Kingfisher is a San Diego restaurant that serves Vietnamese French food with a California lens. That culmination of flavors has turned it into one of the city's busiest Vietnamese restaurants, thanks in part to its iconic dry-aged duck dish. Watch executive chef David Sim and his team make the famous duck dish, a whole fried rockfish, grilled abalone, and more.
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00:00I'm gonna go grab the ducks.
00:02So we just got our delivery from Liberty Farms in Sonoma.
00:07One of the first things we do in the morning,
00:09we process all of our proteins.
00:11Today's a little smaller delivery.
00:13We just got one case in, six ducks each.
00:15So we're going to process these bad boys,
00:17and we use the whole thing for service.
00:20Yeah, so when we started the ducks on the menu,
00:23we didn't think we were gonna be kind of a duck restaurant.
00:27It's like kind of our number one seller every night.
00:31In Vietnam, duck is a very popular ingredient.
00:34The duck itself is a take on a Vietnamese
00:37and Chinese roasted duck.
00:39Yeah, so this was on the menu from day one.
00:41I think this is one of the first things
00:43that we put on the menu, but it kind of just grew.
00:46♪♪
00:56Kingfisher is a Vietnamese-French take
00:59through a California lens.
01:01We opened Kingfisher in 2022 in Golden Hill, San Diego.
01:05♪♪
01:10However you set them on the tray to start dry-aging,
01:14that's kind of gonna be the shape of the duck.
01:16So before I put them on the tray to start aging,
01:19I have to shape the kind of duck itself
01:21to make sure they're kind of nice and presentable.
01:23You could lose a lot of meat, and there's just a lot of fat
01:26to kind of hide exactly where, like, you need to go.
01:30So there's a little bit more kind of, like,
01:32space for error, I guess.
01:33This is our chief chef, Sydney.
01:35Sydney Imlay, she's pretty great.
01:39We're best friends.
01:41♪♪
01:43So this has been aging about three weeks.
01:45Give or take a few days.
01:47And then there's so much loss of moisture.
01:51It's gonna be a lot easier to sear.
01:54We can get a nice skin because of all the moisture loss.
01:57The meat has intensified,
01:59and you'll develop, like, a much better,
02:01deeper, richer flavor.
02:03So this is some local San Diego rockfish.
02:07It's gonna be for our whole fried fish.
02:09What I'm doing right now is descaling the fish.
02:11It's kind of annoying, to tell you the truth,
02:13but it's part of just getting local ingredients
02:16and using the fish, like, as fresh as it can be.
02:18And it's part of just being in San Diego.
02:21You're in such close proximity to the ocean.
02:24Literally, this guy docks his boat down off of Broadway,
02:27which is about a mile and a half from here.
02:29By the end of the day, this fish is gonna be fried up
02:31and served on a plate
02:33and looking a lot prettier than it does right now.
02:36I'm just kidding. It looks great.
02:37These guys are gorgeous.
02:38I think rockfish is my favorite variety of fish
02:42that we serve as, like, a whole fried fish.
02:44By far my favorite. So good.
02:46So, ideally, you're not gonna pierce any of the guts here.
02:49Just go in with your scissors.
02:51You pretty much pull it all out.
02:53I'll put it back in the walk-in
02:54so later we can trim off the rest of the fins.
02:58And then we'll season it, skewer it,
03:00and then it'll be ready to eat tonight.
03:03Yeah, so Chef Sidney's making our house-made egg noodles.
03:06This is the newest dish on the menu.
03:08I think one of the better sellers now,
03:10if not the top seller.
03:11I think it's my new favorite dish.
03:13To be honest, it's super simple.
03:14Before I started here, I had never cooked Vietnamese food.
03:19I never thought about cooking Vietnamese food.
03:21Obviously, I love pho.
03:23So I come from a French culinary background.
03:26I had pretty much always cooked French food
03:28or Californian cuisine,
03:30which is just, like, heavily seasonal produce-based,
03:33but you kind of have the option of bringing in
03:36all sorts of influences from different cultures.
03:38And then when I came here, it was Vietnamese-French.
03:41I was like, okay, I get the French part,
03:43but I knew nothing about Vietnamese food.
03:45Just the process of learning so much
03:47about a different cuisine,
03:49having to really, like, challenge yourself
03:51to be in this box of, like,
03:52it all has to be Vietnamese food
03:54has been, like, a really big journey for me,
03:56and it's been pretty hard, like, to tell you the truth.
03:58Everybody wants you to be something,
04:01and they really want you to be like,
04:02oh, my grandma taught me this.
04:04So, you know, like, they want that story,
04:06and it's like, I don't have that story for you,
04:08but, like, I can also make you some really good food
04:10if you want to eat it.
04:12I think most restaurants take the breast off the crown
04:15and then sear them, but we find it develops
04:17a lot more flavor if you leave them on the crown.
04:19But we just find that you develop a deeper, richer flavor.
04:23There's a lot of small things that kind of matters.
04:26With the dish, like, it's really simple,
04:27but little things kind of along the way
04:29really help develop the dish into, like, what it is.
04:32And one of it being, like,
04:33we take so much care in the little things,
04:35and aging them on the crown will make it juicier,
04:38and then it's like, why not just cook them on the crown,
04:42and then you get a better product.
04:44We kind of have, like, a nice color,
04:46and then this is when I'll kind of utilize the entire pan.
04:49I'll kind of start doubling up at this point,
04:51because I'm just trying to sear
04:52kind of the sides at this point, so.
04:55Yeah, so when we first opened,
04:57we were only allowed to do one duck at a time,
05:00just so everything was kind of perfect.
05:02And Chef Sid, actually, when she came on,
05:04I came in one day,
05:05I think she was doing three ducks at a time.
05:08I was like, this is crazy.
05:09I was like, you're breaking the rules.
05:11And then I was, like, kind of against it at first,
05:13but it works.
05:14I'll cook six at a time now.
05:16To me, it's a small kitchen space,
05:18so we want to get as much done as we can
05:20before the cooks come in,
05:22because once the cooks come in,
05:23this is their territory, this is their space.
05:26So I want to get all of this part done here,
05:28cooking everything, and then I'll kind of get out of their way
05:31and kind of stay on the other side of the pass.
05:33So that's looking pretty good.
05:34So the sides are done on this guy,
05:36so I'm just gonna sear that bottom side
05:38and kind of get that little tail.
05:39Yeah, so this one's probably ready to go right here.
05:42Just a nice, full, even brown all the way around.
05:44My parents are gonna be mortified seeing this.
05:46That was a big thing with me for some reason.
05:49When I first started cooking, I would come home,
05:51come home with all these scars.
05:53My parents were like,
05:54my parents were telling me to wear long sleeves.
05:57Every time I'd get a new scar,
05:58my mom would, like, borderline cry every time.
06:01She's like, can you be a mailman?
06:04So this is some abalone that one of our purveyors
06:07took this out with today.
06:08So we're gonna figure out what we're gonna do with them.
06:10So we just have enough for a special for one day,
06:14so we're gonna get these guys cleaned up.
06:15We haven't run these before,
06:17so this is gonna be kind of our first time running them.
06:20And Vietnamese food doesn't really,
06:23I don't think has abalone normally.
06:25So we're gonna try to get some of the abalone
06:27and try to get some of the abalone
06:29and try to get some of the abalone
06:30doesn't really, I don't think has abalone normally,
06:33but we'll kind of do our own take and spin on them.
06:38Yeah, so after we get these guys cleaned up,
06:40we'll cook one up, see if it's any good,
06:42see if we wanna run it for service today.
06:44Yeah, and we'll get together with the owners,
06:46he and Kim, to see if they like it,
06:49if it's Vietnamese enough for them.
06:51So we got these abalones in this morning.
06:53I was thinking just simply grilling them
06:55and then using some plum vinegar, white soy sauce.
06:57Cilantro flowers are really nice right now.
06:59Fish sauce and Thai chilies into the plum vinegar.
07:01Yeah, that'll turn into a vinegar.
07:03That'll be nice.
07:04Yeah.
07:05We'll cook the first one and see how it is.
07:06I kind of like kind of hard texture,
07:08almost like ears or whatever.
07:10I think it's ready.
07:11I'm just gonna slice it thin and then put it on the shell.
07:13Yeah, we just have some insertions
07:14and then we have some plum vinegar.
07:16Just make a little sauce on the fly.
07:18We have some red boat fish sauce.
07:20Yeah, the allium oil.
07:21Just super intensified garlic shallots.
07:25The best ones like the egg noodles.
07:26It's kind of like first or second try.
07:28I don't want to force it too hard, I think,
07:29if it's not perfect.
07:34Basically, it's grilled abalone,
07:36peanut farms, radishes, nasturtiums,
07:38crystallized iceberg plant, cilantro flowers,
07:40and then there's white soy and plum vinegar.
07:43Yeah, so go ahead and try it.
07:44Let me know what you think.
07:45What do you think about the texture?
07:46That was the thing I was most worried about, I think.
07:48I really like the texture.
07:49Yeah.
07:50Like a very street food.
07:51I think that was kind of the idea behind it.
07:52Yeah, and I like the texture a lot.
07:54Awesome.
07:55I think we can work with this
07:56and we'll kind of just play with it
07:57and work on it for the tasting menu.
07:58Yeah, I think it should be a tasting menu thing.
08:00Yeah.
08:03So, yeah, now we're gonna go smoke our ducks
08:07out back on our little Traeger grill.
08:10We'll smoke these guys on here for initially 30 minutes
08:14and then we'll come back and we'll glaze
08:16with the palm sugar every 15 until it reaches 140.
08:21This is the last step in our whole fried fish.
08:27I'm getting ready for service.
08:28I'm just going to score them.
08:31We're gonna season them.
08:32This is one of the most classic Vietnamese dishes
08:34there is on the menu.
08:35We'll kind of skewer these up
08:37and then it'll get plated just like this.
08:39We might actually have to find new plates to serve them on
08:42because these guys are huge.
08:45I think this guy's like kind of ridiculous.
08:48We might have to put this on a platter.
08:51Everything is 135 to 140, so that's what we're looking for.
08:56Yeah, everything's ready to go.
08:57I'm gonna glaze it one more time and then I'll pull it off.
08:59Yeah, so this is Abel.
09:01He's our main grill guy.
09:02So what he's gonna do is he's using our duck spice
09:06and he's finishing coating the ducks after we smoke them.
09:09So it sticks because we put a little bit of palm sugar.
09:12So he's gonna flash them in the oven.
09:13The spices aren't toasted.
09:14So when we flash them, it'll kind of like tighten up
09:16the skin and toast the outside of the spices.
09:19Right before service, this is what we do.
09:21Just to get everything ready and seamless.
09:24I don't think this fish is gonna fit in this bowl, Abel.
09:28So when we get the order in, the fish takes a little minute.
09:31So even if it's on back, we'll kind of drop it
09:34and kind of hold it in a warm spot just to be ready.
09:36Especially like with something like this,
09:37it'll take closer to like 10 minutes to fry all of the meat.
09:42Barely wants to fit, it's crazy.
09:45Straight fire egg noodles.
09:47Drop my noodles as soon as the order comes in.
09:49And then we're gonna take a spoonful of butter,
09:52a large handful of sliced garlic.
09:54We're gonna let this sweat down.
09:55We're gonna add in our noodle sauce
09:57made with vegan fish sauce, vegan oyster sauce,
09:59tamari, some lemongrass saute.
10:02Let that caramelize and that's when it's gonna give it
10:04a little more depth of flavor.
10:06By the time the sauce is done,
10:07usually our noodles will be done.
10:09Gonna get a little bit of that pasta water in there
10:11to emulsify our sauce just a little bit
10:13and then add our noodles in.
10:15We're gonna finish it with some lemon juice
10:17and then that's it.
10:19Freshly cut negi on top.
10:21Soft poached egg on the inside.
10:23Little bit of espalette.
10:24And then I slide it over chef in the pass
10:27and he's gonna finish it with truffles.
10:28So we just shave two grams of black winter truffles on there.
10:33So that's the dish right there.
10:35Housemade egg noodles with garlic,
10:37soft poached egg and winter truffles.
10:41Straight fire whole fish.
10:43Okay, this thing's huge.
10:45This is not gonna fit on the plate.
10:46Have our ginger sweet and sour sauce.
10:49Garlic, ginger, rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, sugar.
10:53We just bathe it in this sauce.
10:56And this guy's really big so he needs a lot.
10:59Let me garnish it with cilantro.
11:00I always feel like the cilantro's the seaweed
11:02and the fish is swimming out of the ocean.
11:05It's got like a nice crown of cilantro on top.
11:08Yeah, it's whole fried fish.
11:09Our local San Diego rock cod straight out of the ocean.
11:12So this is ginger sweet and sour noodles.
11:14So essentially rice noodles with the same sauce.
11:17And then this is black vinegar marinated cucumbers
11:20with crispy garlic.
11:21And lastly that is pickled green papaya.
11:28Walking in, straight fire duck.
11:30Kells, can I get a duck salad please?
11:33Abel's gonna take breasts off the crown right now.
11:35I think it's important to keep
11:37that creative momentum going.
11:39Keep creating new dishes.
11:40Food is evolving, we're changing all the time.
11:43So the condiments, nutmum chimichurri
11:45is what we're calling it.
11:46The duck itself is just a bunch of dried seafood
11:49and pork essentially with duck juice.
11:52So he's glazing it right now,
11:53giving it the final glaze of the palm sugar.
11:55And that kind of balances out nicely
11:56with all the spices on the duck.
11:58Finish with the sauce and we're gonna put
11:59that confit duck leg right on the side.
12:02Now we have what wasn't originally like a Vietnamese dish
12:06and now it eats super Vietnamese
12:08with the lettuce, the herbs, and then all the sauces.
12:12That's the duck.
12:14Our mom, our aunt, they're always putting new dishes
12:17onto the table, telling us to eat, you know.
12:20And so that's something that we love to see.
12:23And when we see that, it makes us feel
12:25like we've accomplished something.
12:26This is like for us to pay homage to our parents.