The Wild Duck Restaurant

I was treated to the wine paired degustation at Wild Duck as a Christmas present. I hadn’t heard of the restaurant prior to my gift voucher, but I love a good dego so I was extremely excited to try it out. As the majority of the price was paid for ($ 155 w. wine, each), we decided to go all out and get the optional main and dessert as well, also paired with wines. This brought us to 8 dishes plus amuse buche and sorbet palate cleanser.
We had smoked watermelon with goat’s cheese, leek soup with scallop, salmon gravalax, mushroom spatzle, pork belly with steamed bun, barramundi, strawberry mango sorbet, crispy skinned duck, Welsh cakes with praline and a lemon soufflé with coconut ice cream. Every dish was paired perfectly, the wines complimenting better than I’ve had at most degos. The food was all very delicious and perfectly — cooked (the duck was the best cooked Ive ever had) but at the end, when the bill came it felt a little flat. The dishes all felt a little ‘crowd-​pleasing’ and overall underwhelming for the price ($ 200 each). For me a dego should offer something unique, rather than just smaller serves of classics. The amuse buche was the stand out dish for me, and the one dish that was truly innovative. I think this is a dego more for my parent’s generation than mine.
That said, the venue is gorgeous, and the service impeccable. That perfect combo of attentive and discreet. I would take my folks or work colleagues here, but probably not my foodie friends.

After consulting with the minister of war and finance, and deciding that a night out for her birthday was preferable to one in the dog house from forgetting the day (again) I decided to suss out this Wild Duck after scouring Unilocal for some badly needed guidance.
Being a man of great culture and sophistication I’m probably not the best food guide in the world — after all, I know that wine comes in red and white, and the fancy stuff is a mix of the two, and desert wine is something the lass does once you got back home as a reward — right?
I thought righio — a bit of everything will hit the spot, so degustation it was.
At the end of the day the food speaks for itself. — either you like duck liver (insert fancy French words) or not, and there was around 9 courses, so it’s well priced for $ 105 a head: how could you go too far wrong: on average something will make you squeal with delight (maybe the pork belly).
The place was friendly, service a tad hit and miss — first clue was not one waiter had a pressed tunic, clue two — I ended up pouring most of the wine myself. Clue three — the empty spare wine glass that sat there for 30 minutes.
Think of it as casual fine dining with no table cloth and you will hit the mark.
Would I return, sure — but not in a hurry, nice but not impressive: the food had love, the service a smile, the details however were discouragingly lacking.
Maybe I was spoilt at 1907, but then the charge was roughly double there so really — why not try it, just don’t expect to be blown away.
Personally — a good night out, not the best nor the worse. Enjoy

Excellent restaurant with excellent service. If you are looking for fine dining in a very classy atmosphere. This is the place.
We felt like we were in an episode of Masterchef with the way they presented our meals to us. Very tasty and delicious dishes and very well presented. We were even served a few dishes compliments of the chef.
Very enjoyable evening over all… We will defiantly be dining here again.

What the duck?
Took the gf here tonight for birthday dinner. Props to Sylvia. N by the way as I wouldn’t have found it if it wasn’t for her recommendation on Unilocal.A belated thanks. This unassuming little restaurant is situated off Hampden Road and depending on how late dinner is you can park down a side street or in the little car park around the corner behind the bottle shop.
After scouring the menu we decided a Degustation would be good fun. Turns out this is available all week at request. Beware that arriving on a Saturday would imply you intend to have the Degustation as this is the only choice on offer that night.
We had the set Degustation as stated on the website with the only difference being the Pink Snapper being substituted with the Waldorf Salad. This turned out to be a minor blip and didn’t really have any kind of negative impact on our dining experience.
The matching wines in order of drinking were Chardonnay, Rose, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Muscat. The food itself was extraordinary and all the flavours in each dish worked so well with each other that the paired wines in our opinion are not even necessary even though they did help accentuate each dish.
The only thing of note I will say is that having been to another Degustation place before in Perth Wild Duck seems to offer LESS courses. This being the only minor downside. Having said this we were plenty merry and full enough by the end of the dining experience.
The service was top notch and we both agreed we will be back in future to try the a la carte menu which features most if not all of the dishes on the Degustation. The pork belly was a personal favourite of the gf and I also recommend it to anyone dining here a la carte in future.
Definitely coming back here soon!