DUCKSOUP

DUCKSOUP 41 Dean Street, London, W1D 4PY

Ducksoup

http://www.ducksoupsoho.co.uk

Ducksoup is deceptively simple and so now | Metro News

Restaurant review: Ducksoup is the very incarnation of nowness but if you eat there your pasta is likely to be accessorised by fellow diners’ elbows or posteriors.

All of this is, of course, once you’ve managed to find the place – despite being on the main drag, it’s almost passive-aggressively unassuming.

The skill in deceptively simple dishes such as purple-sprouting broccoli with anchovy dressing comes with the cooking of the brassica to just the right point of bite, and anointing it with wonderful Spanish  (I think) anchovies, just punchy and salty enough.

If you have issues with personal space, steer clear – your pasta is likely to be accessorised by fellow diners’ elbows or posteriors.

Ducksoup is so perfectly a restaurant of today, from its easily Google-able name to its basic Tumblr website, that it’s verging on pastiche.  It looks like a semi-permanent pop-up.

Ducksoup, London W1, restaurant review - Telegraph

If I’m honest, I’ve rarely chanced into the latter kind of establishment, always suckered instead into the rip-off place with the cassoulet that is made only of beans.

But you hear about those places, don’t you – full of youth and hope, a bit rough and ready, one or two dishes but they’re so fabulous you’d eat them 10 times over.

Anyway, that’s the concept: five starters at £7 (apart from oysters, which are priced individually), five mains at £14, one terrible pudding for a fiver because fashionable people don’t eat pudding, and bang, you have experienced Soho excellence but you haven’t dropped 200 quid and you’re not too full to go dancing.

Now, T was a bit late so I ordered two things without him, firstly some pickled wild girolles with a chalky but moist Brillat-Savarin (whose eponymous inventor, since you ask, was so wholly anti-carb that if you eat bread with this cheese it turns to ash in your mouth.

Make this your pit stop – a 16th-century village pub whose star dish features loin and pressed shoulder of rare-breed lamb with girolles, baby gem and mint pickle (£25.95) If the log burner in the centre of the room doesn’t draw you in, the blackboard menu above surely will.

Ducksoup | A Casual, Rustic European Restaurant In The Heart Of ...

Ducksoup | Soho Restaurant The casual, white-tiled, rustic minimalism of Dean Street newcomer Ducksoup in Soho is the first thing to hit you.

The first is that the restaurant’s name isn’t Duck Soup but “Ducksoup”, which doesn’t mean anything but does sound quite nice.

Launched by a team who used to work at Hix in Clerkenwell, reviews of Ducksoup justifiably highlight its relaxed ambience and its small European-inspired menu (which changes daily) of around six starters, six main courses and a choice of desserts and bar food.

The handwritten menu, which is posted on the restaurant’s website each day, features dishes that are made with the best of British seasonal produce.

Ducksoup | 40-41 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 4PY  NOTE: Ducksoup doesn’t take reservations and is open 7 days a week (Mon – Sat 12pm – 10.30pm and Sun 1pm – 5pm).

Ducksoup | Soho, Fitzrovia, Covent Garden | Restaurant Reviews ...

"Once upon a time one might have gone somewhere like this and said, “The food’s pretty decent but the room is a bit uncomfortable.”

In 2012 I think people will mostly be saying, “The food’s pretty decent AND the room is a bit uncomfortable.”

Ducksoup, W1 - review | London Evening Standard

It's the sort of touch - and the sort of soundtrack - you'd find in a low-key European restaurant, the kind you always stumble upon on the last day of your city break.

Head chef Julian Biggs, whose team met at Mark Hix's Oyster Chop House, has described it as "a shared idea based on the sorts of places we like to visit time and time again - those that offer an easy European approach to wine and food".

For European, read a little bit French, a little bit Italian, a touch Scandinavian, with impeccably sourced ingredients.

The lager, incidentally, was called Fucking Hell - an appropriate remark on receiving the bill as it turned out, though with appetisers at £3.50, starters at £7 and mains at £14, you can't really complain that it's poor value.

With such a small dining room and a no-bookings policy (good for the restaurant, not for the customer), I fear ever being able to get a table again.

Ducksoup | Restaurants in Soho, London

There’s no duck soup on the menu at Ducksoup, and the owners are silent on whether it was the 1927 Laurel & Hardy film that inspired them (or the 1933 Marx Brothers one).

There are no bookings taken in the evening, diners can sit at a long bar and be served by the chef behind it; there are bare walls and bare lightbulbs and barely any decoration to speak of.

Ducksoup was opened by chef Julian Biggs, along with Clare Lattin and Rory McCoy, who at various points all worked with Mark Hix – and this pedigree is clear.

From the ‘bar menu’ we ordered a simple dish of girolle mushrooms with a few slices of triple-cream Brillat-Savarin cheese and a plate of chewy, garlicky saucisson sec; chef-owner Julian was busy behind the bar slicing a cured leg of pork and dishing up bowls of ‘tomatoes with bread’ – actually the thick Italian soup/stew of pappa al pomodoro.

There's a complicated booking policy in place at Ducksoup: you can reserve tables any time for the basement or the six-cover grotto at the back, but only from Wednesday to Friday.