The bar at Duck & Waffle

Duck & Waffle opened in the summer of 2012 and it has made an indelible mark on the London dining scene. With a name like Duck & Waffle, how could it not? But the name is not its only draw card. Located on the 40th floor of the Heron Tower near Liverpool Street, it offers glorious views over the City of London, the kind that could perhaps only be matched with vouchers for an exciting helicopter ride.

Before you hit enter the restaurant proper, there is the funky stylish bar that serves a range of cocktails. It’s very cool – every bit as cool as special drinks at the Ice Bar. The restaurant itself is casually slick with an urban feel to it. The essence of Duck & Waffle is British dining tapas style. The menu contains a selection of starter plates, breads, raw dishes, and small and large plates, some of which are particularly interesting including the unusually styled duck & waffle dish (but more on that later).

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The shabby area behind King’s Cross use to house the late night clubbing set. But in recent times this has been regenerated into something unrecognisable. Gone is the dinginess, and in its place is a rejuvenated Granary Square laden with fountains and a reinvigorated Granary Building. A Grade II listed structure; the Granary Building plays home to the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design as well as Caravan King’s Cross, the second branch of the Caravan restaurants (the original being on Exmouth Market).

The interior of Caravan King’s Cross is as gorgeous as the luminous façade of the Granary Building. It smacks of industrial warehouse glam and is modern and striking. The airy ceiling space gives it a heightened sense of chic, and the restaurant does well to create the promise of an edgy New York dining experience. It’s the kind of place that immediately draws you in as you walk through the door. But where the restaurant comes up trumps in terms of design, it conversely falls short on the food. The menu possessed hints of creativity but unfortunately the cooking was left somewhat wanting.

A starter of mackerel fillets (£6.50) was nicely cooked and moist, albeit a little salty. It came with a creative combination of seaweed, cucumber, sesame and a moromi miso dressing, but it too, was over seasoned. Shame really as this could have been a rather nice dish.

Mackerel fillet

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Karpo is the Greek goddess of the fruits of the earth, and its namesake restaurant in the Megaro Hotel pays tribute to this fact by compiling a menu that relies on seasonable and sustainable ingredients. An all day bistro, the composition of the dishes draws on an eclectic mix of influences. There’s the touch of the Italian with offerings such as burrata, blood orange and puntarella, but there’s also a sprinkling of the Americana with the likes of Southern fried quail. Situated across the road from King’s Cross Station, it’s not located in the most auspicious location. Nor did the eco/urban design of the restaurant feel particularly trendy, with the mix of concrete, wood flooring and an eco wall hung with a stretch of plants being rather unconventional.

Karpo didn’t generate a great sense of warmth for me when I first walked in, but one bite of the food and I was sold. A starter of Cornish scallops (£10) was delicious, although less cooking time would have given it a more opaque centre. Accompaniments of chargrilled leeks were tasty and a potato purée was wonderfully creamy, both of which worked well with the scallops. But the most winning aspect of this dish was the fantastic stock reduction finished with balsamic vinegar that gave the sauce both depth, intensity and sweetness.

Cornish scallops

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Ed Wilson and Oli Barker, the boys behind the renowned Terroirs and its sister restaurants Soif and Brawn, have created a certain niche by selling biodynamic wines imported through wine specialists Les Caves de Pyrène. The practice of biodynamic agriculture refers to the use of organic, sustainable and ecological methods in wine making, and it is a practice that has gained momentum in recent years.

Wilson and Barker’s latest restaurant is The Green Man & French Horn. They’ve kept the name of the pub that once graced the site where the restaurant now stands. Located right in the heart of Covent Garden, it’s a quaint little place. But it’s also a tight squeeze with cramped tables and noisy acoustics.

The French menu is rustic, homely and comforting. A starter of chicken livers (£8.50) with artichoke and mâche were fat, silky smooth and dripping in flavour. Cooked to medium rare, they were well seasoned and superbly done. A drizzling of merlot vinegar and olive oil dressing left the dish with a lovely glaze and added a moist finish.

Chicken livers

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Oriental noodle dishes are all about the broth. There’s no doubt that noodles are an important facet, but the flavour comes from the broth, and chef-proprietor Ross Shonhan champions this fact with his noodle house Bone Daddies where he serves up noodles in bone-cooked broth as is typical oriental tradition. Shonhan has spent some time at both Nobu and Zuma so Japanese-inspired flavours are old hat for him.

From the starters, a soft-shell crab (£8) was meaty, nicely cooked and very tasty. The spiciness in an accompaniment of chilli and ginger sauce was great, and it added a sparkle to the shellfish. The batter wasn’t thin in a tempura-kind of way, but it really worked with the crab.

Soft-shell crab

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Brothers Oliver and Richard Gladwin have lovingly created The Shed Restaurant in Notting Hill, taking over from where the Ark Italian Restaurant once stood on Palace Garden Terrace. Paying homage to their lifestyle in rural Sussex, the ingredients are sourced from their youngest farmer brother in Nutbourne and other local suppliers in Sussex. Otherwise it is foraged for, and the British menu is ever changing depending on what is available. It is classified according to ’mouthfuls’, ‘fast cooking’ and ‘slow cooking’, etc, and designed for sharing with smallish-sized plates.

As it is a ‘shed’ with a back garden/farm yard feel to it, the restaurant is charmingly decked out with wooden benches, countrified tables, and colourful barrels. It’s a carefully designed hodge-podge furniture collection with a playful feel to it. But the problem is that The Shed is pretty cramped making it a little uncomfortable. And being so small with lots of people being squeezed into it and no floor padding made for some pretty noisy acoustics too.

From the mouthfuls (small bites) section, quail’s eggs with celery salt (£1.50) would have worked better if they were slightly runnier. The celery salt was very good and worked a treat with the eggs. There was a good balance between the salt and the celery flavour. Pork crackling (£1.50) with apple sauce was tasty.

Quail’s eggs with celery salt and pork crackling

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Sake Restaurant

Sake Restaurant operates a chain of contemporary fusion Japanese restaurants in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, with the Sydney branch sitting in the historical and touristy Rocks area near Circular Quay. The décor is lavish, yet simple; sexy, yet understated. It’s really nicely done. Catering to an upmarket and fashionable crowd, its hit the mark as the kind of place one goes to see and be seen.

As befits the name, Sake Restaurant has an amazing sake collection. The sake sommelier suggested that we try the Kozaemon Junmai Daiginjo as our aperitif (a small carafe is $58 – about £38). At over 300 years old, Kozaemon is one of Japan’s most established sake houses and Junmai Daiginjo is its premium label. It brews its sake in the mountains of Japan’s Gifu prefecture. It was delicious, as smooth as silk and an excellent way to start our meal. We also tried a couple of cocktails ($18 to $20 – about £12 to £14) which were also very tasty.

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Pendolino is a refined upmarket Italian situated in the heart of Sydney’s Central Business District. It’s an elegant looking restaurant – very dark, very intimate – the perfect type of restaurant for date night. Be that as it may, it has a welcoming attitude towards children as there were a few dining at the restaurant during our visit. This was nice to see as it’s so rare for such a swish looking venue to be so relaxed about child diners.

Pendolino holds a ‘One-Hat’ (out of a maximum three) from the influential Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide’s restaurant rating system. The menu makes for a wonderful read, the type that could easily tempt you to over order. There are a range of starters, pastas and risotto that come in both starter and main sizes, mains, and of course dessert. All the pastas are hand-made daily on the premises.

I went to Pendolino with FoodPornNation who has eaten there before and absolutely loves the food. She strongly advocated that we try a starter of Alba style free-range beef carpaccio with truffled white walnut puree, testun di barolo cheese, rocket cress, wild baby olives and handmade rosemary grissini
($24.90, about £16) which was a knockout. The way in which the paper-thin carpaccio melted on the tongue was sheer magic, and the aromatic hints of the truffle were a pure delight. This was a glorious dish that one could easily eat over and over again.

Alba style beef carpaccio

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