12 Ducks of Christmas: Give Some Skin This Festive Season

What better gift for your true love this season than a Peking duck (roasted over) a pear tree (fire)? The empress of courtly roasts beats a stuffed turkey any day of the year. To celebrate the dish Beijing gave the world, check out our wholly subjective list of what we consider to be the best dozen ducks in the city.

DUCK DE CHINE
Our ranking: 1
Price: RMB 238+10%
“We ate nothing but duck for nine months.” Father-son chef team Peter and Wilson Lam didn’t let coronary heart failure stand in the way of their mission to crack the quacker. But what did the Cantonese duo learn? “Two-kilo ducks, culled at between 43-45 days old, roasted for exactly 65 minutes over 30-year-old date tree wood (imported from Shanxi).” Got all that? Simply put, the skin here (and it’s all about the skin) is more aromatically sweet and perfumed than any other. The multilayered, house-made sauce, theatrically topped with sesame, peanut paste and crisp fried garlic, puts this duck out of sight.

MADE IN CHINA
Our ranking: 2
Price: RMB 238+15%
Yes it’s in a five-star hotel, but this kaoya dian is strictly old-school. Executive Chef Jin, a gruff, tough Beijinger, presides over a small team of black-belt roasters, several of whom have been slinging ducks for over two decades. Presentation is impeccable: Made in China serves a separate dish of skinless breast meat, which you’re supposed to eat wrapped in a pancake with scallions as a prelude to “the works” – leg meat, skin, cucumber, duck sauce and a little minced garlic. “Roll them small enough to eat in one mouthful,” advises Jin. Oops, too late.

CHYNNA
Our ranking: 3
Price: RMB 239+15%
Chynna gives Beijing’s specialist duck restaurants a stiff lesson in fowl-roasting. Thick, remarkably non-greasy skin has a shatteringly crisp yet yielding texture – you can actually hear the knife bite through it when the chef starts carving. The lean meat is succulent and rich; you’ll be stuffed after three or four pancakes. And because they only roast a few birds each service, you feel like your dish has had the care and attention such noble fowl deserves.

DA DONG ROAST DUCK
Our ranking: 4
Price: RMB 238
Da Dong’s “Artistic Conception of Chinese Cuisine” is one of the few restaurant menus you could use to fight off an armed assailant. The weighty tome contains an astonishing 200 dishes (photographed by the man himself), some looking more like abstract sculptures than edibles. But most customers never make it past page one – “superlean” roast duck. Da Dong’s now much-imitated slower roast apparently renders off twice the fat of birds cooked the Quanjude way, resulting in a typically crisp, lacquered skin and a drier, firmer lean meat. Worth lining up for? Yes, but try the sea cucumber too.

IFW
Our ranking: 5
Price: RMB 188
Flanked on all sides by blazing woks and enticing aromas, IFW, in the belly of the Yintai Center, feels more like an upscale food court than a hotel restaurant. Chef Yang’s kaoya, arranged like flower petals on a single large plate, manages to be rich and succulent yet light on the stomach. Roasted in electric ovens due to fire regulations, the secret, according to Yang, is temperature control. “Adjusting the oven temperature several times during cooking allows us to control the oiliness.”

BIANYIFANG
Our ranking: 6
Price: RMB 148-198
Beijing’s newest oldest duck restaurant has been recently restored to its perch on “Fresh Fish Crossroads” (pun intended) – better known as Xianyukou Hutong, an ersatz street food alleyway that meanders east from Qianmen Dajie. Back in the 1400s, Bianyifang developed the “closed-oven” technique for roasting duck. The restaurant still uses this technique today, whereas almost all its competitors now use the Quanjude-pioneered method of roasting over an open flame. In practice, Bianyifang’s method results in the duck skin being softer and paler, the meat juicier and ever so slightly pink, with a higher ratio of meat to skin. If you take your lean meat seriously, this is a royal feast.

XIHE YAYUAN
Our ranking: 7
Price: RMB 223
Xihe Yayuan’s beautifully presented birds have tender flesh and crisp, full skin, but fall short of the very best on aromatic quality. Full marks, however, for their exceedingly clever, custom-made circular condiment containers. A steamer of spinach-flavored and plain pancakes rests over a candle in the middle, keeping them warm and non-sticky (brilliant!). It’s surrounded by little clock-face compartments with all the usual fillers plus blueberry sauce (in which to dip the skin) and minced garlic. They also do a duck meat pizza, which is just silly.

JIUHUASHAN ROAST DUCK
Our ranking: 8
Price: RMB 168
This little-known duck restaurant in west Beijing fills out on weekends with a mostly local crowd. George W. Bush ate there, which counts for something – though he probably just got lost on his way to the zoo. It’s unashamedly untrendy and low-key, but the duck, in the Quanjude tradition, earns plaudits from some of Beijing’s most notable homegrown foodies. Worth a trip if you live nearer the west side of the city, and more authentically “Beijing” (and less touristy) than most on this list.

JINGZUN PEKING DUCK RESTAURANT
Our ranking: 9
Price: RMB 88
With a bit of DIY tinkering, the duck here is a delicious bargain. Here’s what you do – tell your fuwuyuan that you want it cooked for an extra ten minutes. This both crisps the skin and firms up the flesh, with big gains in flavor. It’s like getting a Da Dong duck at less than half the price. Well, maybe that’s pushing it, but this is still the best duck in Beijing under RMB 100.

LUNAR 8
Our ranking: 10
Price: RMB 248+15%
Only the plumpest 45-day-old birds are selected for roasting in Lunar 8’s basement show kitchen. Avuncular black-robed chefs man the tall, red-brick ovens, roasting the ducks longer for a leaner bite. A signature rub of medicinal herbs and spices helps crisp up and flavor the skin, giving it a perfumed, aromatic quality.

QUANJUDE
Our ranking: 11
Price: RMB 239
What we think of as Peking duck – pancakes, hung ovens, fruit wood – is all down to Quanjude. One of China’s 500 “most valuable brands,” the quality across the dozen or so branches is nevertheless inconsistent, and the birds tend to be somewhat clumsily presented, which irks when you’re paying a tourist premium. Mind you, I’ve never had a bad one, and you do get a numbered certificate of authenticity with each bird, at least at the Hepingmen branch. And the duck heart dumplings are super.

XIANG MAN LOU
Our ranking: 12
Price: RMB 168
This long-running standby stilldelivers dependably tasty duck at its trio of restaurants. They are a notch cheaper than the headline-grabbers, although prices have gone up considerably in the last 12 months. Dependable jiachang cai makes this place popular with local families, so you may have to queue – they only take reservations before 6.30pm.

Click here to see the December issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photos: Sui