The Defiant Duck

Right now, the nickname "Brisvegas" fits our city better than it ever did, as more venues jump aboard the American love train. The latest arrival is The Defiant Duck, overlooking the skeletal steel framework of the Gasworks gasometer in Newstead.

It's owned by the Moubment group, which in recent years has been busy empire-building, with venues including the hatted Gerard's Bistro, Gerard's Bar, a trio of casual eateries under the Hatch & Co brand, and now, the Duck.

While the name sounds like an English pub, the fitout feels a bit like a corporate canteen or cafe. Tucked below a commercial tower, there are lots of hard surfaces, a mix of shared and individual seating and even a pool table. A breezy alfresco area with views over the green to the original section of the Gasworks development is set with tile-topped tables with baskets of cutlery, napkins and bottles of sauce. While there's something to be said for restraint in theming, there's little clue that this is an American diner.

Bar the odd incursion into the north, the menu is a roll call of Southern standards and on two visits we manage to eat our way through hotdogs, crab cakes, ribs, fries, salad, fried chicken and desserts – with hits and misses in equal proportion.

Of the two rib dishes, Coca Cola beef ribs cooked in a Josper charcoal oven with a mild mustard mayo and burnt shallots are by far the better choice; chunky and succulent, falling-off-the-bone tender, the shallots sweet and charred atop the sticky pool of sauce. The pork ribs aren't as successful; the sauce doesn't have the same depth of flavour and the meat is a little dry.

You could just choose to graze rather than go the "big plate" route and I suspect many people from the local businesses will be gathering here for post-work drinks and doing just that. 

There are plenty of drinking food options to go with the broad range of beer and decent spread of wine that includes a couple of wines on tap.

The ultimate comfort food staple, mac 'n' cheese, is served up as croquettes – the crisp golden shells encasing creamy, cheesy soft pasta. Mini corn dogs are juicy below their battered coat but you probably wouldn't want all four to yourself, so order to share.

Crab cakes look promising but the trio of panko-crumbed pucks is missing the sweetness of the crab, and is overwhelmed by potato, while a lack of punch from the accompanying chipotle mayo fails to liven things up.

Fried chicken pieces come in a basket and are dry inside their lightly spiced crumb but improved by a well-balanced house-made ketchup.

A "summer salad" seems a bit of anomaly in this American all-stars menu, but the ruby slices of sashimi tuna, watermelon, crisp wafers of pickled fennel, smoked almonds, black sesame seeds and rocket with a blood orange dressing is refreshing and yes,  summery – almost a palate cleanser and perfect with a glass of Cake rosé. 

Among four desserts, the cherry pie sounds so evocatively small-town American diner it's hard to resist ordering it, but disappointingly, it comes out fridge-cold with thin, soggy pastry and a strange gritty cherry "sherbert".

Better is the chocolate brownie with peanut butter ice-cream, although the chocolate "soil" seems extraneous.

There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about the Duck, but to be fair, it is very new and may just need a bit of time to find its feet.