Hawkers Review: Duck Tales and duck buns
Life here is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg. Race cars, lasers, and aeroplanes, it’s a duck blur. A duck blur is exactly what I experienced at Hawkers on 14th street. Oh, by the way, if you didn’t know what the hell the first two sentences were, here is youtube to help you out… But I mention that it’s a blur because the dictionary tells me ‘blur’ is something that’s indistinct, hazy in outline or appearance. So, something that was supposed to be duck bun, looks and quacks like a duck bun, but wasn’t necessarily a duck bun.
Steph and I walked by Hawkers on 14th street between 2nd and 3rd ave, and thought the menu was interesting. It’s basically a take on Asian street food, at prices that Asians wouldn’t pay for street food. You follow me? So the Flushing Beijing Duck buns were $1 dollar each. In contrast, pork buns at Momofuku are around $5 after taxes. Here, you get two duck buns for $7.35 after taxes so that’s like a little more than $3.50 for a bun. What we have is a duck bun priced between the Flushing-cheap-as-shit model, and the Momo model of my-dead-pigs-ate-better-than-folks-on-food-stamps model. So what’s the verdict?
I dug into the first one and it was alright. They had some slivers of cucumbers that provided nice crunch, and extra hoison sauce on the side if you needed it. The duck was meatier than the one at Flushing, but the skin wasn’t crispy at all. The advertised crispy duck buns but no crispy here. Then Steph tried hers… first bite and she didn’t even finishing biting through it before she figured out she didn’t get duck. All she got was duck fat. That piece you see in the picture, that’s the ‘duck’ that was in her bun. I like duck buns. And maybe one could make a duck fat bun, but when you’re selling duck buns, don’t give me duck fat buns.
Then we got to thinking… suppose the cook was in the back and was like “A take-out order for duck buns? Do I wanna cut another duck just for that or just give them this piece that’s only fat? Would they actually take-out and come back to complain?” If we just revisit the bribing issue… if you’re making a duck bun for someone that you invite to your restaurant to eat for free, I think you make damn sure you’re not offering up just a piece of fat. If you’re making it for a random customer in the store, you might be less inclined to make every bun perfect, but you might do enough so it won’t get sent back. But if you’re making it for take-out… do you care less? That’s my thought about restaurants that cater mostly to dine-in clients…
Lastly, I wanna offer the Duck Tales song in French. It’s different from the English version but just as great. Apparently they had the show in all sorts of languages… youtube.
Hawkers225 E 14th St.New York, NY 10003212-982-1688
Posted by Danny on August 16, 2010 at 4:05 pm
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