The Duke Organic — Restaurant in London

We sat down here for dinner and the experience was as follows:

I ordered a salad side and it was a mini portion size, but because it was a side, I didn't expect much. It literally contained 8-9 leaves of salad and a bit of dressing. The dressing was too thin as well and it seemed like it had been diluted with water. They took over 40 minutes to deliver that salad.

Next was mains: I ordered a fish of the day with vegetables. The vegetables were not cooked properly and were hard, i.e. just not boiled properly. The main problem was the fish though. When I read "fish of the day" (pollock) for £19, I expect to see one whole fish, even half would have been fine. However, the initial portion contained less than 80g of fish. We discussed it at the table and I complained to the manager. They quickly realised that this MAINS portion was undersized and they agreed to bring more fish. When they brought the additional piece it was less than 40g.

In summary: £19 for 120g of fish with uncooked vegetables and an equally miniscule super-simple salad for £4, it is absolutely not worth the money! Therefore - and please keep in mind that I have never rated a place worse then this - I felt like they are having a laugh and the whole experience was an absolute joke.

I genuinely do not reccomended this place because although the taste of the food was somewhat OK, the value-for-money is horrendous. By having a simple menu with little detail, they allow themselves to deliver below anyone's expectations and it's just not worth it. If the price was half of what it was, or the portion was double/tripple, then maybe I would reconsider going again...

IMPORTANT ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK: The next morning, I called the pub and asked to speak to the manager. She knew who it was because she had seen the review. I expressed my frustration with the service and the food, and she asked me what she could do about it to make it right.

I said that I would like to get a refund for what I ordered and the refund was processed the same day. This was an honorable guesture and this is how all restaurants should act, when someone leaves thier place disappointed.

However - and unfortunately this needs to be mentioned, the manager said that their haddock was not farmed (i.e. organic) and that is why it is so exoensive.

The truth is this: HADDOCK IS NOT ON THE CONTROLLED SPECIES LIST, meaning that fisheries can catch as much haddock as they want from the ocean territories of the UK. This makes it in fact one of the CHEAPEST FISH IN THE UK BECAUSE THERE IS AN ABUNDANCE OF HADDOCK. There are literally no restrictions! After doing some research on this topic and calling a few fisheries, I found out that not only is haddock caught freely, making it "organic" by definition, but because of its abundance the price is not more than £10/kg if bought commercially, i.e. by pubs and restaurants. Additionally, most of the places I called deliver freshly caught haddock on a daily basis to London, so the explanation that the Duke od Cabridge haddock is somehow "special" can not possibly be true at all, unless they are getting ripped off by...

An institution. The kind of perennial neighbourhood place that has ceased to surprise you but consistently delivers on the high expectations it set when it once did.

The bar is magnificent, worth going to just to be in, big, bright, open and full of big tables. If you’re eating try and get a table in the restaurant section at the back. If you’re catching the late summer evening light, get a table outside. There’ll randomly be a box of surplus apples or kiwis or something by the front door for people to take home. There are board games.

The food is very, very good. I have ceased to be surprised, as I said, but the quality of the ingredients is so good (particularly the vegetables which I presume come from the farm associated with the restaurant) that I am regularly delighted. The fact that it’s organic doesn’t excite my ethics enough to see past what is sometimes a relatively pedestrian menu, but it’s clear that that leaning on good ingredients is what gives The Duke it’s theme, and what makes it so reliable.

I don’t drink the wine (but I assume it’s great), the whiskey menu is good (but I don’t drink whiskey). The beer selection is very acceptable,there is always something excellent to drink. The fact that not all the beers on sale are organic probably says something about organic beer (...does anyone care if their beer is organic?), and there are often some wasted taps given to dull options that fit with the theme of the restaurant. But they always have something very good on tap and normally have bottles of Kernel in the fridge.

I love this pub. It is the residential neighbourhood corner bar/cafe/restaurant that the city you fantasise about living in has, but it’s in the...

The air in the Duke of Cambridge is thick with smug - everything from the selection of draught beers to the little cards on the tables advising us to live the good life by shopping at farmers' markets (because, so they say, it's cheaper) pollutes the atmosphere with self-satisfaction and holier-than-thouness. And as charming as the fashion for writing menus on blackboards is, it's quite annoying to have people standing over your table debating their orders; it's also tedious when the blackboards aren't updated to reflect the fact that they'd run out of various dishes by the time we'd arrived at 7.30

My quiche was, admittedly, lovely - there must have been a run on it as we were informed we'd taken the last slice - pre 9pm. As for my pork chop: it was on the charred side of chargrilled which I don't mind so much. I do mind that our waitress took great pains to assure me that it wasn't dry, like all the other pork chops I've had in my life. Incorrect. I'm also not sure about the quarter head of cabbage dumped unceremoniously on the plate. The butter beans were nice, but who really needs a quarter head of cabbage?

My displeasure was increased when I asked for a scoop of yogurt sorbet - another thing they'd run out of. The blackboard menu had by this point been "updated" with a cloth - and yet the sorbet remained.

The final insult was our request for cappuccinos. "We don't have an espresso machine" was our snooty waiter's best attempt at an apologetic "I'm sorry, but because the Gaggia company doesn't use biodynamic steel we've decided that - even with Gregg's the Baker serving people coffee the way they like it - we won't be frothing milk any time soon".

Decent...