Roasted Duck Breast (Maverick, SF)

PAN ROASTED LIBERTY DUCK BREAST

What a panoply of flavors from Chef Scott Youkilis at Maverick in this duck dish.  The Liberty Farms duck breast is perfectly pan-roasted, medium-rare, and as succulent as a great fowl can be. Then there’s  crookneck squash and goat cheese custard, figs, some glorious duck jus…zoinks.

Fantastic duck at Maverick, SF

It’s a  full-flavor bonanza and an architectural wonder, stacked with colors and textures like some kid assembled various shapes from board games, models, and construction toys into an imaginary fort. A little fort hiding a sacred duck; sounds like a Japanese film. A fort ready to be forked. The colors alone: pink, purple, varying browns from sienna to umber to Mississippi mud, with stripes of green and gold–make eating at Maverick a blast. One of my favorite duck dishes this year.

THE GRADE: AWESOME (highest grade)
THE DAMAGE:  $26
 THE SKINNY: MAVERICK

3316 17th Street San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 863-3061

Make a free reservation for Maverick here on OpenTable.com.

Maverick SF – a foodie respite in the Mission

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Duck Breast (The Elite Cafe, SF)

Pan-Roasted Maple Leaf Farms Duck Breast

The Elite Cafe serves a simply excellent duck breast. Pan-roasted perfectly, it’s sufficiently seared on the outside with that just rare enough ruddiness inside to make it perfectly juicy, tender, and sweet. The duck is an Elite Cafe staple, partnered up with braised winter  greens and sweet potatoes. The greens provide a grounded, earthy balance to the candied sweet potatoes and sweet duck meat, which swims (no pun inherent) in a small pond of its own jus.

The colors on the plate–brown, pink, orange, and dark green–comprise a painterly palette rife with fantasy. It’s a plate that exhibits the strong visual appeal of food in all its dazzling variety. And while the sweet potatoes were candied far too sweetly for my taste, Elite Cafe’s duck breast is still one of the best I’ve had in 2009, a  high recommendation.

Duck Breast, Elite Cafe, SF

The Grade: Excellent

The Damage: $29

The Skinny: The Elite Cafe