Bay Area Eats - Beijing Duck House

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I’m not in love with the San Francisco Bay Area, my home for nearly the past 40 years. Incredibly pretentious, over-priced, and over-rated, I’d leave in a heartbeat if I had consensus from my family. The Bay Area has provided me with a home and a career with limited complaint. That, but absolutely no civic pride or happiness whatsoever.

The late, great W.C. Fields purportedly wanted to put on his tombstone, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia;” his hatred for his home town clearly evident, but when weighed against death perhaps a different priority. I can’t imagine adopting the same sentiment about my adopted home. While I can’t get excited about much the area has to offer (I’m bored by it all; what can I say?), I do have lots of go-to restaurants that I enjoy, and that I’d probably miss when (if) I move(d) away. I’ll focus on my favorite Chinese restaurant; my family enjoys it, and it’s a place that has given me a bit of gastronomic happiness in a region that overall provides me severe darkness and abject depression.

Beijing Duck House (Cupertino)

This restaurant, in a non-descript strip center near the west San Jose / Cupertino border, is my favorite restaurant in the South Bay. Since the center has seen a seemingly never-ending revolving door of restaurants (we’ve tried them all), I didn’t have much confidence that this or any other place in the center would survive a year, two tops, but alas, Beijing Duck House has soldiered on.

The restaurant is made up of a main dining room and a private room or two in the back. The kitchen is semi-open. The design takes a page from ancient China, with the main room resembling a hutong of sorts (my interpretation), complete with canopies and done up in stunning black and red colors. The ceiling is intermixed with Chinese lanterns and very unique lighting fixtures, set with Chinese characters. The tables and chairs are not your garden-variety restaurant supply units, but true to the spirit of the design.

Dining Room with beautiful decorative lighting  

The lure here is the namesake. Beijing Duck needs to be ordered 24 hours in advance of your reservation. It’s elegantly presented and carved table-side, but with no flair for the dramatics akin to most table-side presentations. The duck is always crisp and tender, and can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. We dine there on the average of about twice each month and it appears quite a few tables order the duck, although we’ve only done so when entertaining.

Ok, a nicely-decorated place with table-side carving of duck; so why is it my favorite? It’s my favorite due to a dish that I highly recommend but cannot pronounce. Hell, I can’t even phonetically sound it out as it is not included on the bi-lingual menu. While we typically order multiple favorite items, this is my dish!

Like many authentic Chinese restaurants in the area, Beijing Duck House has a Mandarin-only menu that they’ll provide to those customers who, by virtue of physical appearance and / or greeting,  meet the criteria. So while I can’t tell you the name of the dish, I can describe it and also recommend that it be shared, as ordering it for myself usually yields three-to-four additional leftover meals.

The dish described (if you can read Mandarin)

Picture a large serving bowl stuffed with beef, fish fillets, tripe, potatoes, mushrooms, lots of dry red chili peppers, and other spices washing over the mix. At least that’s how I order it; you get to select the components, 20 choices  among meats, fish and vegetables. Spoon a helping over steamed rice, look to the heavens, and thank God for the day! This one is hot and spicy, and not for the faint of heart. I’m use to extremely spicy dishes, and prefer the temperature ratcheted way up when asked for my tolerance point. Beijing Duck House frowns upon changing the heat level of the dish, so my family, not big on fiery hot cuisine, typically takes a pass. Oh well, more for me. Just so there is nothing potentially lost in translation, I have my wife and daughter, both fluent in Mandarin, tell the proprietor in her native tongue to please don’t screw with the recipe. It would be personally devastating to have the recipe altered forever. Seriously.

The dish!

The menu is emmense and authentic, and with a large Chinese population in the general vicinity, the place has been getting steadily busier and busier as time has gone on. A really good sign in Bay Area Chinese restaurants is the patronage of Chinese folks. If a place is busy and the majority of the crowd is Chinese, an endorsement can be assumed. That said, I’ve noticed that I'm typically one of only a few non-Asian diners (if not the only one) at Beijing Duck House when we are there. Service, by the way, is impeccable. 

If you like Chinese food, especially Northern Chinese, then you’ll have nothing to lose by checking out Beijing Duck House. The center is in transition and it appears that a few new restaurants are opening soon, but those will need to be consistently on their game to compete with Beijing Duck House.

Beijing Duck House
10883 S. Blaney Ave.
Cupertino 
408-366-0588
Open for Lunch & Dinner

Closed on Tuesdays