Dim Sum Duck quietly opened an outpost on Pentonville Road earlier this year. With a permanently enormous queue at the original restaurant on King’s Cross Road – known for its faultless dim sum and excellent renditions of Cantonese dishes like roast duck and beef ho fun – a pressure valve was more than necessary.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Alec Martin, the restaurant’s co-owner, tells Broadsheet. “For the last three years, we’ve been looking for somewhere.”
The first Dim Sum Duck opened during the pandemic amid rumours that its owner was secretly one of the city’s foremost dumpling chefs. Such was the immediate demand that the tiny dining room sprouted queues that easily outstripped a small heated outdoor space that was erected to accommodate more guests. Meanwhile, attempts to find sites in Islington and around King’s Cross were to no avail, until Martin cycled past the Pentonville Road site and spotted a vacancy sign. It had been a steak restaurant, and before that the Long Hope and Kings Crown pubs, popular with Arsenal fans. The building was built in 1865, when it opened as the Crown Inn.
Martin, his wife and his brother-in-law – the restaurant’s co-owners – immediately grabbed the site, and it took them just three months to pull it together from start to finish. The new dining room is a far cry from the cramped space of the original restaurant. It currently fits 50 but has room to expand to accommodate up to 65, according to Martin.
“There have been people who have been [to the original] three times but never eaten because the queue’s too long,” he says. The new venue now includes several large tables designed to accommodate large groups and families “who wanted to come, but they couldn’t bring their parents and grandparents”.
Sharing-style dishes are identical to those served at the first restaurant. First-timers who have been deterred by the queue shouldn’t miss the kitchen’s skilfully crimped xiao long bao, cheung fun and lacquered roast duck, best eaten with white rice to absorb the dish’s sauce.
Meanwhile, the kitchen is tinkering with adding several vegetarian dishes to the menu (“to appease our vegetarian customers”, Martin says) as well as egg tarts and crispy aromatic duck dumplings. Peroni and Asahi are now also available on tap, and an open kitchen at the far end of the restaurant adds a gentle buzz of activity to the pleasantly busy dining room.
The restaurant is even offering reservations earlier in the week (message 07344 685051 on WhatsApp), and there are plans to close the original Dim Sum Duck for the summer for a much-needed refurbishment – an irony not lost on Martin. A few weeks into official opening, and Martin tells us that there’s already a huge queue outside the new restaurant.
“But it’s just the weekends, mainly”, he laughs.
Dim Sum Duck Pentonville Road
186 Pentonville Road, N1 9JP
07344685051
Hours:
Daily 11.30am–10pm
