Buddakan’s vast space inspires big, time-consuming dishes, like the 40 or 50 Peking ducks chef Lon Symensma serves daily. That much fowl requires two pieces of dedicated duck equipment. First, the ducks must be inflated with air to separate the skin from the meat, the better for it to get crispy and thin. In traditional Chinese cookery, a form of CPR is used, via a straw, but there’s no time for that at Buddakan, so the kitchen keeps a high-pressure 150-psi, 1.8-horsepower air condenser at the ready. “It builds the pressure inside the duck pretty fast,” says Symensma. Then the ducks go into a special oven, built by Town Kitchen to reach temperatures as high as 700 degrees. “A regular oven doesn’t have the amount of room you need for the ducks,” Symensma says. “They need to be exposed on all sides to the heat, and there’s no room for that in a conventional commercial oven.” Unlucky ducks.
