Duck Duck Goose (Noodle Bar)
QV, 31-37 Artemis Lane, Melbourne
(03) 9005 0888

I’ve been waiting for Duck Duck Goose to open for literally 3 years.  There’s a poster of Duck Duck Goose in QV for ages and it was even featured on the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival program in 2008 I think.  Often I walk past Artemis Lane, peeking into the construction site and at one point I’ve given up peeking- it looked the same blank space.  But one day this year, workers started going in again and the site became a beautiful modern “light” noodle bar and “dark” french cuisine/champagne bar.

We went to the “Light” noodle bar for dinner tonight.  With Duck Duck Goose being opened for only 2 weeks,

there are still a number of menu items that are unavailable, the service can be a bit tentative but extremely friendly and helpful.

To be honest the menu is a tiny bit all over the place I felt, there are dim sums for entrees, a choice of noodle soup such as garlic ramen, BBQ Pork Noodle soup, Korean Noodle Soup, Mapo Tofu Noodle Soup, chicken and vegies noodle soup and Beef Brisket noodle soup.  There’s also rice: Mapo Tofu Rice, Beef brisket rice…not much choices and to my dismay, there didn’t seem to be a lot of vegies options or stir fry vegies available.

We ordered pan friend turnip cake ($6/4pc) and Thai Curry beef shao mai ($6/4pc).  The turnip cake is a bit too floury and soft with too little texture for my liking.  I do like the chilli sauce that came with it, it has a tang of spiciness.  Yum!

The Thai beef curry shao mai, whilst the pastry was not top notch, was very nice and it’s something a bit different from the usual pork and prawn shao mai.

It has a slight curry and lemongrass flavour and it was freshly steamed.  What would improve it a little bit more would be to add a bit more fat to the meat increase its juiciness and a thinner dumpling pastry would have been better.

I ordered a beef brisket noodle soup ($10). I must say I am pretty impressed with the noodles.  The noodles are really yummie with a bit of resistance when you bite into it, even when we didn’t dig into it immediately.

The beef brisket was flavoursome- it could have been a little bit more tender but it was acceptable.  There’s a bit of beef tendon but those are made into a little bit mush for some reason.  Once again not enough vegies in this noodle soup- there was only one piece of chinese vegies!  Love the soup though- it has just the right consistency and flavour.

My dining partner ordered the Mapo Tofu rice ($8) which is quite nice also, although I am suspecting (correct me if I am wrong) that they used beef instead of pork here, or this is some very lean pork!  Not that it doesn’t taste yummy and it’s fantastic that it’s healthy but it is just more traditional to use slightly fattier pork for Mapo Tofu.

Overall though I am VERY impressed with Duck Duck Goose.  With its beautiful decor and spacious setting, to eat nice food with a huge portion size and with the bill coming to $30 (food only) for 2 people, it is certainly worth a try and definitely worth coming back.  7.5/10

P.S. We had a sneak peek of the “dark” side- Duck Duck Goose French Cuisine and Champagne bar and it looked very chic, although the price tag is also breathtaking.  Degustation menu starts at $120 pp.  Wouldn’t stop me from going there for a drink and try out their bar menu though!