Waldo's On King Bistro & Wine Bar

Covent Garden Market is built for transactions you carry home — produce stacked on tables, a cheese counter, a coffee grabbed on the way through downtown London. Waldo's On King Bistro and Wine Bar sits inside that building and asks for something slower: a table, a wine list, and a plate of roast duck. Mark Kitching is the chef-owner, and the menu reads like one person decided what mattered, a bistro built on French and Canadian leanings and meant to be lingered over rather than grabbed between errands. Lunch and dinner run six days a week into the evening, with a shorter Sunday, and the wine is poured the whole time.

The Roast Duck Breast anchors the dinner menu, plated with maple jus and candied walnuts — the clearest statement of what the kitchen is after. Around it runs a seafood section that takes itself seriously: a Lobster, Shrimp and Scallop Bisque finished with cognac, Grilled Calamari with garlic aioli, a Seafood Stack under sundried tomato cream, and Deep-Fried Lake Erie Perch pulled from closer to home. There is an eight-ounce Beef Tenderloin Surf and Turf for a splurge and Baked Salmon with mango salsa for something lighter, with Escargot, Chicken Satay, or Mark's Style Bruschetta on toasted focaccia to open. Wine comes by the glass, the half-litre, or the bottle, so the pairing scales to whatever the table is doing.