Monsieur Le Duck, 4 Brushfield Street, London E1 6AN (020 7247 2223).
Salad, main course and a side £17. Desserts £6. Wines (500ml) from £15
One summer, on holiday near Cahors on the Lot river, we found a red wine which we were convinced was the essence of the French good life with a cork in its neck. It reeked by turns of blackcurrant and paraffin, of the deep earth below and the blue sky above. It was a languid afternoon, bottled. We downed loads of it, until the collection of empties by the front door of our gîte looked like cause for a friendly intervention. The tiny winery responsible was close by and so naturally, hugging ourselves with joy at our good taste and sophistication, we bought a case and drove it all the way home to south London. Our little flat might have backed on to the dirty rumble and clatter of train tracks, but with the cork pulled on a bottle of this we would, for a few glasses at least, be back on our stone-flagged terrace, the southern French sun on our cheeks.
Do I need to finish this story? Because you already know, don’t you? We did indeed pull the cork and fill our glasses. What we found was not an expression of the landscape. It was a mediocre, rather blunt red wine which, drunk in the arse end of Clapham, tasted not of sunshine but delusion. It took a long time to get through those bottles.
Monsieur Le Duck, a new pop-up which will be in its present location near London’s Liverpool Street station until May, risks being the restaurant equivalent of that case of wine. Richard Humphreys worked amid the blinking computer terminals and paper drifts of the City but dreamed only of Gascony. He went there a lot. He loved their tiny restaurants. He loved what they did with ducks and red-and-white check. Why could there not be one of those places around the corner from his office? He decided to open one, which had the added advantage of requiring him to stop working in the office. The result could have been a disaster, an expression of one man’s doubts about his life choices, and who wants to go there for dinner?
That it isn’t a disaster, that it’s delightful in a low-key, sweetly romantic way, should be attributed to the narrow frame they’ve set for themselves. It’s called Monsieur Le Duck because that’s what they do: a small number of duck dishes, a bit of salad and a couple of desserts to finish. I’ve admitted in the past that I’ve found the idea of going en vacances in rural France rather more engaging than the reality. You sit down in the charming local restaurant, and thrill to the menu of confit de canard and steak frites, salade aux lardons and crème brûlée. Night two is good, too, and night three OK. By night four what you wouldn’t do for a bit of bloody ramen or a rogan josh. It’s the downside to a robust culinary culture, these grinding menus of the same old.
Think of Monsieur Le Duck as the first night of your French holiday to which you won’t return, perhaps for months. The modern space, a glass-walled addition to a pre-existing building, is floored in wood block. There are dainty red-and-white check curtains running along the length of the original building’s windows on the back wall, which don’t need to be there, but are nice to look at. There’s one long communal table down the middle, plus a bunch of two tops, a wine rack and tiny open kitchen with space for one cook and one bottle washer. They play Edith Piaf at you, as if it were part of the order of service. And no, I don’t regret anything either, Edith. Monsieur Le Duck is begging to be packed on Valentine’s night and most other nights, too.
The menu is short. For £17 you get a mixed salad full of butch, hefty leaves and a light dressing to start, followed by one of the mains, plus a side. There are nutty puy lentils or green beans fried in garlic butter, seasonal greens with lardons or thin frites, a little potato skin clinging to their ends. All are exactly as you would wish them to be. And so, to the duck. Spoiler alert. If you don’t like duck, don’t come here. Likewise, if you do like ducks, but not dead, cooked ones, also don’t come here. This may seem obvious, but you can never underestimate the boundless stupidity of some people.
It is offered four ways, three if you can’t quite tell the difference between the two ways with breast. All of them need a sprinkle of extra salt but it’s there on the table so I’m not whining. The breast, either grilled over coals or gently pan-roasted, is the deep purple inside of rare calf’s liver, as it damn well should be, with crisp skin, the fat almost fully rendered, as it also damn well should be. There’s a burger of minced duck, which is a couple of inches thick, pleasingly dense, and constantly on point to leak juices down your chin. Stand by with a napkin.
All of this would be wasted effort if the duck confit wasn’t up to scratch, but it really is: crisp and bronzed and salty and rich. I imagine I’m meant to niggle that they don’t confit it themselves; they bring it from France. Then again if they’ve found the good stuff, why overcomplicate matters, especially at these prices? The real bargain is Le Grand Jeu, for two to share: a leg of confit, 100g of each way with the breast, a burger, two salads and two sides for £42.
The non-meat option is described as a grilled winter vegetable tart, but could just as easily be listed under “will this do?”. It is a dense platform of just undercooked puff pastry, ungenerously hidden under some flaccidly roasted vegetable. In the sense that it represents perfectly a Gallic shrug of disdain for non-meat eaters, it is just as authentic as everything else here. Look, I am merely the reporter.
As well as listing some of Gascony’s finest, they have a sturdy white, rose and red, at £15 for a 500ml carafe (equivalent to £22.50 for a standard bottle) which lubricates all of this. We finish with an exceedingly well-made crème brûlée, and a slice of apple tart with a scoop of crème fraîche which is all kinds of encouraging loveliness. Monsieur Le Duck could have been a terrible idea. It could have been one man’s mistake. Instead it’s a delightful night out.
News bites
If you like dinner with a French accent, try the Hero of Maida in west London, where the menu – like those at the group’s other pubs – is overseen by chef Henry Harris. It’s all here: celeriac remoulade with Bayonne ham, steak tartare, rabbit in a mustard sauce, chocolate mousse to finish. Harris ran the much-loved Racine and it’s a delight to see his menu return (theheromaidavale.co.uk).
Chef Tommy Heaney, who competed recently in Great British Menu, has opened Heaney’s Restaurant in Pontcanna, Cardiff. Because it’s 2019, the menu offers plates for sharing including sea bass with celeriac and a sourdough broth, lamb with anchovy and sea vegetables, and fish beignets with curry and pomegranate (heaneyscardiff.co.uk).
The very first Ed’s Easy Diner, which occupied a wedge-shaped corner site at the end of Old Compton Street in London’s Soho, has closed. It’s easy to forget just how radical and exciting Ed’s was when the late Barry Margolis opened it in 1987 – 24 other sites remain (edseasydiner.com).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
