistic with all of its distinctive elements,” says chef de delicacies Nathan Kim, who brings in instances of contemporary duck at a time. “Not solely is it value efficient, it forces our workforce to assume outdoors the field and make the most of our technical skillset to carry the perfect out of all of the elements of the duck.”

Which results in a dish just like the foie taco at Obélix, the place traditional French method and a world perspective come collectively. Known as the “Foie-Co,” it’s the creation of chef-owner Oliver Poilevey, and it combines seared foie gras, pickled cherries, and salsa macha on a nixtamalized blue corn tortilla. It’s considerably of a mind-bending dish that may trigger some apprehension, nevertheless it works spectacularly properly. When Paul Bocuse described foie gras as ”one of the beautiful feathers within the cap of French gastronomy” in his cookbook Regional French Cooking, I don’t assume he had this explicit dish in thoughts. However you by no means know.

Nonetheless, duck within the culinary sphere goes again for hundreds of years. “For Chinese language delicacies, Peking duck has over 400 years of historical past,” says govt chef Lijun Han of Z & Y Peking Duck in San Francisco, “And the dish was solely served on the imperial menu on the time. Right now, Peking duck stays a nationwide treasure in China.” 

Han serves round 20 geese a day on the restaurant. It’s a multi-day course of that ends in an otherworldly, shiny, and crackly pores and skin alongside skinny, juicy slices of meat, and reservations for the duck are extremely advisable. Leftover duck bones are used to make a standard Peking duck soup, and in a slight break from custom, there’s additionally the choice so as to add caviar to the duck for an entire East-meets-West interaction of crispy duck pores and skin, savory duck meat, and the saline pops of caviar — which is having its personal second throughout menus in America.

“Duck has the texture of luxurious,” says Karyn Tomlinson, chef-owner of the restaurant Myriel in St. Paul explains when requested why she thinks duck is having a second lately. “It’s not a typical weeknight protein for many People, but it doesn’t carry the stigma of a luxurious of minimize beef for the conscientious omnivore.”

Tomlinson echoes different cooks’ sentiments concerning the sustainability and economic system of working with duck. “Geese, like pork, have little or no waste,” says Tomlinson on the way it varieties a complete ecosystem at her restaurant. From the aged breasts to the confit legs on the à la carte menu, to the giblets and coronary heart that seem in a porridge on the tasting menu, Tomlinson says duck “performs an integral position on our menu, each as a function ingredient and pantry merchandise,” together with the fats for confit potatoes and an all-purpose inventory and jus.

Like a whole lot of classics, what’s new is outdated, and what’s outdated is new once more. Whether or not it’s the flexibility, moral motivation, sustainability, frugality, the artistic alternatives for the resourceful chef, or the sheer deliciousness, geese have lengthy been a part of a standard culinary canon. These focal factors keep it up to a contemporary period, whether or not the duck will get stuffed right into a sausage, cooked in its personal fats, squished in a vise, or tucked in a corn tortilla.