Roasted ducks hang behind the counter at Tom's Chinese BBQ

My plan for the day had been to check out a roast duck shop I wanted to write about, one that recently opened up in the suburbs. But first, my wife insisted, I needed to get acquainted with an old roast duck shop, the place her refugee mom often mentions. So, Poway would have to wait; instead I charted a course for City Heights, and finally, belatedly, paid a visit to a local institution, Tom’s Chinese BBQ.

Seemed like a worthwhile switch to me. Newly opened restaurants get most of the press these days, while these long tenured establishments continue to plug away with relatively little notice. I’m not sure exactly how long Tom’s has been open, but long enough that it hasn’t been featured in the Reader for the better part of a decade. It’s been a favorite of the immigrant community for what must be at least 30 years. My wife remembers going there in her youth. She explains that, on celebratory occasions, her family would forego the likes of birthday cake in favor of a whole duck from Tom’s.

According to her, little has changed about the place. It’s still a hole in the wall on University Avenue, still all take-out, still cash only. Whole ducks still hang by the neck, browned and glistening, behind the counter.

A quarter pound of crispy pork belly

It’s not all ducks here, by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect my wife only intervened because she was actually craving the shop’s crispy pork belly ($17.50/lb). And, when a door opened to the kitchen, I could see guys in the back butchering an entire pig.

Not that I needed proof this was a whole hog sort of operation. The Reader’s own Ed Bedford notoriously tried the pig rectum here back in 2008. That’s still offered ($13.95/lb), and the menu likewise features the intestine ($13.45/lb), stomach ($13.45/lb), and head ($16/lb).

But I don’t want to give the impression that the less conventionally popular parts of the pig are the reason to visit. Tom’s proves an excellent, old world-style source not only of roast pork ($17.50/lb), but also BBQ pork ($13,95/lb) — two options where familiar cuts from shoulder to loin might wind up. You can pick up a hind leg for $3.50, a foreleg for $4.50, and best of all, spare ribs for $13/pound.

Half a roasted duck, chopped into pieces with a large cleaver

We stuck to a quarter pound of the pork belly, and it was as succulently fatty as its skin was crispy, all as simply rendered as could be, and hacked into pieces with a large cleaver by the small yet strong woman working behind the counter.

She similarly got to work chopping up the whole duck we split with my mother-in-law, ($33, or a half duck for $17). That cleaver cut through the bones like they were breadsticks, quickly turning an intact fowl into dozens of discrete, just bigger than bite-size pieces. Once we took it home, I rarely knew which part of the bird I was eating at any moment, only that it was always that ideal mix of gamey and aromatic, the skin nearly always crispy, and the meat rich and juicy without fail.

Now I feel as though I’ve gotten a solid baseline for roast duck in San Diego, and may proceed accordingly to try it elsewhere. Though it’s becoming more and more clear that family will keep me coming back to Tom’s Chinese BBQ for many more years to come.