Local Knowledge: Billy Wong’s Peking Duck Has Been a Tableside Ritual for 35 Years

From a scientific perspective, Peking duck is a marvel. A whole, raw duck gets blown up with an air compressor, so the skin becomes smooth and taut before it’s delicately needled to allow moisture to escape. The duck gets hung up overnight to dry and oven-roasted to order the next day. The result? A deep amber, lacquered layer of perfectly rendered skin. At Billy’s Pine and Bamboo Restaurant, around 30 ducks undergo this process each day. It’s been like this six days a week for the last 35 years.

“My carving days are over at the moment, but all the staff are trained to carve,” Kim Wong tells Broadsheet as he slices the shiny duck skin at our table. Kim took over from his father Billy after he graduated university in 2010.

In 1990, the Wong family migrated from Hong Kong to Australia, and Billy took over the restaurant his brothers had first opened. Billy’s Pine and Bamboo quickly became a local favourite and remains so. “Many customers have been regulars for years. Some of them have been with us the entire time we’ve been open, so you get two, three generations of a family coming in. It’s not just a business; it’s more like a family. It’s really special,” Kim says.

Critical recognition soon followed, and the restaurant has been reviewed by the The Courier-Mail ’s late food critic Bob Hart, along with many other local writers over the years. Collages of newspaper clippings are displayed at the front entrance – you can see black and white photographs of Billy carving a duck and waitstaff smiling from ear to ear.

Billy’s retired now, but his framed caricature portraits and numerous golf trophies are still on display. “He’s 70, so he’s taken time off and gone travelling but he’s still around and comes in to say hi to customers,” Kim says.

Not much has changed over the years. The Peking duck recipe and process have remained the same since the place opened. It’s roasted to order, carved tableside and served with the usual suspects: a thin, steamed flour pancake, sliced scallions and cucumber and a sticky-sweet hoisin. For a two-course experience, the duck is cooked to medium rare and only the glassy skin is eaten with the pancakes. Then, the meat is prepared per the diner’s choice: in san choy bow, stir-fried with handmade noodles or vegetables, or stuffed into pockets of sesame pastry. The kitchen also makes a rich, milky broth with the bones, so nothing goes to waste.

Another Billy’s classic is the beggar’s chicken, a traditional Chinese dish dating back to the Ming dynasty. It takes 13 hours to prepare from start to finish and must be ordered at least a day in advance. A whole chicken is stuffed with traditional Chinese herbs, spices, mushrooms and rice wine before being wrapped in a giant lotus leaf, then encased in dough. After baking low and slow, the dough and leaf are removed, the chicken is deboned and served with jasmine rice.

The rest of the menu is as extensive today as it was back in the ’90s, with at least 10 options for every protein. A handful of tanks display live lobsters, mud crabs and perch to steam or fry. “We’ve always had a menu with two hundred dishes. Gordon Ramsay says on his shows that restaurants shouldn’t have big menus, but our customers like coming here and having all the options. Most of the dishes are cooked fresh in woks with [interchangeable] ingredients anyway,” Kim says.

After 35 years, the Wongs’ culinary experience stretches almost as far back as Ramsay’s and with packed dining rooms and ringing endorsements from local chefs like Louis Tikaram and Jason Barratt, they clearly don’t need to change a thing.

Billy’s Pine and Bamboo Restaurant
7/968 Wynnum Road, Cannon Hill
(07) 3399 9095

Hours:
Tues to Sun midday–2.30pm, 5.30pm–9pm