The Weekly Feed: Extra Crispy Edition
Dish of the Week: Crispy roast duck
Where: New Big Wong
One of my favorite dishes is roast duck. Delicious meat and crisp skin. What's not to love? Except, of course, for the extreme difficulty in doing it well. So many Chinese restaurants tend to give you weak ducks with a small amount of flavorless meat, a quarter inch layer of fat, and a lackluster skin. They may also crisp the skin up by pouring hot oil over the top to "fry" the skin. This ends up being quite problematic, as many restaurants appear to reuse the oil over and over again, leading to an off flavor. Those ducks should be relegated to the Peking duck preparation of pancakes, plum sauce, and scallions, which masks the flavors of subpar duck. Good roast duck plays best with a neutral background of white rice.
New Big Wong recently reopened after a renovation, and it may easily gain the title of Best Chinese in Chinatown. (Though it doesn't take much to earn that title.) The roast duck has perfectly crisped skin with plenty of meat on its bones, and the majority of the fat rendered out. By itself, it doesn't have an extreme amount of flavor. But the pool of slightly sweet soy sauce-based sauce the duck rests in quickly imbues it with more than enough flavor. The sauce is plated before the duck to preserve that perfect skin, so be sure to dig down to the bottom to soak your pieces.
Small Bites
Veg for the Common Good
The Common Good City Farm promotes access to fresh, local and healthy food through urban agriculture projects in D.C. They will be hosting a fundraiser at Monday, March 13 16 at Vegetate from 6:30-9:30PM featuring DJ DrEDD. There is a suggested $10 donation for the event. You can RSVP on Common Good's website.
Brew News
City Paper's Orr Shtuhl launched a Beerspotter Twitter feed, which takes messages from other twitteres so readers are up on the locations of the latest and greatest beers. For more info, you can check out Orr's post.
Mice come out to play
Bourbon's Owen Thomson and Bar Pilar's (and Drink in the Details co-blogger) Adam Bernbach will be behind the bar for Billy's Parents' House this Sunday at Warehouse Theater. The party is a tribute to all those great high school parties when someone's parents went out of town. Expect fanciful takes on those helter-skelter cobbled together drinks, such as homemade wine coolers, mom's schnapps cabinet, agar-agar (vegan jello) shots, and the "new" tequila shot. The event starts at 7 p.m. with no cover, and will be DJed by Yellow Fever.
Dating advice from bartenders
The Gibson's Derek Brown debuted his first Mixmaster column for The Atlantic's new food blog, which features thought leaders like Grant Achatz and Marion Nestle. He will be writing about his perspective as a bartender, as well as discussing drinks. His first post is about utilizing bartenders as wingmen.