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.