Duck & Rice

Sharing the rooftop of Westfield Sydney with Middle Eastern-inspired Babylon, Duck & Rice is a Cantonese restaurant based on Shanghai in the 1920s, marrying traditional Chinese design with moody European art-deco styling.

The restaurant name gives an indication of the menu’s main star: Cantonese-style roast duck. It can be had in half or whole portions with house-made plum sauce, or pancake-style. Cooking the duck is a four-day process that starts with simmering the bird in a pot of water seasoned with spices, instead of dry-stuffing it before roasting.

There’s also steamed and fried dim sum, such as siu mai with pork, crab and fish roe, and duck and mushroom dumplings. Classic Chinese dishes have also been reinterpreted, so there’s strawberry sweet-and-sour king prawns and yuzu duck san choi bau.

Over at the bar, there's a smaller à la carte menu available for more casual dining. The drinks list is inspired by Chinese flavours, where an Old Fashioned comes with black-sesame rum and the Clover Club uses Szechuan-flavoured gin. You can also get flights of absinthe or the pungent Chinese white spirit, baijiu. There’s a well-considered range of non-alcoholic options too, including house-made sodas such as chrysanthemum or lychee and elderflower. A mocktail called Salt v Citrus features pink grapefruit, citrus, agave, salt and soda.