Alex J.
Yelp
CASH ONLY. Park in back, enter from the back for most convenience.
Whole roast duck: Lacking flavor, dry, box of meat seemed small in comparison to whole bird prior to chopping - and I've bought plenty roasted birds to-go in SoCal Little Saigon, SF Chinatown, and Saigon itself to know a thing or two about how full a box should be from one dead duck.
Cha lua: Full of filler to point of being spongy and gray rather than firm and lightly pink with pork.
Chà bông: The only saving grace - but cha bong is something I could make as a kid. My mom thought it was underflavored, though.
Popular little joint for Vietnamese barbecue meats to-go. We grabbed an order of a whole duck to try, along with two tubs of chà bông (shredded dry-fried pork) and cha lua (silky pork sausage roll). Will write more once we've dug in. Meanwhile, I need to unload the photos from my phone.
The roasted duck was neither juicy nor flavorful. The meat was tender enough, but it entirely lacked the savory, slightly sweet juiciness we expect from a Vietnamese-roasted bird, especially one fresh out of the roaster.
It was serviceable - while it didn't add much to the meal, it didn't detract too much from it, either. We did need to add broth to our base for our egg noodle soup with roasted duck to make up for the lack of flavor from the bird, which we never do when we get ducks from our favorite roaster in the general area - which is also a good 40-minute drive away, so my mom always asks for two ducks when we go, with the additional duck to freeze for later consumption.
The pieces here were also thrown in haphazardly as the butcher chopped up the meat. Grab part, chop part, scrape resulting pieces from chopping board into Styrofoam box, repeat. Which makes for a jumble of parts with lots of gaps as pieces fall on top of each other however they will.
Here's the odd thing about that. Normally, a whole or half order of duck would typically have the odds and ends, neck, head, and bits on a bottom layer of a to-go box with the half or full breast laid over top, with one whole duck easily filling a white Styrofoam box to the brim with juicy, piping-hot pieces of poultry, as my orders from San Francisco's best hole-in-the-wall Chinese barbecue joint always do. And yet here, my mom, who I'm visiting, even murmured a question of whether parts had been taken away from the whole upon opening the box.
With pieces thrown in as they were, there was no way of telling whether there was something to that thought without going through trouble of reassembling the entire bird. That said, logic would demand that a jumbled pile of meat pieces take up far more room than an orderly one. And certainly not less.
I find myself wondering now whether there was something else to the continued, almost insistent suggestion that my group take seats in the little waiting area out of the butcher's line of sight, which we finally did after some minutes of constant suggestion. Makes for an awkward theory. No matter, though. We won't be back for another duck anyhow. The plump, succulent, far meatier birds at our preferred joint for the same price point are definitely worth the drive in comparison.
The cha bong was nicely crisp, chewy, and well-flavored. It makes for good lazy-day and road-trip fare, since it keeps so well and pairs well with just about any meal for a bit of protein on the fly. It's also immensely make to make, though, and other Vietnamese shops carry the convenience food as well, so I probably won't be back just to buy this again, though it's nice to know it exists as an additional option in event I'm feeling that lazy.
The cha lua pork sausage, however - cha lua made right is firm to the touch and pink with pork. Not spongy and gray from too much filler ingredients and too little meat to support everything else. The cha lua roll I get in Bloomington remains my go-to standard, regardless of the additional driving commitment. That should tell you something.
They have indoor seating, but it's clearly not a dine-in environment - the tables are more intended for customers waiting on still-roasting ducks and pigs than for groups to tear into the succulent meats. They run out of their roasted duck and pork way early - plan for an early pick-up or call-in order if you're planning on dropping in. I won't be.
