First Look: Get Expert Cantonese Roast Duck at Phoenix Kitchen in the CBD

A’Beckett Street has long been a hotspot for Korean barbeque joints, including Surasang and Hansik. But newcomer Phoenix Kitchen brings a different focus: Chinese-style roast duck and Cantonese roast meats.

All the meats, from peppered honey pork ribs to crispy pork belly, are roasted on-site. The char siu pork is basted with a honey and maltose glaze as it roasts, enhancing caramelisation, while the ducks are hung in barrel-sized ovens for a crisp finish.

On the menu: pale, brined Nanjing-style salted duck; pancake-wrapped, golden-skinned Peking duck; juicy Cantonese-style roast duck served over rice or noodles; and pipa duck – a Cantonese specialty butterflied to maximise the amount of crispy skin.

This city store is the sixth Phoenix Kitchen venue from brothers Weiming and Weiqiang Mo, both ex- Secret Kitchen head chefs raised in Guangdong (formerly Canton). They opened the first Phoenix Kitchen, an old-school Cantonese tablecloth diner in Doncaster, in 2015. They then followed it up with three Phoenix Kitchen restaurants, all focusing solely on Cantonese food. In 2021, they quietly opened a roast meat takeaway stall in Point Cook, followed by an upscale banquet-style seafood restaurant in Box Hill and a kiosk at QV Melbourne.

When a Clayton outpost opened last year, it was the first of the brothers’ venues to have dishes from other parts of China such as Sichuan and Beijing. The new city outpost offers the same diversity and has a similarly casual setting. “It feels more like a Hong Kong cafe. We do simple food, and we serve the food very quickly,” marketing director Adam Park tells Broadsheet.

While Cantonese food – including an all-day dim sum menu with siu mai, salted egg custard buns and char siu pork buns – still dominates, there are nods to other regions in China and beyond.

The restaurant’s large lion’s head meatballs have their origins in Yangzhou, and fierce Sichuanese flavours are found in pickled beef hotpots, boiled fish and beef soups. There’s also Taiwanese three-cup chicken claypot as well as Malaysian char kway teow.

Phoenix Kitchen City
9/120 A’Beckett Street
9043 4558

Hours:
Mon to Thu midday–10pm
Fri & Sat midday–10.30pm
Sun midday–10pm

@phoenixkitchen_city