King’s Barbecue House - Cantonese Roast Meat - Hong Kong Style.
/
When out exploring things to eat it’s great to wander into a place where the food catches you off guard, astonishing your taste buds with something unanticipated. But equally satisfying can be getting exactly what you expect to get, with no surprise. The very encounter of something that looks and tastes exactly as it is supposed to look and taste feels like, well, a discovery in itself. And that’s exactly what my experience at King’s Barbecue House was like.
Located in Seattle’s International District/Chinatown, King’s Barbecue House is an institution in Seattle and a go-to spot for loyal followers of Cantonese roast meats. It’s the stuff of eye-popping attraction -- meat hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant, golden, crispy and dripping with natural juices into metal trays beneath. That is all you see as you approach the glass front of tiny King’s, a family-run joint for over 30 years. Here they serve the classics of this genre of Cantonese food to hungry meat lovers in the Emerald City. I’m talking about pork, chickens and ducks, each roasted or barbecued or steamed or braised in special sauces. The meat hangs on steel hooks in the window or is piled up beneath in various states of apportion. This is one of those places where you stop and look, even if you're not hungry. Where you secretly wish you could, like a child, just press your face up against the glass to get as close to the glistening meat as possible.
Inside King’s you are immediately struck by its diminutive size. A single room about twelve feet square, there is nothing in there aside from a stark, unadorned counter, behind which they chop the meat you ordered, put it in takeout containers and accept your money -- cash only, please. On the back wall, a counter with a sink and old butcher block table forms a space to set large sheet pans heaving with steamed chickens and ducks, metal bowls of Cantonese Master Sauce to ladle over duck feet and wings for extra flavor, and strips of red charred barbecued pork (char siew) before hanging them in the window. There are no tables, no chairs and literally no decor in this tiny place.
Beside the counter is the storefront looking onto the street. This is where the magic is displayed: a curtain of meat including entire crispy-skinned sides of roasted pig from which the cook hacks off sections before chopping to the desired size. Ducks hang uniformly like shirts in a closet, their golden, slightly heat-wrinkled skin glinting in the sunlight like sirens on a reef beckoning to hungry seafarers. Soy-cooked chickens, tanned like plump sunbathers, hang with their heads skewered alert. Lengths of thick Chinese sausage drape over poles from which hunks of pork ribs dangle crooked from steel s-hooks. Slabs of pork belly are suspended beside it all, with bronzed skin so shatteringly crispy that you can almost feel that magical, salty crunch in your mouth just by looking at it. For lovers of cooked meat still resembling its natural state, there are few things more beautiful.
King’s is not a Cantonese restaurant as one might typically think of. It is a siu laap shop -- a place where meats are prepared for people to take away. Aside from white steamed rice, roasted meat is all they do. The menu, handwritten on a bulletin board, contains only meat; no greens, no stir fry; no soups or noodles. Everything else to go with a Cantonese roasted meats meal will be be provided for elsewhere -- typically consisting of little more than rice and pickled greens.
At King’s you can order only one thing to take away as a meal: white rice with your choice of meat and a spoonful of cooking sauce (their so-called BBQ Lunchbox). The beautiful simplicity of this meal starts with the aroma when you open the container of King’s siu yuk roasted pork. The bouquet tickles your nose and drives you to forgo chopsticks and just grab a piece with your fingers. The multi-sensory crunch is hard to capture in words. The sound is louder than you expect -- a satisfying breaking of the tensile surface, golden brown and rough like sandpaper from the high heat that cooked it. A bloom of salty umami splendor followed by the savor of juicy meat and fat enraptures your senses. The meat is so moist that with every chew you are introduced to more flavor, which lingers lazily in your mouth beyond the swallow. You rush for more, needing to experience that additive crunch and wash of intense flavor all over again.
But as good as the pork is, it is the roast duck which steals the show at King’s. The master sauce elixir — slathered over the bird’s skin as it cooks in a tubular open flame roaster — imparts a deep savoriness coupled with the slightest hint of sweet. The juices that drip from the duck are basted back over the pores where feathers once stuck, moistening the meat and transforming the bird into a golden-glazed work of art. The thin skin provides a slight crackle to the tooth, delivering a silky, emulsified taste of sweet soy, Chinese spices and duck fat. The flavor of the flesh beneath is mild, juicy and not at all gamey. Instead, it conveys a multilayered taste, of deep tissue embraced by a thin slick of braising liquid which infuses the flesh with an ever-so-slight earthiness. This intermingling essence of skin and meat is greater than the sum of its parts; complex yet delicate, rich but not overpowering. It is all-consuming of your tastebuds, but does not lead to fatigue of your palate as you grab more until it is gone. Bottom line: you don’t have to love duck to love King’s duck. You just have to love truly well-prepared, simple food the way it’s been made for centuries.
King’s Barbecue House, 518 6th Ave S, (International District/Chinatown) Seattle WA
