After 10-year run, King + Duke closing but recipes live on

That hearth has been a workhorse for numerous talented chefs who have run the King + Duke kitchen, including opening chef Joe Schafer, E.J. Hodgkinson, Chris Edwards, Nate Boer and Eddie Barrett.

In a few days, however, the coals will stop glowing and the behemoth hearth will go cold. The lease on the space at 3060 Peachtree Road is up, and the hospitality group has decided not to renew it. June 18 will be the final day of service.

Credit: Brandon McKeown

Credit: Brandon McKeown

Middle Eastern restaurant Delbar will be taking over the space. The concept, which owner Fares Kargar plans to debut in Buckhead this winter, will join sister locations in Inman Park and Alpharetta.

”It’s time for someone else to come in and bring something new to the space,” a Rocket Farm Restaurants representative told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a prepared statement. “As we near that final service, we’ll be looking back on a special decade in Buckhead and are feeling very grateful for the employees, guests and regulars that have supported us over the years.”

In that same vein, we sifted through AJC archives to find numerous King + Duke recipes featured through the years. Here are some of our favorites.

RECIPES

These recipes from King + Duke chefs include the restaurant’s popular white cheddar popovers, a refreshing watermelon salad, a side dish of roasted onions with Romesco sauce, and the fried yeast doughnuts that have been a mainstay on the Sunday brunch menu.

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

King + Duke White Cheddar Popovers

These white cheddar popovers are part of the bread service at King + Duke, and the recipe was created by Chrysta Poulos, director of pastry for Rocket Farm Restaurants.

For the showiest results, use a popover pan with cups that are 2 inches wide and 2 1/5 inches deep. These pans are readily available and come in sizes that bake six or 12 popovers at a time. Popover pans have deep, steep-sided wells that force the batter up while baking so your popovers end up with crisp sides and a puffy top. This recipe will result in dense popovers as opposed to the hollow ones.

At the restaurant, a batch this size would be made with six extra-large eggs. Because we test recipes with large eggs, we weighed out both extra-large and large eggs by volume and found that seven large eggs were the equivalent. Poulos recommends using King Arthur flour. We mixed our batter in a 5-quart stand mixer and found we needed every bit of that volume to accommodate the batter.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

King + Duke Watermelon, Blackberry and Grilled Peanut Salad

This salad was a menu item at King + Duke in summer 2020 when Nate Boer was the executive chef.

“We wanted to convey the nostalgic summertime images of enjoying freshly cut watermelons and eating berries right off the bush,” Boer told the AJC at the time. “We decided to simply highlight amazing local watermelon and blackberries with the classic regional flavor favorite of roasted peanuts.”

At the restaurant, the peanuts were roasted in a wood-fired oven. Try doing this on your grill in an iron skillet. But you can also roast peanuts in the oven. Heat the oven to 350 degrees, then roast the peanuts 10 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned and fragrant.

Roasted peanut oil is a specialty oil with a deep roasted peanut flavor. They suggested if you must make a substitute, use walnut, hazelnut or unrefined coconut oil.

And if you’re looking to pair this salad with a protein, they said, “Grilled steak would be awesome with this dish.”

Credit: Renee Brock

Credit: Renee Brock

King + Duke’s Coal-Roasted Torpedo Onions

Chef Joe Schafer shared this recipe in 2014 when the restaurant served it as a seasonal appetizer or side dish. At the restaurant, the onions were garnished with fried capers, made by heating oil to 350 degrees and then frying 1/4 cup drained capers until crisp. Drain the fried capers on paper towels and use them to garnish the onions immediately so the capers will remain crisp.

Piquillo peppers are a sweet pepper with little or no heat. They are roasted and then packed into jars and can be found in the gourmet aisle of some grocery stores or on the Spanish food aisle at the Buford Highway Farmers Market. If you’re making this a little later in the summer and can’t find green garlic tops, substitute chives or the tops of spring onions.

King + Duke’s Romesco Sauce

Any leftover Romesco Sauce will be excellent with grilled fish, seafood stews or roasted potatoes.

Fried Yeast Doughnuts

Fried-to-order doughnuts are a Sunday brunch menu item at King + Duke.

Chrysta Poulos, director of pastry for Rocket Farm Restaurants, uses Sir Galahad flour from King Arthur Flour for artisan breads and yeasted pastries because it’s relatively low in protein. Since it’s only available in 50-pound bags, we substituted King Arthur’s unbleached bread flour.

Only roll out the dough once for doughnuts. Any scraps can be kneaded together, allowed to rest and used to bake dinner rolls. Form the rolls, arrange on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and allow to rise again. Brush with egg wash and top with salt, sesame seeds or poppy seeds and bake at 325 degrees until golden brown.

For the doughnuts or rolls, Poulos likes to have them rise until they’re grown to 1 1/2 times their size, not doubled as most recipes call for. She finds this makes for moister breads.

This is two recipes in one. You can use it as it comes out of the mixer as cream cheese frosting, or heat it and turn it into a glaze. The glaze will not dry hard. Instead, it will be a bit sticky.

Our recipe calls for using a stand mixer, but if your ingredients are soft enough, you can mix this in a bowl with a wooden spoon.

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