I don’t know how long
Duck & Waffle will remain a 24 hour restaurant. It’s on the 40th floor of almost the tallest building in London, with no sign at street level that there’s even a restaurant here to attract any passing trade. And given that the city isn’t exactly the buzzing hub of London’s nightlife I’m not entirely sure who they’re hoping will show up at two in the morning for a smoked haddock scotch egg and a £100 bottle of wine?
Anyway, in other cities around the world people pay good money to whiz up 40 stories in a soundless space-age glass elevator and gawp at familiar landmarks from an eagle’s eyrie. So given the chance to look down on the top of the stately Gherkin as a mere by-product of having dinner, and not a high-falutin, mortgage-inducing ten course tasting menu either, every visitor to London really ought to book a table here. Heck, if you live in London you should try Duck & Waffle once too. I’m just not sure the food on offer is good enough to persuade me to do it twice.
It’s sharing plates, by the way. An idea so novel that our waitress felt the need to explain the concept. She also giggled at me when I sniffed the wine rather than tasting it (“Heehee! Why did you do that?”) which was a cute insight into the level of experience of some of the staff up here in the clouds. I have to say though that service was always friendly and mostly useful.
The signature dish is a leg of crispy-skinned config duck on a sweet waffle with a fried duck egg and a pot of dark maple syrup sauce. It’s Chinese crispy duck crashing into an American breakfast; sweet, unctuous, meaty, bready, you’d be daft not to order it. From here on all the dishes seemed to be a bit hit or miss, the menu something of a lottery.
A really big smoked haddock scotch egg with curried mayo was an interesting way of de-constructing and then re-constructing kedgeree, although very, very salty. Three tiny Herdwick lamb cutlets were delicious on a bed of pureed aubergine. Fish of the day was four tiny nibbles of salmon served on a big brick of Himalayan salt. Nice presentation, but someone didn’t think through how such a miniscule quantity of food would be received at table. Grumpily. Then again there was a generous blob of good rabbit rillettes on toast. And a bag of super sweet/salty/spicy crispy pigs ear strips that were very moorish. They bring out the dishes whenever they’re ready, and apparently the heritage tomato salad takes a long time prepping. Pity, as we were gagging for some fresh veg after what was quite a
hefty load of meat, carbs and salt. The tomatoes when they came were good, but the flavour came from the (salty) dressing rather than the colourful but flavourless fruit.
Mercifully the roasted turnips that arrived with half a grouse were a solid hit of fine vegetable. But half a grouse is not a sharing plate. To eat half a grouse you need to tear into the bird with knife and fork, devouring the obvious bits of meat in a couple of bites and then winkling out all the tasty little shreds while bones and flecks of bird fly everywhere. At some point you’ll want to pick it up and chew the particularly awkward bits off. How this can be a pleasure to pass around a table of four I just don’t know. Good grouse, though.
Puds were good, without being epic. Maureen’s torrejas with caramel apples were the best, a cast iron pan full of sticky deliciousness. My peach melba was lacking in the promised caramelised almonds, but this was swiftly rectified (good service, see?). Unfortunately the almonds were bizarrely the saltiest item we had all evening and destroyed the otherwise nice peach melba without mercy.
The wine list is heavily weighted towards three-digit bottles, which I’m sure irritates almost anyone who prefers to spend more on their food than their wine. Because like us, they’ll have to choose from the handful of cheaper options. That said, we found a good New Zealand Gewurtztraminer at £40. The noise level in the all-glass-walled dining room began the evening at “buzzing” and rose to “shouting at the waitress” before subsiding again around 10pm. Oh, and did I mention the views are astonishing?
Duck & Waffle is fair value given the location, we managed £40 each sharing one bottle of wine between four. So having said I wouldn’t come back here, I probably would. I would visit again if I came up to town with my parents, for instance, or some friends. I’d bring them for the views and the experience, and by picking carefully from the menu we’d have a pretty good bite to eat with it.
