fried chicken

Chick’n’Sours, London

I want Chick’n’Sours to open up in Birmingham. There, I’ve said it. I know I should be using this opening paragraph to set tone and meter, but fuck it, it’s my blog and I’ll do how I please. I want them to open up in Birmingham really badly. I want the people who think that we have good fried chicken to eat their fried chicken and go ‘woah, hold on there, sister’, and shake their wrists until the fingers on their flaccid hands crack off one another, and dab, and floss, and raise eyebrows like they’ve just witnessed a man taking a shit in a public park. All of these are valid reactions to good fried chicken.

I know they do good fried chicken because I have really good taste buds, and my girlfriend who usually does, but is ill on this particular day, says things like “I can’t taste a thing and they still are really good. I can’t imagine how good they taste to you”, to which I dab and floss and raise my eyebrows in the same way that I did when I witnessed a man taking a shit in a public park on the way to work one day. True story. He didn’t even wipe. We wipe frequently with the baby wipes and the kitchen roll provided, though any of the sauces committed to anything other than the mouth would be a waste. Our lunch starts with pickled watermelon rinds, sweet and perfumed, with only a little vinegar astringency, moving on to nachos with bacon and I think seasoned with chicken skin, that are really quite frantic. It’s difficult to decscribe how the palate reacts to this and a loose cheese sauce, kimchi, with the occasional searingly hot chilli hidden for shits and giggles. Literally both shits and giggles with this amount of chilli and dairy. At times it’s all very fugitive, but also crack levels of addictive. I’ll take this combination over something more cohesive and dull any day of the week.

Chicken tenders are obscene strips of breast meat coated in what looks like poultry armour, a kind of riff on KFC only without the mutant chickens who live in sheds that nobody is allowed in, and those chickens are 20ft high and they don’t know why they are so big, and they look down at all the little chickens and think they are in an aeroplane because they are so small. Do KFC deny this? I think the silence speaks volumes. Anyway, back to this little underground gem in Covent Garden where these tenders are pretty much perfect when dredged through a perky blue cheese dip loaded with umami. Two side dishes appear; the first cucumbers in a sauce I cant really get to terms with, the second pickled watermelons dressed in a complex sauce that has vinegar, sugar, and fish sauce in amongst the mix. These are the second best things you can do with a watermelon; the first being sweet pickling the rinds, of which we are now on our second batch.

And then there are the wings that have me reaching for the tissues once again. Yes, chicken wings do turn me on this much, and no, I really don’t care that we are in public. Two flavours; hot and kung po, both with sauces as thick and reduced as the Tory leadership contest, which dress the fat wings and sit in every crevice like a lycra top a size too small. It’s not just great fried chicken; this is great cooking which plays on the five taste sensations throughout. Seriously skillful and a stupid amount of fun at the same time. It’s the real deal.

The above menu for two clocks in at £16 a head. Yes, you have read that correctly. It has to be one of London’s true bargains. Now I’m bound to secrecy on this, but I have it on good authority that Mr Chick’n’Sours himself is in Brum at the end of July for one night at one of our best (maybe the best) restaurants. I’m guessing it will be a lot more than £16 a head, but I’ll be there, and so should you. And if the main man himself is reading this right now, please do come say hello. I’ll be happy to show you around and maybe point out a site or two where I am positive they’ll be queuing out the doors to eat your food. One night is not going to be enough.

9/10

Can’t wait for them to come to Birmingham ? Let’s all split an A2B and go to London

Salt & Earth @ 1000 Trades, Jewellery Quarter

The first thing chef Nikki Astley says to me at the hatch of 1000 Trades is “you’re the bloke who takes the piss out of my name on Twitter?”. He’s right, we’ve not known each for so long, but I can’t help being a gobshite and fair play to him for calling me out on being a dick. But Nikki knows the rules and so do I; it’s just a bit of fun on my part. I apologise on my part and we exchange small talk before ordering my dinner. A full commitment is what I’m thinking of, though Nikki is fair enough to tell me that I’m over-ordering. We reduce the six plates I was intending to eat by myself to just two. He goes back inside to cook, and I return to my wine. He never says goodbye.

Less pop-up and more viagra hard-on, Salt & Earth have been in the kitchen of 1000 Trades for months (maybe a year? I don’t know; only the sober remember dates). The present menu is chicken focused, compromising of fried chicken with sauces, fried chicken in bao-style buns, and a few small plates that focus on vegetables, from which I order one from each section. You wouldn’t get this from any other guy.

The least enjoyable of these is a vegetable dish that suffers from watery carrots on a slightly less watery puree of tofu where the carrot has lost all that lovely natural sweetness. Now if you ask me how I’m feeling about that chicken, I won’t lie to you, it’s good. Really good. It does not let me down. Crispy, brittle coating that cracks in all the right places, it gives way to lovely bits of good quality chicken thigh. To stop me from all ordering all three the kitchen have kindly sent the chicken out nude with pots of each sauce. The scotch bonnet is mercifully restrained in heat, and a honey soy sauce is a sticky sweet mess of happiness. Best is the Korean pepper sauce that is full of umami notes. Sadly the bun is less of a success. Six months ago I might have told you a different story, but the quality of bao in this city has dramatically improved in this city since then. This bun is dense and a little flat with none of the lightness I’ve now come to expect. Not even that stellar chicken can save it. Save for a brownie there is nothing here to dessert me so we call it a night.

Now I’ve timed this badly. It turns out that the residency is to finish at the end of this month, so it’s pointless giving this a score. Truth is I was a bit nonplussed by it. I’ve eaten Nikki’s food before and it was brave and articulate, whereas this was some good fried chicken and not much else. I’ll keep a keen eye out for his next move which will hopefully see this talented chef back in a permanent home, where I can open my wallet to him and not that massive gob of mine.

Planning on drinking as much wine as I did? A2B will get you home.

Bonehead, Birmingham

Who would thought that a bit of fried chicken could cause such bother? KFC running out of chicken caused total pandemonium. Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham. I wonder to myself could life ever be sane again? Of course it could, its just chicken for fucksake, and not very good chicken at that. Still people properly lost their shit. Social media went into meltdown and 999 calls were made to report the closures, which is just ridiculous. Everyone knows if you are going to waste police time you do it when the carrot on the snowman is nicked.

Bonehead also do fried chicken, except they get their chicken from a nice little farm in the Cotswolds and not a secret underground laboratory where 12ft mutant chickens are crafted with 8 wings. And whilst no one sane is going to phone emergency services about them, they do some very good things for a little chicken shop just three days old on the date of our visit. It is deliberately low-key and dark on the inside. Walls are painted black and coated with flyers. Downstairs is the dive bar, upstairs is a basic dining room with basic seating and a hole in the wall to the kitchen. This is the beard and beanie of chicken joints, a little too hipster for its own good. I like it.

And so to the menu, which is made of chicken that you can have cooked anyway you like just as long as its fried. They do the important things right; good quality chicken, brined, with the wings jointed for even cooking. We end up with three trays of those wings, and should you find yourself less greedy than us and in need of choice, take the buffalo option. These are a showstopper, hot and sour from cayenne pepper and vinegar, that are as difficult to remove from the breath as from a shirt. I know, I’ve tried to do both. The blunt notes needing the blue cheese to soothe the finish. And we like the hothead wings which are more aromatic than spicy, though the original ones are floury and not particularly nice. Two outta three ain’t bad. Just ask Meatloaf.

And then there’s the burgers. We try both because those trousers aren’t quite tight enough after 24 wings. They eat a lot better than they photograph. There is crunch in the batter that protects the chicken thigh from the harsh heat. There is molten cheese and the tang of pickle lurking in the background. It’s very well balanced but asked to choose you should take the hot one which gently smoulders. And whatever you do add the potato waffles loaded with sauce and slaw. That slaw might just be the best thing about the entire meal. It’s crisp and clean with a slight Asian feel to it. Those waffles and some buffalo wings with a cold pint of craft lager might just be my go-to dinner for a while.

Prior to its opening I’d publicly played Bonehead down because the hype was making my little head explode. And if you are the type of person that orgasms over a picture of a dish you’ve never eaten then please go find a hobby. But is the hype justified? Kind of. It’s not Fuku, the best fried chicken I have ever eaten, not by a distance. But it is good. Cleverly conceived tasty food at a fair price. Birmingham needs places like this. Independents raising the standards is only a positive thing. If you haven’t been to Bonehead yet, you finger lickin’ should.

8/10

In the effort of full disclosure the kitchen sent out additional wings which were not ordered and did not appear on the bill.

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