The Duck Inn

The Duck Inn works because it refuses to make you choose between a bar and a restaurant, then earns the right to have it both ways. Up front, it's a proper cocktail lounge with a big bar and snack food built for lingering: fried cheese curds in bloody mary ketchup, a duck fat dog, a duck and foie tamale that has no business being that good for a bar bite. Most places treat that as the whole show. Here it's the warm-up.

Through the double doors, past the exposed brick and the mural that tells you what this place is about, the real argument sits on the menu: a rotisserie duck for two that justifies the name and the trip. The menu doesn't sprawl. It doesn't need to. What's on it is worked over until it's right, and a loud, packed dining room full of people clearly there to eat is the proof.

Three straight years of Bib Gourmand recognition and a James Beard semifinalist nod for Outstanding Restaurant aren't the reason to go. They're confirmation of what the duck already tells you. This is a neighborhood spot in Bridgeport doing a small, disciplined menu with total conviction, and it hasn't needed to be anything bigger to be this good.