White Duck Brew Pub — Restaurant in Winthrop

My Fiancé and I went earlier this evening for the first time. We were actually scouting it out as a potential place to hold our Rehearsal Dinner and I was definitely looking forward to it. The hosting staff was friendly and prompt, as was our server. Not long after we were seated, our server asked if this was our first time dining there, and it was. He explained the drink menu, food menu, and specials of the day. To start my Fiancé just had a fountain drink, but I decided to try one of their monthly drinks which was A muddled Strawberry Old Fashioned. I was expecting a bit more from that one, but the strawberry chunks in the bottom didn’t really add much to the rest of the drink. It was a 6/10 Old Fashioned in my book. For appetizers, we shared a plate of their Duck Confit Poutine and I also grabbed a small side salad with 1000 island dressing. Since that is always my go to I was excited to try their house made version, but I was pretty disappointed with either the dressing, or the pickled onions in the salad, but that is just a personal preference, I should have removed them. The Duck Confit Poutine was proportioned oddly and not layered very well; the cheese curds were all on the bottom, the duck seemed to be mostly on one side, and the gravy was either not plentiful enough or not hot enough when added to the dish to properly melt the curds at the bottom. Overall though it was one of the better things we had here, I loved the fries and if you had a piece of everything it was a pretty good bite. My biggest complaint though is the food was very blatantly not salted as it was cooked. Once we salted everything more appropriately though it was pretty tasty. My Fiancé and I both ordered a daily special, hers was a (I believe Sirloin) steak and shrimp dish with mashed potatoes and green beans while I had a different daily steak special which was also a Sirloin with fingerling potatoes and green beans. The best part of both of our Entrees were the Green Beans. They were perfectly cooked, similar issue with seasoning but that was acceptable to both of us. Both steaks were a bit inconsistently cooked and were not the most tender. Both cooked to medium rare ish with a hard grey band but I will say my Fiancés might have been a bit closer to medium. My Fiancés Shrimp was very good, but only came with four 16/20(guessing the size) shrimp. Her potatoes were good, mine were good. Everything needed salt, but overall it was not bad. My biggest gripe though was the food was just okay for the price we paid. I knew we were going to pay a bit more than going to a chain, but we were hoping to have our socks knocked off here, If even a little bit, as I've heard great things. Overall though, we left with our socks pretty well in place, our wallet pretty well lighter, and no closer to finding our rehearsal...

We stopped in with a group of our friends for dinner and drinks. I had the fish and chips, and the hubby had their chicken parm sandwich. I wish I could say that my haddock filet was fresh caught off the coast of Maine, but sadly, it was not. Prebreaded, frozen fish is what I got, (at market price too, might I add) and it was on the small side portion wise, it was a 4 ounce filet from Sysco brand food's, or it could've been PFG. I know this cause I used to be in the industry for a long time. It was still tasty, though. My French fries were awesome, fresh hand cut, and a great portion too, all most like they were trying to make up for the lack luster size of the fish filet. Their coleslaw was bland and lacked any flavor at all. What a bummer! Our server was, well, just okay. She wasn't very attentive to our table. After everyone finished eating, we sat talking with dirty dishes stacked waiting to be cleared from the table, which did not happen until we left, but I witnessed other tables being cleared with customers still at the table chatting like we where. Either it was poor training of this particular server or was done intentionally, so we would leave sooner so the table could be turned over, I'm not sure but it is something they need to work on and be more diligent about. It's very rude and disrespectful. Remember, diningroom educate your tip will reflect how you treat your customers!!! You can't be more attentive to other patrons because they're regulars and snub people who aren't. Those people tip you, too. Overall, we were happy, but they need to implement some improvements, especially in the kitchen, less prefabbed foods that come frozen from a box, bag, or plastic container and more in-house fresh made with fresh local...

My husband and I had traveled all day, pulling a trailer across the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire with our Tacoma. We needed something to eat before we arrived at our cabin in Windsor. It was fortuitous timing that when my husband mentioned food, we were approaching the town where I remembered that I had visited last week with my sister. She and I had come to The White Duck to listen to a band that she liked. The food was good that night, so I said to my husband, "I know where we can go,"and quickly Googled the restaurant. It was only 6 minutes away.

Upon arrival, we found a place a bit uphill from the restaurant to park the truck and trailer and walked down the stone steps to the restaurant entrance. We were told that it would be a 40 minute wait, but then we saw two seats at the bar, which we gladly took. The bar staff, though crazily mixing drinks for what seemed to be everyone in the restaurant, were attentive and took our food and drink order. The food was fantastic and the drinks were more than enough for us. Think STRONG--at least my mixed drink with bourbon was! As busy as the restaurant was, I was impressed with how the entire staff seemed relaxed and worked like a well-oiled machine. We could see into the kitchen from the bar, so we got a good perspective on the activity there, too. Everything about the place was clean and neat.

When we were leaving, we stopped by the hostess stand to see whether our names had been called. Our names were next on the list! So we were happy that by sitting at the bar, we had been able to skip that entire wait! The hostess crossed off our names and we left, happy.

Kudos to everyone who was working on this night! Good job! We will definitely keep this on...