Sixteen years ago, Ko-Hsin Fan found herself sobbing over her restaurant’s giant wok. It was Thanksgiving Day. The chef had walked out in a fit of anger after a dispute with the sous chef.
She had to step in and take over the kitchen. “I had no idea what I was cooking,” she says, “my tears just drop and drop from my eyes, mixing with my sweat. I was counting every second of that day.”
The restaurant was fully booked for Thanksgiving, which had a set menu, but as of 9 A.M. on the morning of, Fan did not even know how to start a restaurant stove. Servers hid in the kitchen, afraid to tell customers what was happening behind the dining room. Her sous-chef couldn’t help, as he was busy with slicing Peking duck. Angry customers ran into the back and demanded their food or a manager to explain the situation. Fan was hopeless. “At one point, I told my servers it’s okay not to take the money for that night because I failed them.”
Fan vowed after that day to learn to cook, recalling, “It was the most significant humiliation in my life and to me as a restaurant owner. I could not just be the pretty restaurant owner who just does the money counting.”
She put the hairnet on and took every opportunity to learn from chefs: how to roast a duck, to slice it properly, to start a dough, roll it out and create every dish on the menu.
However, this episode was just the beginning of Fan’s hardships as a restaurateur. When Fan and her parents moved to the United States in 1996 from Taiwan where they owned a restaurant, her mother dreamed of owning one in Los Angeles. From 1996 to 2003, Fan worked in the computer industry, a 9-to-5 job that she found “killing.” In September 2003, Fan’s family bought a restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley and called it Duck House.
As luck would have it, there had been a gangster shooting in the same location a year before she took the restaurant. Few people came. Fan jokes, “Everyone including my relatives didn’t want to come to the restaurant. They asked me if they need to wear a bulletproof vest when dining there.”
Fan wanted to keep the family pot burning when the family bought the dying restaurant, so she gave the restaurant a Chinese name the same as her parents’ hot pot restaurant in Taiwan— “Lu Ding Chi”. Lu-Ding Chi is a famous Chinese novel, but Fan had her own interpretation: Lu means deer which represents meat. Ding is an ancient Chinese pot. When you put the meat(Lu) in the pot(Ding), it becomes the hot pot.
When the chef walked out on her that fateful Thanksgiving day, Fan said she only had $250 in the bank. When a mediocre chef came to try out for the job, which Fan didn’t offer him, he insisted on being compensated for his time and wouldn’t leave the kitchen until Fan paid him $50.
Then came Fan’s epiphany, in part born out of desperation. She saw there were no traditional Peking Duck dishes in the Greater Los Angeles area. “In the early 2000s, restaurants deep fried the duck and glazed some homemade sauce and that was it,” she recalled. “However, Peking Duck is one of the quintessential Chinese dishes, and I hate to see it done wrong.”
“Do you know why there is a lot of fusion cuisine popping up recently? Because those chefs don’t fully understand one cuisine, so they just mix everything to create so-called fusion.”
She decided to aim for authenticity with her duck, betting on classics done-well rather than aiming for creative dishes. “Do you know why there is a lot of fusion cuisine popping up recently? Because those chefs don’t fully understand one cuisine, so they just mix everything to create so-called fusion.”
Duck bone soup
Watching Fan in action in here restaurant is a thing of wonder. It’s hard to miss a petite woman sprinting confidently from table to table, and introducing the newest dishes. She knows almost everyone who comes through the door, and greets them like old friends.
During the restaurant’s hardest time, Fan’s friend recommended that she compete in a reality TV Chinese cuisine competition. Fan hesitated, “Those are seasoned, award-winning chefs. I didn’t think I would win anything. I just went there to get some exposure for my restaurant.”
Surprisingly, Fan took home the second-place award in Los Angeles, as well as fame and attention to her restaurant.
After two years of struggle, Duck House was finally taking steady steps toward success. One day in 2009, Fan received a letter from the official Michelin Guide. Duck House was named one of the Michelin Recommended restaurants in Los Angeles in that year, just six years after Fan first opened its doors. She remembered, “Well, I think I was very calm when I received the letter, I felt I was doing my best and it was luck they noticed me.”
Duck House is located on Atlantic Boulevard. It is a mid-size capacity restaurant which serves gourmet Mainland Chinese dishes. The restaurant is packed with hungry customers, most of whom come for the famous Peking Duck. Everything on the menu showcases owner Ko-Hsin Fan’s creativity and the care she puts into giving the best to her customers: Unagi sticky rice, Treasure Island (marinated Napa cabbage in mushroom and crab sauce), Drunken Chicken, Truffle Oil Lobster and of course the famous two-way or three-way Peking Duck.
Fan’s famous Peking duck
As a Taiwanese, she felt obligated to serve Taiwanese dishes, but that is not what customers craved. Instead, the Duck House is famous for a creative modern twist on dishes and most importantly, authentic Peking Duck that required 12- hours of boiling, dry-aging, color glazing as well as multiple steps before serving. Fan defined her dishes as Mainland Chinese dishes with Taiwanese influences; the dishes were less oily, spicy and heavy which were more accepted in the community.
When the Peking Duck arrives at the table, you want to jump from the chair to be the first one to grab the crepe-like flour pancake. Be cautious not to burn your hand, as it is freshly out from the steamer. The duck is sliced and separated by the skin and duck meat. To get the right balance of flavors, you want to get one piece of crispy, oil-dripping golden duck skin and two or three tender duck meat on the pancake. You then spread the homemade Hoisin sauce to the pancake Before you fold it to a mini burrito, you add a few slices of cucumber and scallion to balance the oiliness from the duck. When you first bite into it, you will taste the crispy duck skin and tender duck meat mixing with the sauce, scallion and cucumber, so refreshing but not overpowering the main character.
“You can’t even find this type of craft in Beijing, this dish comes from the heart and that’s why she succeeds.” one of the restaurant regulars, a food competition judge, remarks Ko-Hsin Fan’s dish.
Celebrities and sports players such as Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou, NBA All-Star Ben Wallace and Hollywood star Chadwick Boseman can be seen shoving flour-wrapped duck slices in their mouth.
When I asked what she thinks as a female chef in this male-dominated industry; she noted it’s not about her, it’s all about her customers. Fan described herself as always into the artsy things, “I discovered cooking is profound and addictive, the more I cook, the more I am into it, I love doing what I do, I only hope my customers always leave with a satisfied smile on their face when they walk out of my place.”
Duck House Restaurant
501 S Atlantic Blvd, Monterey Park, CA 91754