Duck & Waffle

Forty Floors Above the City, the Kitchen Never Closes

At this height, the City of London reads differently. The square mile's towers drop away beneath you, and the Thames bends west toward Westminster in a long silver arc. Duck & Waffle occupies the 40th floor of 110 Bishopsgate, and the physical fact of that position shapes everything about the experience before a plate arrives. London has a handful of high-altitude dining rooms Cornus holds a strong refined perch too, but very few of them run through the night. Duck & Waffle runs all seven days, twenty-four hours, a format that sits apart from the rhythm of nearly every serious Modern British kitchen in the country.

That 24-hour operation is not a gimmick layered onto a standard restaurant. It changes who eats here, when, and why. The 3am crowd is different from the Saturday brunch crowd, which is different again from the weekday lunch that draws the surrounding Bishopsgate financial district. The kitchen under Elliott Grover has to perform across all of those contexts, which is a more demanding brief than it first appears.

The British Larder at Altitude

Modern British cooking as a category spans an enormous range, from the three-Michelin-star precision of CORE by Clare Smyth to pub-adjacent bistro work. Duck & Waffle positions in the casual tier of that spectrum, the Opinionated About Dining Casual Europe list ranked it #481 in 2025 and #440 in 2024, with a recommendation in 2023 marking three consecutive years of recognition from one of the more rigorous peer-reviewed tracking systems in European dining. That trajectory is worth noting: the list is scored by a network of frequent diners rather than a single inspector, and sustained placement in it reflects consistent performance rather than a single good season.

The editorial angle that leading explains what Duck & Waffle does within Modern British cooking is its relationship to the indigenous British larder. British cuisine's most interesting current thread is not its French-influenced fine dining heritage, represented at the top of the market by The Ritz Restaurant and Ormer Mayfair, but rather a quieter, more seasonal approach to what the British countryside actually produces. Game birds through autumn and winter, root vegetables from October through to spring, hedgerow ingredients used with a directness that older British cooking rarely allowed itself. This is the tradition that L'Enclume in Cartmel has made its defining identity, and that kitchens like Moor Hall in Aughton and Gidleigh Park in Chagford pursue from rural positions with direct access to the land. Duck & Waffle does it from the 40th floor of an EC2N tower, which is an unusual configuration for this kind of cooking but not an incoherent one.

The name itself signals a willingness to work across register, duck is a game-adjacent protein with clear British larder credentials, waffles are a casual American brunch staple. That juxtaposition of formal ingredient and informal format has been the kitchen's working tension since it opened, and it remains the clearest summary of what the cooking here attempts.

Where Duck & Waffle Sits in London's Dining Structure

London's restaurant scene has long split between a Mayfair-and-Chelsea fine dining concentration and a more dispersed casual tier spread across the inner boroughs. The City of London, EC2 and EC3, has historically been lunch-and-dinner-only territory, driven by the financial district's working hours. Duck & Waffle's address in Bishopsgate puts it in that financial district cluster, alongside restaurants that serve the Square Mile's professional population, but its 24-hour operation and glass-walled views mean it draws from a much wider catchment, particularly on weekends.

For visitors building a London itinerary across different dining registers, the comparison set is instructive. Dorian and Hand and Flowers in Marlow both occupy the serious-casual Modern British space, though with very different formats. Duck & Waffle's specific advantage is its combination of 24-hour access, altitude, and OAD recognition at a price point that sits below the Michelin-starred tier. For context on what the upper end of Modern British looks like in 2025, The Fat Duck in Bray and CORE by Clare Smyth define the ceiling; Duck & Waffle operates several tiers below that, with a commensurately different booking and pricing structure.

Beyond London, the Modern British tradition runs through regional kitchens that are worth knowing: hide and fox in Saltwood, 33 The Homend in Ledbury, and Artichoke in Amersham all work within the same broad category from positions outside the capital, often with more direct access to local producers than any London kitchen can claim.

The 24-Hour Factor

Running a kitchen at this level continuously is a staffing and logistics challenge that most operators avoid. The few restaurants globally that maintain genuine 24-hour service, not a reduced overnight menu but a full kitchen operation, tend to cluster around airport hotels and Las Vegas casino floors.

The timing consideration for visitors is meaningful. A late-night table at Duck & Waffle, post-theatre, post-event, or simply late in a long London evening, offers a kind of dining that the city almost never provides at this standard. Most kitchens at this calibre close their pass by 10pm at the latest.

Planning a Visit

Address: 110 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AY. Hours: Open 24 hours, all seven days. Cuisine: Modern British, casual tier. Awards: Opinionated About Dining Casual Europe, Recommended (2023), #440 (2024), #481 (2025). Chef: Elliott Grover. Reservations: Advance booking recommended, particularly for weekend evenings and the high-altitude window seats; late-night midweek tables can be more available. Getting there: Liverpool Street station (Elizabeth, Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines) is the nearest Underground stop, a short walk from 110 Bishopsgate.

For broader London planning, EP Club maintains guides across every category: our full London restaurants guide, our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide.