A boat, a beer and a duck

This week’s food­ie mus­ings take me back to Wednesday’s 2–4‑1 din­ner at the Boat Café, nib­bles and drinks at The Hop Gar­den, and a Le Canard roast duck from the Har­bour­side Mar­ket.

The Boat Café har­bours (yeah, yeah groan!) fond mem­o­ries of the orig­i­nal Parade Café, a place of wor­ship for many. The food remains well pre­sent­ed, good val­ue, and sat­is­fy­ing (the fries def­i­nite­ly wor­thy), and the staff wel­com­ing.  And the views are prob­a­bly only rivalled by 180 upstairs at the Copthorne.

Although I’m assured the same man­age­ment exists, the food has seemed slight­ly more refined and var­ied in recent times, includ­ing my pan-fried grop­er on Wednes­day.  Maybe some new hands in the kitchen?  What­ev­er it is, go the Boat crew. And don’t miss the Wednes­day 2–4‑1 din­ners.

Sat­ur­day saw a meet­ing of friends (old and new) at The Hop Gar­den for tapas and drinks.  A pleas­ant light flavoured Te Mata pil­sner made its way into my glass to com­ple­ment tasty treats like warm goats cheese and aubergine frit­ters with house pic­calil­li and chive oil, pork bel­ly with apple rel­ish, mini Cajun-spiced drum­sticks… sali­vat­ing yet?

It’s such a relaxed and pleas­ant atmos­phere under the glass and grapevines.  But ssh­hh, don’t tell too many peo­ple.

And last­ly, I’ve been han­ker­ing after a Le Canard roast duck for some time (sad I know), and recent­ly found a col­lec­tion of tasty left­over duck recipes in a mag­a­zine, so it was all on for young and old.

Warm duck and chut­ney rolls for lunch yes­ter­day, duck noo­dle soup for din­ner tonight and quick duck and mush­room risot­to for din­ner tomor­row.  Yum­mo (tech­ni­cal word).

Duck is a tough one to get right, but oth­er than duck­ie and I hav­ing a wee tus­sle over some of the inner pieces close to the bone, the meat was rea­son­ably ten­der with­out being over-fat­ty.  Well-played Le Canard.  See their web­site for the dai­ly loca­tions of their La Rotis­serie du Canard truck.