The Crested Duck Charcuterie

The Crested Duck is only open form 5-10 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  There are only 20 seats in the whole dining area and I think you will definitely need a reservation to get a table, but it is well worth it.  The food is amazing.  This is the place that is providing the cured meats to the other places around town that you're ordering, like the Omni William Penn, Spoon, and Bar Marco.  Its better to come to the source. 

This place is amazing if you like cured meats.  The small charcuterie plate is $10 and comes with four cured meats & the large plate $20 comes with eight cured meats.  Who wouldn't go with the large plate to sample everything this place has to offer?  They don't tell you what the meats are before you order them, and I'm sure it's what ever is ready when you go so it probably changes every couple weeks.  Its byob and the cork fee is $5.  I was told all of the charcuterie was gluten free, but the salad and desserts were not.

When the plate arrived, the server told me the name of everything on the plate was, but I really am not super familiar with the names of cured meats.  I know something was venison, something white was called Lardo, and there was plums, nuts & tiny pickles on the plate. Most of the meats were sliced thinner than paper.  Everything on the plate was delicious, with the exception of the the one large, red, round pate like meat closest to me. I didn't like the texture or the flavor, but if you're into that sort of thing, it probably would be delicious to you.  It just wasn't my thing.

Then my smoked duck with strawberry BBQ sauce came.  It was beautiful.  It was delicious.  It was tender & smokey & juicy.   The BBQ sauce was sweet and spicy.  I need more of this sauce.  It was that good.  On the side of the place was a radish ans micro greens salad. Oddly enough, it was good for radishes.

I stopped the server.  I told him whoever thought of strawberry BBQ sauce was a genius.  He said, "That was me. I made the BBQ sauce."

I made sure to tell him he was a genius.

The crispy pork was amazing, too.  I don't know what they did to it to make it that crispy & tasty.  The yellow squash was a raw with a light oil dressing and had pretty little blueish purple edible flowers on it.

I had no room for dessert.

I will be back.  This place was wonderful.  I loved the presentation and the taste of all of the food and I didn't get glutened from any of it.  I can't say it enough, Amazing!

603 Broadway Ave
Pittsburgh PA 15216

http://www.crestedduck.com/