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Simon’s Peiking Duck – 197b Middleborough Road Box Hill South - www.simonpeikingduck.com.

Having heard of Simon Lay’s sublime duck banquets when he was at the Old Kingdom, by the time I got round to trying it out, the man had left. Thankfully, he’s opened shop a little further east, in a suburban shopping strip on Middleborough Road in Box Hill.

You definitely need a bit of advance knowledge for Simon’s if you’re planning on indulging in the duck banquet. They’ll ask you when you book how many people and how many ducks (and you really need to book). It’s one of those places with two sittings and I still can’t work out if I love or hate that (love having an excuse to dine at the ridiculous hour of 6pm, hate feeling the pressure to get out of there before our table’s next occupants arrive).

So to the banquet - it’s three courses designed to fully utilize the bird on offer. It opens with one of my favourite dishes in the world – Peking Duck pancakes. These pancakes are house-made and paper thin. The ducks are painstakingly prepared by Simon each and every day, stuffed with spices and flavour-giving goodies, air is pumped between the body and skin, the duck is plunged into boiling water to shrink the skin, then dried for six hours and finally roasted in a hot oven.

The man himself presents at your table to start carving the duck, then the pancake folding class begins. It’s very specific, they don’t call him the “duck nazi” for nothing. Pancakes are flung at the small bread and butter plates on the table; cucumber and spring onion (one piece of each only!) are laid at 9 o’clock, a big fat piece of duck with crispy, glistening skin placed on top, and then a spoonful of thick plum sauce drizzled on top. Finally, we fold - “six o’clock, nine o’clock, three o’clock”. In it goes … and JOY … it’s everything it’s supposed to be.

At this point, a warning! The website indicates that tables should buy one duck per two to three people. Believe me when I say that one duck will feed three. Being a table of six we ordered three - we thoroughly enjoyed the first plate of 15 pancakes. We were pleasantly surprised when a second serving of duck and pancakes arrived. We groaned when the third was presented to the table. That entire third plate of duck was taken home in takeaway containers.

Course two is stir fried duck, with the choice of being paired with bean shoots or an option of noodles. The great thing is you can mix it up a bit. So as we had three ducks, we tried the crispy egg noodles, thin rice noodles, and the home-made noodles. Each were lovely, and somewhat pleasingly the three dishes (which contained the same ingredients) still varied slightly in flavour. It’s no more than some onion, bean shoots, shitake mushrooms, but the combination allows the flavoursome pieces of duck to come through.

A little strange to finish on, but the last course is a duck soup – a broth with duck bones and flesh, some greens, and squares of tofu. I didn’t think I’d touch mine, but somehow it did have something of a cleansing effect after the heavy start to the meal.

Things are a little chaotic at Simon’s. Be warned: they don’t accept any cards, it’s cash only. We had a little misunderstanding with our booking. The place was heaving on what I was sure would be a quiet public holiday Monday. Décor-wise - it’s a typical suburban Chinese joint, with salmon-pink fan-adorned walls, a gold cat on the counter, and paper tablecloths. But it is top quality duck, and it’s pretty amazing value. We really did order too much, but even then, for the food, some beers, and corkage for six it turned out to be under $40 a head. If we’d ordered two ducks like we should have, that would have come in at $28 per person.

It doesn’t seem like it’s all that often these days that restaurants are as much about the personalities running them as the eating experience itself; but Simon’s Peiking Duck is such a wonderful combination of both. The smiling Charles Bronson waving the sharp knife around is contagiously chirpy, entertaining, and a damn fine cook!
 

PLAY AUDIO: Ela's review of Simon's Peiking Duck

3AW Food - Eating Melbourne

3AW is Food: Melburnians love to eat so it's fortunate we live in the culinary capital of Australia. On this dedicated food page you will find the latest recipes by Bob Hart as well as Tony Leonard's Pub of the Week reviews. La Luna head chef Adrian Richardson also serves up a dish from his own cook book and food reviewer Ela Carte visits one of Melbourne's hottest eateries weekly.