Finding a Chinese restaurant that serves tea and duck is as easy as, well, finding a Chinese restaurant. But for duck that's actually cooked with tea, you'll have to seek out the area's few authentic Sichuan eateries.
Tea-smoked duck was first dreamed up for preservation purposes, though the recipe survives well into the Frigidaire Age thanks to its distinctive flavor. A combination of black tea leaves and wood infuses the duck's dark, fatty flesh with a heady smokiness reminiscent of Texas-style pit-smoked meat, but even more complex and intense.
To score our fix of this fragrant Sichuan fowl, we ventured beyond Boston's Cantonese-dominated dining scene and headed for the suburbs. Some ducks we sampled were perfectly cooked, but the smokiness was too subtle. Others were plenty smoky but suffered from tough or chewy meat. (Yet another was so obnoxiously perfumed it was like eating a duck-shaped ashtray.)
By a stroke of smoked-duck luck, we stumbled on two excellent versions: at Beijing Star in Waltham and at FuLoon in Malden. Both boasted just the right level of smoke - nuanced yet potent. Both used steaming to render almost every glob of fat beneath the skin. Beijing Star's scored a point over FuLoon's for its more evocative name ("tea smell duck"). But FuLoon counterpunched with a salty overnight marinade of rice wine, Sichuan peppercorns, and fennel seed, which left every bite fork-tender and perfectly seasoned.
Advantage, FuLoon.
TRY IT TONIGHT
Tea smoked duck, $12.95
FuLoon, 375 Main St., Malden.
781-388-3338.
JUST TRY IT, ALREADY
Tea smell duck, $14.95
Beijing Star Restaurant, 835 Main St., Waltham. 781-642-8888
