DUCKSOUP, SOHO

Last night I ventured into Central London for some dinner with my brother and his wife. We had plans to go and check out the new DubJam restaurant in Covent Garden, but unfortunately Lucy wasn't able to make it in the end, so we didn't want to go there without her. We popped into Flatiron, Polpo and Burger and Lobster, but they all had waits of over an hour, and by that point neither of us could wait that long for food! Luckily though Ducksoup had room for the 2 of us, and I'm so glad we ended up eating there, as neither of us had been before and we absolutely loved the food! Sadly, as we were sitting downstairs, it was quite dark, lit mostly by candle light, so the photos I took are terrible!! But bear with me, I'm sure you'll get the gist, and you should go check it out yourselves anyway as I think their menu is really original and utterly yummy.

Ducksoup's menu consists of small bar menu plates, and larger plates from the kitchen. We decided to share a few things so we could get to try as much as possible.

We started with a plate of capocollo, which is cured pork shoulder, and tasted like it was seasoned with black pepper and juniper. It had the perfect balance of meat and fat, and just melted in the mouth, leaving it's wonderful flavour lingering:

Next up was raw scallop with sea salt, chilli and oil - the sweetness from the scallop was perfectly complemented by the salt, chilli and oil:

It's hard to choose a favorite from the dishes we tried, but the chicken wings, tahini yoghurt and crispy curry leaves was definitely up there. The chicken was juicy and tender, and the curry leaves were so good I was eating them on their own (please just pretend you can see the photo!)

Onto a couple of fish dishes: deep fried whitebait with caper aioli was good, but the whitebait were quite batter-y which made them heavy; and clams with broad beans and wild garlic, which was strong in flavours of the sea and greens:

We finished off with the lamb chops, seasoned with cumin, lemon and salt. They were really chunky (in a very good way) chops that were cooked to perfection, slightly pink in the middle, and so full of flavour. If I wasn't so full by then I would've been fighting my brother for some of his chop too! 

We drank beer with our meal, as they only serve natural wines, which my wine dealer brother said all taste a bit like cider, so we didn't try any of those.

We had a really enjoyable meal at Ducksoup, which felt like a journey through some glorious flavours. The atmosphere is lovely there too - we sat at the bar and ate, which felt quite tapas bar like. The attention to detail is amazing, and they played great music all evening, that we later discovered were actual records being played. I'd really recommend a visit - wonderful food, attentive and friendly service, great atmosphere, and it wasn't too expensive. Our meal came to £72 including drinks and service, and we left with full tummies, smiley faces, and awful photos!!