Roast Dinners in London

Let’s party like it’s 2015 with a roast dinner at Duck & Waffle, Liverpool Street.

Ahhh 2015 when life was actually good, unlike the boomers who dream of the 1950’s when you could leave your door unlocked because you didn’t actually own anything and had 3 potatoes a week to live on.

Back when you could actually see what your mates had posted on Instagram, and not some shitty roast dinner reviewer or legions of gawping faces you’ve never met proclaiming the best burger EVER.

When London was still basking in a post-Olympics blow, when most people still viewed Boris as a harmless name behind a bicycle scheme, as opposed to the two biggest curtails of freedoms in this country since the boomer age.

When Dalston was still edgy. When Croydon was going to get a Westfield. When going to a Boiler Room event didn’t mean you’d be labelled as a associate of the Israeli Defence Forces.

And when Duck & Waffle was living the zeitgeist of the London restaurant scene, along with Polpo, Dishoom – heck, Franco Manca was the best pizza in London back then.

You’re quackers

Curiously, the week gone was my 10th anniversary of moving to London, which I studiously celebrated in typical Londoner style by…

…forgetting to celebrate it.

Unless you count going to Duck & Waffle?

So if you’ve moved on from the early 2010’s (I would understand if you are still living back then), a little reminder of Duck & Waffle. It’s on the 40th floor of 110 Bishopsgate – one of the tall towers near Liverpool Street though not one of those with a plallic name, unless you count Heron Tower as phallic?

That’s what we call Heron Tower in Hull.

So also Duck & Waffle is mostly know for brunch, and in particular – duck confit leg on a waffle, with a fried duck egg on top.

Also it’s mostly populated by people just getting to know what was cool in the early 2010’s, so plenty of American tourists (who also seem to love Dishoom on social media) and folk from the outer boroughs, if I’m judging on looks as well as accents.

Oh and Lord Gravy. For their £55.00 for 3 courses roast dinner.

Aw, phooey, 3 courses

I don’t know when best to rant about the enforced 3 courses but I might as well get over with it. I haven’t even worked out when to mention Brexit.

Of course, I knew (more or less) what I was letting myself in for, but I don’t understand why a restaurant needs to enforce 3 courses. I’m already fat. I might want to enjoy the rest of the day.

We asked if there was any option other than 3 courses if we wanted a roast dinner, but there wasn’t. It was £55.00 for 1 course, 2 courses or 3 courses. However, you could merrily just order one main from the brunch menu.

This makes zero sense.

If a restaurant has to put a minimum spend on…fine, I can work around it. But please don’t enforce a minimum amount of food. Especially when starters are effectively a breakfast plate:

Blast it, breakfast too

Rant over as the food was pretty much great.

The sourdough was glistening, also brioche-like in luxury to the top though the bottom was rather on the crunchy side – hard work to cut and the cutlery was good quality.

Sharpness to the tongue also from the vinegar-ish touch of the capers mixed in with the beef tartare, topped with the gherkins.

You might expect Duck & Waffle to be good at eggs – it was the perfect fried egg.

Other options for starters were corn ribs or lobster roll – perhaps these might have been the more sensible choice, but staying in the European Union was the more sensible choice. Yay, mentioned Brexit.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy

For the roast, the choice was beef, lamb or a mushroom and camembert wellington. No vegan option, but I wouldn’t go to something called Holy Carrot and expect a steak, so guess the same applies for Duck & Waffle.

Quite why duck wasn’t an option for the roast is another matter.

My first impression was of slightly weird presentation.

With a little re-arrangement, we had:

At least you can see most of what I’m about to talk about, except the carrots. Said carrots were small batons and rather on the sweet side, probably from honey.

Leeks were quite chunky in size, creamy and crunchy.

Cabbage was good, again a slight crunch and rather silky – assumed buttered.

Also we had swede mash which was again creamy.

Yes, we also ordered cauliflower cheese. Why the fuck did we do that? For £9.00 extra and we ate little of it, however it was super cheesy – the cheese strings pulled as you spooned it onto the plate, four types of cheese though I’m not sure using orange-coloured cheese works. Topped with something similar to parmesan but lighter in flavour.

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle

Roast potatoes.

Yes, they did have duck fat on. No I won’t stop waffling. However they were nowhere near as good as they look – they look like the star of the show, and damn I was excited, and whilst they all had crispy edges – that box was ticked, they each had different problems.

One was tired, one was dry inside and the other was chewy. Hmmm. You know, I’ve still never been to Burger & Lobster. 10 years living in London.

The Yorkshire pudding was a proper homemade kind, soft and fluffy – if cold and too large.

The star of the show for me, was the lamb. Someone did comment on Threads (it’s actually ok on there despite Meta) about the well-know rectangular nature of roast meat, but I guess this is what you call a pressé in chef terms (though possible I’m hallucinating this).

One assumes it was slowly braised – the meat was so tender and juicy, it fell apart to eat – plus some chives and crispy onions on top to add some texture. Very much top work.

My accomplice’s beef was likewise tender, not a patch on the flavour of my lamb, but very nice. Alas, she had a problem.

Her gravy had an aniseed flavour.

My gravy was a hearty lamb-flavoured gravy, thick and delicious. Though of course there was never enough. I thought Kier Starmer had stopped the small gravy boats?

Duck & Waffle

Oh gosh, I thought it was time to write the summary but I still have to talk about the dessert.

Caramel isn’t my favourite of sweet tastes – it does make me feel equally gooey inside, but hey I’ve just consumed 3,000 calories, been through the trauma of Tracey Emin’s exhibition replete with her images of surgery, about to go down a very fast lift 40 floors and then go have a few beers – what damage could a little sickly caramel do?

It was excellent as a piece, the cheesecake had vanilla vibes to it, the caramel sauce was oozing gooeyness, the white chocolate shavings glorious. But also utterly gluttunous.

Drinks wise, I ordered a Meantime – which was also trendy back in 2015. I certainly wouldn’t choose it now, unless it was the only IPA on the menu. Which it was.

We also had a Californian Zinfandel as we are still boycotting Argentinan Malbec which would have been our choice, not quite sure why I didn’t think about USA and Trump in my list of places I am boycotting, except Google, Microsoft and Meta products because have you seriously tried an alternative to Google? But hey, at least their armed forces are well fed for their multiple victories in the war against Iran that ended 95 days ago and…oh…is still being won yet again as I type. And possibly still yet again when finally-ex-MAGA Americans are reading this in 2036, wistfully wishing the presidency had been handed to Eric rather than Barron.

Service was pleasant. Not much to add on that, though I’m tired of writing and need to start work soon. Gosh, I just realised that Trump posted a meme that involves a black person being in the army. And is that a woman in the background? Maybe don’t tell Hegseth.

So do I knock some points off for enforcing 3 courses? It was certainly an annoyance, but apart from problematic roast potatoes and the (otherwise good) yorkie being cold, there isn’t much to complain about. Oh a lack of gravy. But that was expected.

The lamb was stunning, all the vegetables were excellent – and it is arguably good value for money – £55.00 for 3 courses. I didn’t eat much the next day. The gravy was good, also.

My gravy was good anyway. My accomplice didn’t like hers, said it negatively affected everything – and scored it a 7.30.

My score is an 8.21 out of 10. Mostly it was excellent, but I begrudge the enforced 3 courses. And I wish we were back in 2015. Even Twitter was good back then.

Next Sunday is an ordinary and thankfully much cheaper pub, that has apparently upped its roast game. We’ll see.

Toodles.