I’m not sure where the sudden obsession originated. Probably one of my flippant cockamamie comments on a Peking duck dinner I’d had years ago, or maybe it was something Skip came up with on his own after we toyed with the idea of dinner in Chinatown a while back. Whatever sparked it, the seeds of a proper duck dinner had been planted, and there was no uprooting the stranglehold that the notion had on both our heads, so Peking duck it would have to be. Skip consulted Yelp for a nearby option, and Chef Chang’s came up with a decent body of reviews. It was nearby too, just down the street from Deuxave. I couldn’t even picture a Chinese restaurant there, and I remained skeptical as we walked through the Mall in the middle of Commonwealth, posing for pictures with statues.
A right onto Massachusetts, and suddenly we were there, stepping down into a semi-hidden and completely empty Chinese restaurant that smelled of many good things. Our server spoke little to no English, but we were only there for one dish so it didn’t much matter. Of course, they didn’t have it. Despite what Yelp said, there was not a bit of duck to be had there. We settled for an appetizer of beef tendon, which didn’t sound appealing, but there was beer, and a promise to find a place that had the suddenly-elusive dish. (We tried ordering the beer, but the server didn’t understand, so he ended up taking a photo of menu with his cel phone. That would totally be me as a server. He brought out the wrong beer anyway, so maybe it wasn’t the best method after all.) It turned out that the tendon was actually quite good – and I made a mental note to return at some point to try it out properly. On this particular night, we wanted the duck so we made a hasty exit and hopped on the T to Chinatown.
I knew where the restaurant was, and we were early enough that it was still open, unlike the previous evening when we couldn’t find our way out of a paper bag. (Whatever happened to Chinatown being where all the after-hour eats were available? My how that has changed. Shit was shut down by midnight!) On this evening, however, it was only about 8 PM – plenty of time for a Peking duck sit-down.
This is a dish I’ve only shared with a few special people in my life: my family at the first wedding I ever attended, my Uncle Roberto while visiting him in Washington, DC, and Kira after we were reunited following her decade in Florida. Now a new memory with Skip was being made, and he is a worthy addition to the vaunted folks who have joined me on the ducky adventure. It wasn’t what he was expecting – which is the same reaction I had the first time I tried it. One envisions an extravagant sort of stuffed duck on an elaborate plate that needs to be painstakingly carved in just such a way –which is completely at odds with the simplicity and eat-it-like-a-wrap-in-your-hands method to how it’s served. I think/hope it won Skip over. We took our time, rounding out the meal with a couple of other dishes, downing some Kirin Ichiban beer and happily realizing our ducking goal.
Returning to the condo stoop for a final close-out of the weekend, we looked back on our five previous Red Sox adventures. Each one had its memorable highlights, and we made note of what happened on this trip to add to that memory room. We also looked ahead to next year, making loose plans for what we might do and where we might go, because that’s the best way to alleviate the sadness of bringing such a good weekend to an end.
The top of the Prudential Center was lit in the colors of the rainbow – a nod to Pride Weekend in Boston and a happy illumination of hope. The fountain was in its summer splendor, dripping its tranquil cadence of water, bracketed by a lush carpet of ivy leaves. Braddock Park glowed as part of this enchanting Gatsby-like metropolitan twilight, and this brief sparkling jewel of a weekend lowered its curtain for another year.
