"The Duck is a great traditional country gastropub serving modern, traditional British food. The pub has a fairly remote location in a little village about 5 miles from Canterbury. Its unassuming exterior reveals a cosy, simple yet elegant interior with scrubbed oak tables, an open fire, a beautiful garden and views across the surrounding countryside. We enjoyed a 3 course dinner here on a Saturday evening. Whilst the food was really good there were a few minor issues with our mains. We started the evening with the tempura local cod which came with a creamy and rich Durban curry mayonnaise, lime and coriander which was absolutely delicious. Then for mains we had the slow roasted pork belly with roasted carrots, carrot puree, greens, burnt apple purée and mash and the 30 day aged ribeye steak with a mixed leaf salad, truffle and parmesan fries. The presentation was excellent and the dishes were flavoursome with generous portion sizes but the steak was cooked more medium than medium rare and one of the pieces of pork was over cooked and a little dry and chewy with an impenetrable piece of crackling which was virtually impossible to cut. For dessert we enjoyed the spring berry Eton mess with raspberry sorbet washed down with a glass of Chateau Delmond Sauternes 2018 which were both superb. The staff looked stressed and were a little unfriendly at times. There were only two members of staff covering both the bar and restaurant and whilst there were only a few tables occupied they were clearly struggling. Sadly this is a reflection of the times with the hospitality industry in general struggling to find and retain staff. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our meal and the fine dining experience. The menu is forward thinking and innovative and the chef is clearly very talented. The prices are very reasonable and apparently they do the best Sunday roast here for miles around which, of itself, is a great reason to return (and that we will most definitely be doing)."
