I had virtually no experience with duck until a few years ago when, during a three-day stay in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a persistent waiter coaxed me into ordering the duck confit. A revelation.
And yet … I still have very little experience with duck — mostly because you don’t find it on a lot of local menus. And duck is expensive. So what better strategy to try the fowl again than to thrust it into the Friday Food Fight ring — then get a receipt and expense it?
I found two worthy restaurants with duck on their regular menus: Alsace French Bistro in Tierra Verde and Mis en Place in Tampa.
ALSACE FRENCH BISTRO
On a mid-August Friday, we arrived promptly for our 7 p.m. reservation. The restaurant is located at the end of a long, two-story shopping center that could pass for an apartment complex. Its signage is scant. All we could read from the parking lot was “French Restaurant.”
Ownership has done their best to give the modest interior a French farmhouse vibe, but saggy fiberglass ceiling tiles sapped some of the ambience. We sat in the narrow back dining room at a two-top with a checkered tablecloth.
We ordered Canard a L’Orange (“half a duck, crispy, with an orange mustard glaze, $31) For a side, we got Red Cabbage (cooked in red wine), and added on a side of sauteed potatoes ($6). Our appetizer was Tarte Flambe Original ($13), an “Alsatian favorite.” The restaurant had but two beers available, so I chose a Beck’s ($8).
Appearance
The entree plate was crowded with alluring stuff. The shredded cabbage nearly filled a sizable bowl. This spread, which did have a farmhous vibe, said, “I hope you’re hungry.” The Tarte Flambe was a round, thin flatbread covered with goodies.
Texture and Taste
It’s in food-scribe handbook that you must use the world “succulent” when describing duck. Man, this duck was succulent. Juicy and tender. The bird did not taste gamey. The skin, crispy as advertised, added punches of flavor. I dipped the duck into a sweet(ish) sauce that added further zest.
I really dug the cabbage, which blended sweet and tart. It was laced with bacon — and as everyone knows: Everything is better with bacon. The potatoes were fine, but didn’t wow me.
The Tarte Flambe was cardboard-thin but not crackly. It had a pleasingly smokey flavor, courtesy of bacon that was almost rare but not rubbery. Long strips of cooked onion and cream cheese — that’s what the menu says — rounded out a very intriguing and substantial starter, which we finished.
MIS en PLACE
Driving across the Howard Frankland Bridge through a vicious thunderstorm in bumper-to-bumper traffic is not the ideal prelude to a high-end duck dinner. It took an hour but we made our 5:45 reservation on Wednesday.
Nearing four decades in business, Mis en Place is one of Tampa’s heritage restaurants. The large dining room, imbued with white-tablecoth elegance, has a modern urban feel. The Place’s cuisine is not categorically French, but “French-inspired.” We sat at a four-top near the bar. I tried my level best to tune out the tepid smooth jazz coming from the sound system.
Choosing to split our meal, we ordered Duck Breast ($43.37), which had an 18-word description attached that I won’t include here, other than “tamarind date jackfruit gastrique.” We also got the Fried Green Tomato Salad ($18.37, 15 words). We each chose a Three Daughters Beach Blonde Ale ($8.37, 0 words), which unfortunately came from a can, not a tap.
“How would you like your duck cooked?” asked our pleasant server, Melissa. Uh-oh. Umm … like duck. We decided on medium.
Appearance
The kitchen split the entree into two plates before bringing it to the table, so we didn’t get the full effect. But the sighting of pink let me know that this would be a far different duck experience than that of Alsace.
Texture and Taste
We should have gotten the duck medium-well. Bonnie and I both appreciated the fully cooked parts, which were succulent, but struggled a bit with the rare inner sections. But that’s just us. We were fans of the brown gastrique (sauce), which added a touch of spicey heat.
The fingerling potatoes were small and far between. We each got a piece of deep-fried cauliflower that was quite tasty, and also quite small, plus little dollops of stuff that added flavor accents.
The salad was terrific. It included crunchy fried green tomatoes, arugula, grape tomatoes and other ingredients. And if you ever get a chance to have a salad dressed with “green chili buttermilk chive vinaigrette,” do it.
And the Winner of the Everybody, Duck Dust-Up Is …
Alsace French Bistro.
This decision was entirely subjective. I simply preferred AFB’s plentiful, peasant-food French meal to the small-portion, French-inspired fare of Mis en Place.
Note to Alsace: Please invest in cloth napkins. Paper ones — small, thin ones at that — are no way to cut corners. The stain on my pants probably wouldn’t have occurred with better coverage.
