December 7 2017 | By Chris Crowley for GrubStreet
Why Everyone Is Excited For DaDong’s New York Opening
(Above image: DaDong’s famous Peking duck photographed by Jessica Nash)
DaDong goes through a lot of ducks. Specifically: DaDong serves 1,387,000 Peking ducks per year at the restaurant chain’s ten locations in Beijing, four in Shanghai, and two in Chengdu, including the original location in Beijing, a restaurant that Dong Zhenxiang ran for ten years before buying it and reopening it as DaDong in 1995. Peking duck is, of course, one of the most delicious recipes known to man, and in China, DaDong is its most famous ambassador. Its public face is its chef and founder, Dong, who once cooked at Quanjude, the place that invented modern Peking duck.
The Chinese restaurants attract international leaders (the Obamas) and leading chefs (Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal), and on December 11, Dong will open his first international location (check out the massive menu here) — in Manhattan. Fans are, to put it mildly, freaking out. Here’s what you need to know about the chain’s appeal, its fans, and its arrival in New York City.
Dong is really, really specific about his duck. In China, DaDong’s employs a man whose job is solely to monitor all aspects of the ducks from raising to slaughtering to cooking, down to how the meat is sliced at guests’ tables. He’s been working there since 1985. Its New York restaurant will serve special ducks that Dong reportedly tailored over two years with an Indiana farm. Those ducks will be cooked in patented ovens that they had shipped from China.
That duck is known for a distinctively delicious style. His duck-roasting career started in the early 1980s, and in the three decades since, he’s perfected his recipe, resulting in a duck that’s lean-but-moist, with the crispiest skin imaginable. It’s also commonly credited with turning Peking duck into fine dining — because of its more upscale environment, Dong’s attention to presentation, and his use of fancy ingredients like caviar. Its two locations in Shanghai each earned a star in the city’s inaugural Michelin guide, the first for mainland China.
Read more about it on GrubStreet.
Check out our other posts here!