Le Canard Du Roy

Louis Sergeant Sweet Couture is, primarily, a cake shop. They do very good, very French, patisserie. They also run to a good line in lunches – I’ve had their croque madame before, and it is a thing of beauty, elevated from its humble origins of cheese and ham toastie, as we’d call it in English.

Their Burger Wellington offering is Le Canard Du Roy, or the king’s duck (“duck of the king”, if you live in Westeros). It’s described like this: On Trays duck confit and duck liver parfait with Capital Produce zucchini, citrus and micro-herb salad, prune chutney and truffle mayonnaise in a truffle brioche bun. The Garage Project beer match is Aro Noir, an old favourite stout that they’ve been brewing, like, forever. (Maybe three years?)

At this point I have to ‘fess up: I left my phone in the office, so there’s no picture of the burger. Instead, here’s a picture of a duck:

I hadn’t booked, and the place was packed; but the waitress said that if I was out before they needed the table at 1:30 they could squeeze me in. No problem, I said. As it was, there was quite a wait on the burger as they were, well, busy! Never mind, I sat sipping my Aro Noir and waited patiently.

When it arrived, the first thing that hit you was the smell: they’d used a hint of garlic in the preparation, methinks. There was no mention on the menu of the chunky, duck-fat-cooked chips, or the thick, garlicky aioli that accompanied them. The duck had been shaped into a patty, but was quite loose and squashed down to become a pick-up-able burger, without squirting out of the sides. The duck liver pâté added an unctuousness to the already rich meat. It needed something to cut through all that richness, and I looked in vain for the promised prune chutney, which seemed to have gone AWOL. A bit of acidity would have worked wonders. The zucchini didn’t really add anything and again, the citrus element was conspicuous by its absence. All enclosed in a sweet brioche bun, I felt that the burger was unbalanced – it really needed an acid counterpoint to bring it together.

This just missed out on scoring a 10, so 9 it is.