Mary’s comments about creating the winning bite:

We learned how to appeal to the demographic when it came to flavor by bringing in a fan-favorite dish like the Loco Moco, but we also wanted to push our limits by making the dish into an eye-catching dish that let the flavor of duck speak for itself. We challenged ourselves by making each appetizer per order to upkeep the food quality, not wanting to compromise each dish going out fresh and hot. One of the biggest take-aways from the competition was very similar to what we practice at our restaurant, to always see what we can do to heighten the eating experience to every person that wanted to try our dish.

For our Duck Off appetizer, we created an elevated spin on the Hawaiian dish, the Loco Moco. It consists of a crispy rice base layered with ground duck patty, both pan-fried in duck fat. We drizzled our hot-held duck gravy over the patty and garnished it with green onion ribbons. Finally, we plated the dish with a smear of egg yolk sauce and droplets of scallion oil. We paired the scallion oil for the strong aromatic flavor to balance the richness that came with our duck egg yolk sauce. The charred scallion oil is a staple and popular sauce that we serve at JOEYs and the duck egg yolk sauce we created ourselves to emulate the image of a fried egg on top of the entire dish.

Thank You’s

A special thanks to our sponsor Maple Leaf Farms and Don Ruffin their Regional Sales Manager for supplying the duck.