Quack Around The World

After a hard day’s househunting, we set out on a different kind of hunt in the evening: a duck hunt. As part of Wellington On A Plate, we had earlier booked a place at Zibibbo’s, who were offering their Quack Around The World – a dégustation dinner of different ways of cooking duck from different cuisines. After an amuse bouche of duck liver parfait, we had two Asian dishes, one from Vietnam and one from Japan, before moving on to more traditional European duck recipes from Italy and France – a confit duck leg with surprisingly spiced puy lentils and sauerkraut. The pudding was a crème catalan (like a crème brulée) made from duck eggs, with tamarillo and a selection of petits fours.

On arrival, we found that we had been sat at a table of eight people; however, it became increasingly apparent as the amuse bouche and then the first course were served that four of the eight weren’t going to put in an appearance. We wondered why – had they looked out the window, seen the rain, and decided not to bother? Had it been booked by some super-rich person who didn’t feel like eating duck tonight? Or had they booked it 6 weeks ago and forgotten about it – at around 9:30 did they suddenly think “weren’t we meant to be doing something tonight?”

Before we started, the maître d’ gave us a short welcome and speech about how the wines had been selected for each course, including the difficulty of matching a wine to a Japanese soup dish.

It was all very tasty and the portions just right – we didn’t feel stuffed as we left, as the only full-sized course was the confit leg (which is understandably difficult to subdivide). A good start to Wellington On A Plate, and there’ll be more to come over the following fortnight.