Fay Maschler reviews Duck & Rice

Fay Maschler isn't sure that Alan Yau's latest project is worth the wait
Soho supremo: Duck & Rice is the latest of many ventures started by Alan Yau, founder of Wagamama, Yauatcha and Hakkasan
Fay Maschler5 December 2017

I had been waiting so long that Duck & Rice started to feel like the Second Coming. Alan Yau first appeared to Londoners in 1992 when he launched Wagamama and customers proved willing to share John Pawson-designed tables and make a meal of Japanese noodles. He went on to open Hakkasan, Yauatcha, Busaba Eathai (all now sold on), Cha Cha Moon and Princi.

Yau wasn’t infallible. His Italian venture Anda in Baker Street with Francesco Mazzei at the stoves didn’t last long and Naamyaa Café in Islington closed before its predestined rollout.

Devotees of Yau OBE have been waiting with the patience of Latter-day Saints since the projected opening in 2013 of a Chinese gastropub in Berwick Street where once stood The Endurance. Last week the day finally dawned but it turns out that at lunchtimes food is being served only in the ground-floor pub part and in the evenings soft opening prices still obtain. My plans had been made and companions rounded up before this became evident.

Cantonese roast duck

Just a bit more Yau legend: when he was five years old his parents came to Britain from Hong Kong to open a Chinese takeaway — in King’s Lynn because there happened not to be one there — and at the age of 11 Alan was summoned to join them. Later, after studying politics and philosophy in London, he opened a Chinese restaurant of his own in Peterborough and earned back his investment in six months.

When Yau speaks of authenticity he makes the case that the sort of food referred to in the Duck & Rice press release as “Hong Kong Garden chop suey house” — something I remember discovering as a child with greedy glee — is as authentic in its own way as any strictly regional, probably rather dour faithful exposition.

A dinner for family and friends — you have probably inferred I know (and admire) Alan — covers some of the more luxurious bases such as roast (Irish) duck (£38) and lobster Cantonese (£48) on the long, almost certainly too long, menu. Arriving unannounced and with credit card to hand I order dinner by homing in on noodle assemblies, Cantonese clichés and comfort food.

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Soup is wanted; crabmeat and sweetcorn (£9) and hot and sour (£8) are chosen. Consternation regarding egregiously high prices sets in. Food is delivered from a basement kitchen via a dumb waiter trundling up two floors. Everything arrives lukewarm including the hot and sour soup, which is neither hot (in any sense of the word) nor sour. Tepid temperature allows sickly sweetness to predominate in the crab assembly. We perfect chopstick skills picking up warm sparky cashew nuts sautéed with chilli and shallots, one of the Beer Snacks.

Word — and Instagrams — had reached me from friends trying Duck & Rice about sesame prawn toast, which in place of the usual minced shellfish paste — often with a booster of surimi — is a whole prawn clinging on for dear life to a baton of fried bread with a carapace of black and white sesame seeds pressed on top. It’s terrific, and worth the £6.50.

The other item that rouses some enthusiasm in my three increasingly jaundiced companions exposed to claggy beef ho fun, heavily curry- powdered Singapore fried noodles with flossy texture and No 23 (ordering joke), a chicken chow mein quite closely related to Pot Noodle, is ginger cod with egg sauce and fried rice. White of egg gives the sauce a floaty gossamer quality — clinging to the fish like a tutu on a rather hefty dancer — and what isn’t improved by the warmth of ginger? Jasmine-smoked pork rib shows that costings are to some extent predicated on superior ingredients.

Chilli szechuan chicken

Meeting a chum for lunch on the ground floor, elbowed into a corner by huge copper tanks holding unpasteurised Pilsner Urquell beer delivered weekly from the Czech Republic — a feature of the frantic design from the ergonomically illiterate Istanbul-based group Autoban also responsible for Yau’s Babaji Pide currently closed “due to a mechanical difficulty” — we try the pub food.

Seven dim sum are offered. Pork and prawn shu mai are blameless but at £7.80 ridiculously more expensive than the same item for £5.90 at Yauatcha next door. Cha siu bun is the comforting little cloud of innocence with a wicked heart that it is designed to be. Japanese fish fingers are sea bream tempura and we like them better than the soft-shell crab with wasabi mayo. Hong Kong Garden spring roll has a murky flavour contributed by the beansprouts. It is time travel back to a less golden age.

The beer and wine list have clearly been given the same careful and lengthy consideration as other elements in the package. Almost 30 wines are offered by the glass in various sizes, including 70ml. Who is that for? Your pet? I appreciate the clarity and lightness of touch of the Pilsner Urquell and at dinner enjoy the Austrian Blaufrankisch Markus Altenburger. It has been a long wait but — so far — not entirely worth it.

Open daily noon-11.30pm (Fri & Sat midnight, Sun 10.30pm). Pub snacks/food £3.90-£16.50. Upstairs a meal for two with wine, about £125 including 12.5 per cent service.

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