Wine-Lees Duck Neck
Duck necks braised with chilli and spices and then steeped in a brine made from rice wine lees, sold cold as a gnawing snack to go with beer.
How to eat it
There is no polite way to do this. Pick the neck up with your fingers, bite along the length of it and work the meat off the small vertebrae with your teeth, then suck the marrow-rich bones before setting them on a side plate. The wine-lees brine leaves the meat slightly wet, so keep napkins close. It is eaten cold or at room temperature, usually alongside beer or with a bowl of plain rice porridge. Do not expect much meat per piece; the point is the flavour, not the quantity.
The story behind the dish
Quzhou sits on the western edge of Zhejiang, bordering Jiangxi, Fujian and Anhui, and its taste for chilli sets it apart from the rest of the province. Spiced duck parts are the city's best known snack, and the wine-lees version marries that heat with an older Zhejiang habit of preserving meat in the lees left over from rice-wine brewing. The lees add a soft sweetness and a faint alcohol note that rounds off the chilli. It is a shop-counter food rather than a restaurant dish, bought by the bag and eaten at home or in the street.
For reference
Every kitchen does it its own way. What follows is the typical version — ingredients, heat and price shift from city to city and from one restaurant to the next, so take it as a guide rather than a fixed recipe.
If you have an allergy or something you can't eat, check with the staff before you order.