An extensive wine list poses its own set of challenges, but B.Y.O., with the freedom of choice those three little letters imply, is practically impossible. Or at least it is when the food on the menu doesn’t impose certain restrictions of its own. Thankfully, however, Peking duck—and let’s face it, no one goes to Old Kingdom to eat anything else—is a dish where ‘bringing your own’ means ‘bringing a light red’, and tonight, after stumbling across an obscure reference to the dish in the last couple of pages of Jay McInerney’s A Hedonist in the Cellar, I have decided to take a punt on Zinfandel—in particular, the 2004 Kangarilla Road Zinfandel from McLaren Vale. This country isn’t known for its Zin, and I’ve not had the Kangarilla Road before, but I’ve left everything to the last minute this evening and this is the only bottle of the stuff that the bottle shop next to the restaurant stocks. If it turns out to be undrinkable, well, there’s always jasmine tea.
This may seem, on the face of it, like a lot of work to appease a duck. But this, or so I have been lead to believe, is no ordinary duck: this is a duck that people cross town for, pre-ordering it a fortnight in advance, waiting outside in the cold to get at it while the punters who came for the earlier sitting—which is inevitably packed to the rafters—finish up their own pre-ordered birds. You can pretty well bet the collective farm they’re not going to be eating anything else.
You can get Peking duck in most Chinese restaurants, but for some reason, Old Kingdom, which in almost every other regard is most Chinese restaurants, has become renowned around town as the place to get your roasted quack. There are a couple of reasons for this.
For a start, the restaurant offers excellent value for money, in a sense positioning itself as the poor man’s Flower Drum. Each duck, at fifty dollars a piece, is roughly enough to feed two people (there are four us tonight, for example, so we’ve pre-ordered two). As much of the bird is used as possible and serves as the basis for three different dishes: the skin is eaten with crepes and hoisin sauce, the meat is cooked up in a simple stir-fry, and everything else is thrown into hot water and boiled up into duck-flavoured broth.
Secondly, there’s a certain element of theatre to the place: hacked up at the table, its greasy head dumped on the tablecloth of butcher’s paper, watching as the waiter makes short work of its carcass, the duck comes with a hastily-delivered set of verbal instructions on how to eat it: “Put one piece of cucumber and one of spring onion at quarter past three, cover them with some skin and a little bit meat, drizzle all that with a spoonful of sauce, then fold up from six, down from twelve, then over and across from nine. Enjoy!”
On the night we visit, the restaurant’s usual front man, Simon, isn’t working, much to the disappointment of two of my dining companions, who have been here before and suggested the place. Simon’s performance is apparently one of the highlights of the Old Kingdom experience: eat the duck incorrectly, fold the crepes the wrong way, or—God forbid—ask for more of anything, and he will come down on you like a tonne of bricks, only with less compassion. The cleaver-wielding fellow we’ve got tonight delivers a fair approximation of the usual shtick, I’m told, though clearly I’m going to have to return sometime soon to experience the resident tornado firsthand.
It is just because of viagra india prices their easiest form, many delicious flavors, 100mg strength and quick execution period. Super P-Force is considered one of the most potent forms of view for source generic cialis uk as it is able to treat erectile dysfunction. Emotional factors much affect a man’s erection that physical factors. viagra on line But the big question is, how do you know if your ED is an early sign of cardiovascular disease online pharmacies viagra or not. Still, not having to worry too much about the theatre of the place allows me to give undivided attention to the food—all those wonderful variations on the theme of roasted duck. All things considered, it’s a pretty good line-up, unpretentious, well-cooked, and satisfying. You wouldn’t write home to mum about it or anything, but then the place isn’t asking you to. It’s just asking you to eat and enjoy, and eat and enjoy we do.
Crispy shards of golden skin and succulent little pieces of fugitive meat, which we wrap up by hand in the paper-thin crepes and down, one by one, in two or three bites, give way to a fairly routine stir-fry of duck meat, bean shoots, and Asian greens. In between, in a mad fit of gnawing, I also polish off the duck’s neck. It’s a crunchy, greasy glowstick of skin, and slobbering all over it is a bit uncouth of me. My significant other, who is also in attendance, sighs and shakes her head incredulously.
The stir-fry comes with a serve of steamed rice (fried rice is the other option) and the broth (not a soup), when it arrives not long after, is flavoursome and strengthening. Little bits of backbone and gristle bob around in the watery-thin stock, which also contains some greens and tofu, and while it isn’t pretty—it’s pretty grizzly-looking, actually—it is surprisingly tasty.
The dessert menu is short, the items on it cheap (most of them come in at under five dollars), and the expectations of everyone are accordingly—and sensibly—low. It would be stupid to expect much of anything at this price, and none of us are particularly surprised when the course arrives and reflects what we’re paying for it. Canned lychees—we know they’re canned because we saw a kitchen hand walking around with them earlier—provide a sickly sweet bed for a small scoop of commercial vanilla ice-cream. We wind up with two serves of this after a waitress misunderstands a request for a second spoon. Meanwhile, my large scoop of deep-fried ice-cream, which looks a little like an undersized coconut, would be bland but for the textural binarism of its sandpaper outside and half-melted centre. It’s practically bobbing up and down in a reservoir of maple syrup. I probably wouldn’t eat dessert here again: the duck, in all its guises, will suffice.
And the Zinfandel? It works a treat—though we drink it too quickly, which is to say, I do (I drink half a glass just to wash down the neck). Next time—and there will be a next time—I might have to bring an extra bottle. As McInerney writes in his book: “I have no idea why Zinfandel works with such a wide variety of Chinese dishes . . . though I suspect it has to do with the natural exuberance and sweetness of the grape and its low tannins. Try it.” And while you’re at it, try Old Kingdom, too, and give the wine the dance partner it deserves. After all, as the old saying goes, Lord love a (Peking) duck.
The Scene, 18 July 2007
