The Flying Duck Hotel Prahan restaurant review 2022: Old pub soars to new heights this summer

A tired neighbourhood pub has been given a swift makeover in time for the silly season. But can an old favourite learn new tricks?

Kara Monssen

3 min read

December 6, 2022 - 2:44PM

The Flying Duck Hotel is a hot contender for Melbourne’s best glasshouse. Picture: Parker Blain

Food

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Overripe, “drip-down-your-arm” juicy mangoes. Late night tennis. Silence, then the echoing clap of ball-to-cricket bat impact. Wafty sunscreen. Sand everywhere. Mozzie season.

The quiet whisper of snags whistling on the barbie. Beer. Good times.

Welcome to summer.

These sights, sounds and tastes may trigger some of that nostalgia, yet a Melbourne pub has thrown a late entry into the mix.

Woodfire stonefruit desserts. Stay with me.

Yellow nectarines crackling with smoke, their blistered skin oozing a tart nectar after being smacked over red gum coals, resting on velvety vanilla custard folds next to a puckering strawberry sorbet bulge.

It’s OK if you missed the “burnt custard” ($14) while trawling the menu at Prahran’s new look The Flying Duck Hotel.

Mainly because this is a pub and who orders dessert, but also, it’s a take on the peach Melba, routinely plucked from the “chef summer dessert” playbook.

This is more than that.

Wood-roasted scallops. Picture: Parker Blain

Cheeseburger. Picture: Parker Blain

Chef Ben Pigott (Hobsons Bay Hotel, Supernormal) has cracked the code, found a new way to make “simple” so stupidly satisfying.

Yet almost everything at The Flying Duck 2.0 is unexpectedly so in this new Brenton Lang and co era.

The founder of bakery behemoth Rustica has been playing with pubs for a while, most recently turning the Hobsons Bay Hotel into a neighbourly westside watering hole.

Now he’s taken over a 154-year-old pub in Prahran’s leafy backstreets to do something similar.

Beer? Let’s get a Queensland brewery to make a “Flying Duck” house lager.

Yes there’s wine, but it’s widely inclusive of all tastes and terroirs – from new age natties to old-world wonders on Coravin.

The pub’s interior is now more open, walls bowled over to bring cohesion between a smart looking exposed brick drinking room and the lush garden oasis outside.

Think this fairy-lit beer garden, dwarfed by towering palms, is the only place to get some rays and practise your drink-to-mouth reflex?

Just look next door, where you’ll find a hot contender for the city’s best glasshouse, soaking in the green surrounds without running the risk of rain (because Melbourne, and also La Nina).

The Flying Duck Hotel has an expect mix of counter meals, snacks and refined eats. Picture: Parker Blain.

Pigott gets creative with the food, too, which is an expected mix of counter fare, portable snacks and refined meals.

Fish of the day? Yes, but let’s throw some barramundi over coals instead, smother it in seaweed butter with native warrigal greens ($38).

While we’re on seafood, the prawn po-boy slider ($12 each) takes one golden-fried prawn meat finger and slots it between a soft milk bun with a conservative squirt of smoky marie rose sauce and lettuce.

Bolster up the fillings and you’ve got a beer-ready snack.

Same goes for those in-shell scallops ($8 each), bobbing in a herb butter sauce, though you’ll need some of that flatbread ($14 for two) for daubing.

Made from wholemeal flour and yoghurt, the bread comes with salmon roe-adorned black garlic toum for swiping.

I’m sure someone is working on a cosmetic hack to make black garlic anything look more, ahem, palatable, but this packs a solid punch against that powerful char.

The smoked salmon roe doesn’t add much, though.

And given the pub’s name it’d be rude for Pigott not to have a quack, sorry, crack at roast duck ($44).

All tanned skin, lacquered by a bronzing oil like it’s ready for the beach, is more flabby than crisp than expected, with the breast meat slightly overdone.

A strong supporting cast levels up, with braised red cabbage and sweet/tart Davidson Plum caramel, plus you can’t argue with an oily potato rosti.

I’d get a side salad for balance.

Come for the woodfire fruit, stay for some fun in the sun.

The Flying Duck is soaring high this summer and hopefully for many more seasons to come.