Why Duck Is on Every Restaurant Menu These Days

Like bell bottoms, shrimp cocktail, 3-D movies, Espresso Martinis, and vinyl LPs, what’s old is often new again. As Food & Wine’s restaurant editor, I eat out on a very regular basis, and I couldn’t help but notice that the old stalwart protein that is duck — whether it’s a duck breast, confit leg, or foie gras — has been appearing everywhere these days, often displacing menu cornerstones like chicken or steak. And while you probably won’t find me rocking some bell bottoms any time soon, it’s safe to say that duck is in the culinary zeitgeist right now, waddling onto menus across the country.

From the dry-aged crown of duck at the Brooklyn brasserie Francie and the old-school canard à la presse at Pasjoli in Los Angeles to the huge, duck-focused section of the menu at the modern French bistro Obélix in Chicago and the (optionally caviar-laden) Peking duck at the San Francisco restaurant Z & Y Peking Duck, it’s clear that we are living in a full-blown duckaissance. 

Duck has of course been a part of culinary traditions around the world for centuries. There’s Peking-style duck, the bistro standard duck confit, and foie gras in all its forms. Also, see duck à l’orange, the classic French dish that legendary food writer Paula Wolfert described in her 1983 cookbook The Cooking of Southwest France as an “old gourmet warhorse” — that’s likely due a comeback of its own. 2017 F&W Best New Chef Angie Mar’s duck flambé graced the cover of our December 2018 issue. Or then there’s always the duck press — alternatively known as canard à la presse or canard à la rouennaise — which seems to be having its own moment.

“The duck press is a dish near and dear to my heart,” says 2014 F&W Best New Chef Dave Beran, where it’s been the “showpiece” at his Santa Monica, California, restaurant Pasjoli ever since it opened in 2019. He served it in 2011 while he was executive chef at Next in Chicago during the Paris 1906 menu, and also had it on the menu at his now-closed L.A. restaurant Dialogue. The canard à la presse is an old school French presentation, likely most well known at the 400-plus-year-old restaurant La Tour d’Argent in Paris (the inspiration for the film Ratatouille). It’s available in only a handful of restaurants in America, including Ariete in Miami and Edwins in Cleveland. It can also be found at L’Antagoniste in Brooklyn and 1988 F&W Best New Chef Daniel Boulud’s namesake Daniel in New York City (both of which you will need to call ahead, possibly a couple of weeks).

In this classic dish, a duck, cooked medium-rare, has its legs and breasts removed, and the carcass is crushed with a powerful vise — sometimes done tableside — yielding a rich blood- and organ-infused sauce that’s then further reduced. Part of the prestige is the rarity; these presses are expensive, rare, and difficult to source.

Diners who order the duck at La Tour d’Argent receive a postcard with a serial number. According to the New York Times, the 500,000th duck was served in 1976, the millionth in 2003. A recent Yelp photo from March 2024 denotes 1,183,815 duck dinners. Pasjoli also provides a postcard with a serial number; theirs is up to 19,000. It will take some work to catch up. 

According to Robert Courtine’s The Hundred Glories of French Cooking, it was rumored in the 1890s at La Tour d’Argent, the canard à la presse “took three ducklings for every one that was served,” but things are a little more sustainable at Pasjoli, where the breast is served alongside the duck confit that graces a salad with crispy duck skin, and also gets incorporated into a bread pudding. “The magic of this dish is there is no waste,” says Beran. 

“We end up with the course being one to one, in the sense that every part is used for each order. It’s rare to find a dish that is essentially a closed loop with every part being showcased in its own way.” 

This sort of sustainability and ethical focus is at play at a lot of places that serve duck. Like at Francie in Brooklyn, with its roasted crown of duck — basically a duck with its legs and wings removed for other purposes — that is brought to the table on a platter surrounded by herbs and flowers for a moment of spectacle. Whole ducks are butchered at the restaurant, the crown is dry-aged for around 30 days, and then the rest of the duck gets put to use in other dishes. 

“Since the bird gave its life for the restaurant, we feel it is necessary to utilize the entire bird,” says Francie chef and co-owner Chris Cipollone. “Bones go to jus, fat gets rendered, and the leg meat goes into various preparations like the pappardelle Bolognese and the duck mortadella.” 

If any restaurant understands duck well, it might just be the modern French restaurant Obélix in Chicago, with a menu that runs the gamut of duck-based dishes. A few highlights include foie gras macarons, a dry-aged duck breast accompanied by a smoked duck sausage, a brochette with duck heart and skin, and an especially duck-forward salade Lyonnaise with duck confit, duck fat croutons, and a duck egg, naturally. 

“Using whole animals means being creative with all of its unique parts,” says chef de cuisine Nathan Kim, who brings in cases of fresh duck at a time. “Not only is it cost effective, it forces our team to think outside the box and utilize our technical skillset to bring the best out of all the parts of the duck.”

Which leads to a dish like the foie taco at Obélix, where classic French technique and a global perspective come together. Called the “Foie-Co,” it’s the creation of chef-owner Oliver Poilevey, and it combines seared foie gras, pickled cherries, and salsa macha on a nixtamalized blue corn tortilla. It is somewhat of a mind-bending dish that might cause some apprehension, but it works spectacularly well. When Paul Bocuse described foie gras as ”one of the most exquisite feathers in the cap of French gastronomy” in his cookbook Regional French Cooking, I don’t think he had this particular dish in mind. But you never know.

Still, duck in the culinary sphere goes back for centuries. “For Chinese cuisine, Peking duck has over 400 years of history,” says executive chef Lijun Han of Z & Y Peking Duck in San Francisco, “And the dish was only served on the imperial menu at the time. Today, Peking duck remains a national treasure in China.” 

Han serves around 20 ducks a day at the restaurant. It’s a multi-day process that results in an otherworldly, shiny, and crackly skin alongside thin, juicy slices of meat, and reservations for the duck are highly recommended. Leftover duck bones are used to make a traditional Peking duck soup, and in a slight break from tradition, there’s also the option to add caviar to the duck for a whole East-meets-West interplay of crispy duck skin, savory duck meat, and the saline pops of caviar — which is having its own moment across menus in America.

“Duck has the feel of luxury,” says Karyn Tomlinson, chef-owner of the restaurant Myriel in St. Paul explains when asked why she thinks duck is having a moment these days. “It’s not a typical weeknight protein for most Americans, yet it does not carry the stigma of a luxury of cut beef for the conscientious omnivore.”

Tomlinson echoes other chefs’ sentiments about the sustainability and economy of working with duck. “Ducks, like pork, have very little waste,” says Tomlinson on how it forms an entire ecosystem at her restaurant. From the aged breasts to the confit legs on the à la carte menu, to the giblets and heart that appear in a porridge on the tasting menu, Tomlinson says duck “plays an integral role on our menu, both as a feature ingredient and pantry item,” including the fat for confit potatoes and an all-purpose stock and jus.

Like a lot of classics, what’s new is old, and what’s old is new again. Whether it’s the versatility, ethical motivation, sustainability, frugality, the creative opportunities for the resourceful chef, or the sheer deliciousness, ducks have long been part of a traditional culinary canon. These focal points carry on to a modern era, whether the duck gets stuffed into a sausage, cooked in its own fat, squished in a vise, or tucked in a corn tortilla.