Food truck and wine bar may be best in city
Thompson: Duck & Drake Kitchen and Digress wine a great partnership.
Like many people, Heberto Segura walked into Digress for the first time and heard angels sing. He demonstrated this with a not-precisely-choir worthy soprano, but one that drove the point home.
Duck & Drake Kitchen, Segura’s mobile kitchen, and Digress Wine are a love match.
Duck & Drake (which was recently branded the city’s best food truck) happened into residency here at Digress (which was recently branded the city’s best wine bar) by a bit of happenstance. Operators of the previous food-truck regular, Smoke & Donuts, had asked Segura and his wife and partner, Rona, to fill in for them.
That’s when Segura felt the thunderbolt.
“I walked in and just knew,” he says. “This is the place where our food would just go perfect with the ambience, it’s perfect for the kind of service we want to do.”
And when Smoke and Donuts moved on, Duck & Drake was able to bring that service in permanently.
Service, by the way, that even now features silverware and fine china. On which dishes like duck empanadillas, beef tongue sliders with chimichurri, short rib and risotto and monkfish in sherry-kissed lobster broth (their fabulous description, not mine) are served.
So, while Duck & Drake is most definitely a food truck, it is one with some serious fine-dining cred. Street cred, I guess. Since they literally operate in a parking lot.
The Seguras’ culinary pedigrees are long. Heberto hails from the Dominican Republic. Rona,
from California, though she was raised in her family’s native Mexico. They met in Vegas while working at the Venetian, where he’d helped open a two-story behemoth of a restaurant right off the casino floor. He was the sous chef; she, lead line cook.
“And still probably one of the most kicking-ass-onthe-line cooks I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” Segura says of his wife.
There’s a lot of love in this story.
And in the food that comes out of the trailer, but it would be a few years before they built that dream. First came some international travel — St. Maarten, Anguilla, St. Tropez — and a return-trip to Vegas before the Seguras came to Orlando.
Roy’s Hawaiian was Rona’s last stop (she ran their pastry program). Heberto’s was a 10-year stint at Raglan Road, where he was executive chef.
“Working with chef Kevin [Dundon] and the partners there was great. We were always pushing the envelope, making something exciting. There are a lot of restaurants that say they’re like family, but that was as close to working for a family restaurant as you could have.”
Segura enjoyed every moment, but in 2017 they decided it was time to fly.
“Most chefs always have that feeling of wanting to do their own thing. We had this dream for a while and it got to the point where if we didn’t do it then, it would have been too late.”
They explored the pop-up scene to see what was going on, then ventured into it — in places like Redlight, Redlight and Central 28 Brewing — testing the waters for upmarket, global cuisine. Turns out, they were calm and welcoming, allowing Duck & Drake to grow, gather steam, invest in the truck and last January, luck into residence at Digress.
Rob Chase, the wine bar’s owner, feels just as lucky.
“The food, right from the start, was blowing everyone away,” says Chase, still equally smitten with his partners. “I think 75 percent of our phone calls are people checking to see if Duck & Drake are here.”
Chase and the Seguras’ constant communication informs the boards on both their menus.
“We talk to Rob about
what’s coming in,” he says. “So, say, he’s getting wines from Chile and Argentina — we will plan something that’s cohesive either in flavor profiles that pair well or perhaps geographically.”
Cuisine here is often tapas style, but portions are hardly nouvelle. You’ll get full sampling, and sliders — I tried wagyu, spicy chicken and beef/lamb — are available a la carte
at roughly $4/pop. More than fair. And with suitable pairings curated by Chase? Balanced, as well.
The short rib, a fall-apart hunk, wonderfully spiced with interesting toasty flavors — a whisper of cinnamon? — was heaven alongside rustic, veg-heavy risotto.
And in Digress’ environment, where your blood pressure dips as soon as you walk through the door, there’s not an ounce of pretension with all that good wine and food. It’s not stuffy. It’s come as you are.
One of Chase’s favorite pastimes is watching first-timers check out Duck & Drake’s menu.
“You can see them, overwhelmed by the options and the ingredients,” he says. “So, they order, and they come in and sit down, and in comes the food, plated on actual plates with real silverware … It catches them completely off guard and it’s amazing to watch.”
Chase says 75 percent of their calls are people checking to make sure Duck & Drake are there. And so, they’re upping their game.
New to the roster are two monthly dinners: The Supper Club, a casual,
dine-in or to-go offering featuring three courses for two ($60/$25 extra for a curated bottle) and the Cellar Dinner, a more formal, intimate event. For now, it will be small and socially distanced — eight people max — coming in for a 10-course tasting menu. $125 with pairings, $90 without.
The city’s best wine bar and the city’s best food truck are angling for a Best Restaurant nod, methinks.
But there may be competition.
The Seguras have brickand-mortar plans on the horizon. Nothing big, says Heberto — he loves that he’s back in the kitchen cooking and doesn’t want to give that up. But he plans to stay on at Digress Wine in some fashion, regardless of any expansion.
A good thing, says Chase, “Because they’re not allowed to leave.”
If you go:
Duck & Drake Kitchen: 1215 Edgewater Drive in Orlando (at Digress Wine); duckanddrakekitchen.com
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando. foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.