Dong Zhenxiang, Founder and Owner of Da Dong, Joins the Beijinger’s Dining Hall of Fame

For the second year running, the Beijinger's 2016 Reader Restaurant Awards Ceremony invited members of Beijing’s F&B industry to recognize their peers by electing new members to the Beijing Dining Hall of Fame.

Four individuals were elected to the Hall this year, including Dong Zhenxiang (most commonly known as Da Dong for his 1.93m stature), the founder and owner of Da Dong Roast Duck. Here we take a brief look at this towering personality.

From relatively humble beginnings at his first restaurant along the Third Ring Road in Tuanjiehu in 1985, Da Dong's signature roast duck with succulent meat and crispy skin has steadily risen to the top of the heap of this quintessentially Beijing dish.

From then, and over the following 30 years, Da Dong moved from a single location to more than a dozen outlets in the Da Dong empire, including nine Da Dong Roast Duck locations, one Taste of Dadong offering more casual fare, and most recently, a fast-food take on duck called Da Dong Duck. And that's just in Beijing; he also operates two Da Dong Roast Duck restaurants in Shanghai.

Da Dong Roast Duck is a regular winner in our Reader Restaurant Awards, and in 2016 that tradition has continued. Da Dong was our winner for Best Beijing Duck (upscale dining), as well as Outstanding Chinese Restaurant of the Year, and Dong won the Best Chef award.

Opened last October, Da Dong's new fast food outlet Da Dong Duck (read our review here) has also made a splash, going on to win this year's Best Beijing Duck (casual dining).

But Da Dong has also become known for far more than just duck, with his menu expanding to 160 pages over the years. A work of art in itself, it reads like an encylopedia of fine dining cuisine and the duck dishes take up but a few pages.

Time listed Da Dong Roast Duck as one of the top 10 things to do in Beijing, “Da Dong Roast Duck at Nanxincang, the old old imperial granary to the northeast of the Forbidden City. Crispier and less fatty than other birds, these are the best Peking ducks in town.”

Dong Zhenxiang, who also has an MBA, looks at his restaurants as not only a dining experience, but a cultural experience as well. "We want people to not only enjoy the food – we also want to expose them to Chinese culture, and we want them to feel our country’s famous hospitality,” Dong told the Beijinger last year.

The towering chef is generally fairly low key about his past and there's very little out there about his past prior to Da Dong Roast Duck in 1985 apart from the fact that his father encouraged him to become a chef. According to an interview by Epicure, he took his first jobs in the food industry in 1981 at Beijing eateries Yanqiao Restaurant, Yansong Restaurant, and Tuanjiehu Roast Duck.

Never content to rest on his laurels, Dong is always on the lookout for a new frontier. After investing more than USD 300,000 in setting up a fast food duckburger joint, he plans to take his classic cuisine and its burger version to New York City next. "The white-feather Peking duck will be raised in Chicago according to our specifications, and we have found a place for a three-story restaurant at Times Square," he recently told NBC News.

More stories by this author here.

Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
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Photos courtesy of Da Dong, TMTPost