🍜 Asian Duck makes a go of it at 46th and Minnehaha

Official Fried Chicken didn’t last very long when it opened in 2022 at 4010 E 46th St, the teeny-tiny restaurant space on the ground floor of the MN46 Apartments. Its successor, the Thai restaurant PK Cafe, had an even shorter life. Despite seemingly desirable fundamentals — big windows on a corner lot, lots of car and bike traffic, bustling businesses on the rest of the intersection, four stories of apartments above and five more across the street — the storefront sat vacant for the past six months and had some neighbors fearing it was destined for the dreaded Cursed Restaurant Location fate.  

So it was cause for relief and cautious optimism to see Asian Duck Cafe quietly hang their shingle last weekend. The husband-and-wife shop is serving a tight menu of Laotian-twisted pho, banh mi, curry, and boba tea, geared towards to-go and delivery orders, filling the area’s gap between fast food and sit-down dining. After a stealthy soft launch, they’re now open seven days a week.