“To do duck you have to be really disciplined, like cut out your social life,” says Chartchai Vongsanikul. “Period.”
Vongsanikul, who goes by Chef Bob, is looking me on his semi-day off to speak about duck. He’s the chef at Roasted Duck by Pa Ord, a tiny restaurant in a strip mall in Thai City that focuses on taut, shiny-skinned roast duck. His is the face you see peeking between the row of hanging geese behind the counter on the restaurant. He lives and breathes duck, spending his days brining, drying, roasting and chopping it, even considering duck when he’s not within the kitchen.
Hanging geese at Roasted Duck by Pa Ord in Hollywood.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions)
“Today is my day off, but I have to go in and prepare the ducks,” he says. “So I don’t really have a day off. If you’re going to do duck, you should think twice.”
About 15 years in the past, throughout a visit again to Thailand from Los Angeles, Vongsanikul’s father requested him to take over the duck restaurant he’d opened in Bangkok. The restaurant served a Kunming-style roast duck, a variation of Peking duck from China. Vongsanikul ended up spending years getting ready geese for the restaurant, tweaking the preparation and presentation to one thing he believed would enchantment to Thai palates.
“There was a lot of trial and error of getting the taste to something for Thai people,” he says.
In early 2024, he had a gathering in Bangkok with Lawan Bhanduram, the girl behind practically a dozen Los Angeles eating places, together with Pa Ord Noodle. He had really labored for her for a short while years prior, buying items for her eating places.
“She was semi-retired at the time,” he says. “I said, come on, let’s do this. I got the duck, you got your name and your brand.”
The pair returned to Los Angeles and opened Roasted Duck by Pa Ord shortly after.
Vongsanikul dry-brines his geese for a few hours, then dips them in sizzling water to tighten the pores and skin. He paints the geese with honey, then lets them air dry for twenty-four hours. The geese roast, a dozen at a time, at what he calls “just the right temperature” for one hour.
The duck meat glistens on the plate, organized in a small heap of skin-clad tiles. The pores and skin is a deep-golden brown, with the thinnest layer of fats beneath. It clings to the duck, delicate and wrinkly, with a fleeting crunch that melts mere seconds after it hits your tongue. The meat is succulent and tender, saturated in its personal juices and fats.
The roast duck particular for one at Roasted Duck by Pa Ord in Thai City. The set comes along with your alternative of rice or jade noodles and two sauces.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions)
Vongsanikul suggests making an attempt the duck by itself first, earlier than sampling the 2 accompanying sauces. One is a darkish soy sauce spiked with vinegar and sliced jalapeños. The opposite is a gravy fortified with star anise, cinnamon, soy sauce and sugar. It’s heat and only a tad candy.
You may order the duck bobbing in Bhanduram’s signature soup ($17), the ruddy broth heady with the flavors of the duck. Or swimming in curry ($17) or on high of a salad ($17). However for duck to the tenth energy, there’s the roasted duck particular, for one ($25) or two ($35), served with the sliced meat and rice or jade noodles.
Lower Beverly Hills 
The entire duck presentation from Lower Beverly Hills comes with a singular tackle shepherd’s pie.
(Glee Digital Media)
At Lower Beverly Hills, Drew Rosenberg is simply as fanatical about his duck.
“It’s like my baby,” he says.
The chef began serving a complete duck preparation ($135) on the restaurant about six months in the past, hoping to entice diners with choices outdoors of the stellar steak program.
“Everyone loves duck, everyone does duck,” Rosenberg says. “I wanted to be a little different with how we are presenting it.”
Rosenberg sources his geese from Mary’s farm in California and dry-ages the birds for 14 days. He lacquers the breasts with honey and a spice combination that features coriander, black pepper, plum powder and grains of paradise. It’s served sliced, the pores and skin so crisp it crackles, every bit its personal supply of dissolute pleasure. They swim in a seasonal jus wealthy with duck drippings, brown butter and no matter produce is in season. Earlier this yr, there was an opulent huckleberry jus with Cassis liqueur and contemporary mountain huckleberry puree. It was the type of sauce you scrape from the plate. Now there’s a market cherry jus with Murray Household Farms cherries.
On the aspect is a play on shepherd’s pie, made by curing the legs in a single day, confiting the meat and folding it right into a diminished sherry wine cream that delivers the identical lavish oomph as a slab of foie gras. Piped excessive are mashed Yukon gold and Japanese purple potatoes. The primary is mild and creamy, the latter like whipped velvet.
The entire duck introduced with a singular tackle shepherd’s pie at Lower Beverly Hills.
(Glee Digital Media)
Rosenberg can also be making bao buns with the rendered duck fats.
“I just wanted to kind of take the stuffiness out of the dish and make it fun to eat,” he says.
It might be essentially the most compelling entire duck presentation within the metropolis, however Rosenberg says it’s been a tough promote. That’s comprehensible with the opposite heavyweight proteins on the menu vying for diners’ attentions.
“I thought about taking it off the menu because it’s not easy to sell,” he says. “Though we did have a celebrity come in with his wife recently, and they each ordered their own ducks five days in a row. It made me really happy.”
Rosenberg sometimes makes simply eight geese per week, and pre-ordering is inspired. Keep away from duck disappointment. Name forward.
Olle Korean Delicacies
If you stroll into Olle, the restaurant on the base of the Oxford Palace Lodge in Koreatown, plumes of smoke billow from the tables. The aroma dangling within the air is woody and candy, just like the remedy room at a five-star spa.
What you’re smelling isn’t marinated brief ribs or pork stomach caramelizing on a grill. It’s smoked duck, steaming in lovely, pale, hinoki picket packing containers.
The smoked duck at Olle Korean Delicacies in Koreatown is served in a hinoki wooden field.
(Lily Kim)
“I imported 20 hinoki box sets from Korea,” says proprietor Eugene Chun. “It cost me $10,000.”
For Chun, it was an affordable value to pay for the restaurant’s signature dish, a half smoked duck introduced like treasure.
Throughout a visit to Seoul final yr, Chun fell in love with the smoked duck discovered at eating places everywhere in the Gangnam District. Then he sought out a duck farm in Pyeongtaek, a metropolis about 45 miles south of Seoul.
“I discovered this duck farm where they marinate and smoke the ducks for six hours with some applewood and herbs,” he says. “Around the same time, I learned about hinoki wood, and that’s why I started this business.”
Chun, who was operating a noodle restaurant in Koreatown referred to as Wonsan Myunok on the time, bought the restaurant and shifted his focus to smoked duck. He opened Olle, named for the slender paths discovered throughout Jeju Island in Korea, in January.
The geese arrive entire and smoked from the farm. They’re sliced to order, a couple of half a duck in every set ($89), the items fanned out in one of many hinoki packing containers. A server locations a small burner on the desk, topped with a steel tray of sizzling water. The field is positioned excessive and also you’re instructed to attend a couple of minutes whereas the duck steams.
The brief wait is quickened by a tray of banchan each bit as grand because the duck itself. Chun’s spouse, Kristy, prepares 15 to 18 dishes every morning, altering the alternatives virtually each day. Lately, there have been 4 varieties of kimchi, together with child bok choy; pickled radish; chunky potato salad; marinated perilla leaves; bean sprouts; kelp noodles; fried zucchini rounds; a vegetable pancake; and marinated seaweed.
The smoked duck in hinoki wooden from Olle Korean Delicacies in Koreatown.
(Lily Kim)
As soon as the duck steams for 2 to a few minutes, the server makes a present of eradicating the lid, and the smoke envelops the desk in delicate, curling wisps.
Every bit is ribboned with fats and the thinnest layer of pores and skin. As an alternative of crunch, there’s an intense smoke taste that’s simply shy of overpowering, and a denseness just like ham. The meat tastes of hickory and applewood, with notes of citrus and pine from the hinoki. The mound of rice within the center picks up that very same candy, smoky taste, and also you construct alternating bites of duck, rice and the assorted banchan to chop the richness.
“The hinoki aroma makes it taste better,” says Chun. “And it makes people more comfortable and relaxed.”
I can’t say that the hours following that day’s duck have been extra relaxed, however I used to be content material, and I smelled like I’d been to the spa, and a barbecue.
The place to rejoice with duck
Roasted Duck by Pa Ord, 5136 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 599-6511Cut Beverly Hills, 9500 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 276-8500, wolfgangpuck.com Olle Korean Delicacies, 745 S. Oxford Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 315-5054, www.ollelosangeles.com
