Sticky Wings, Brick Lane

With chicken wings, as with many life experiences, you generally only remember the very worst or the very best. My personal worst is a tie between some sad little pucks of broiler poultry I had at Giraffe offshoot Chooks, which would have been bad enough even if I didn't have to travel all the way to Muswell Hill to find that out, and a box of flabby microwaved greaseballs that came free with my housemate's Domino's pizza one time. Both were not just poor but memorably inept, Chooks being a particularly lazy leap onto the chicken bandwagon, and the Domino's wings came with a vegetarian pizza. Who knows what they were thinking.

As for the best? My opinion is tied there too. On the one hand there are the MeatLiquor Bingo Wings, generous in flavour and portion size, and now served with even more of their lovely chunky blue cheese dip. And there is of course the brilliant Orange Buffalo, who use mango in their sauce and whose blue cheese dip is also worth the trip alone. Both are all the more impressive considering they've sourced or invented their own hot sauces (MeatLiquor's is from somewhere in Peckham, but like everything they do is shrouded in secrecy) - usually any attempt to steer away from the traditional Franks & butter ends in disaster.

But stop the presses, there's a new kid in town. Sticky Wings began life in the wilds of Lewisham but struggled with the lack of passing trade, staff, opening hours, basically everything you might expect when trying to run a restaurant in Lewisham. Now on bustling Brick Lane, they've at least solved the passing trade issue, and have themselves a bright and clean new restaurant in which to serve wings 4 ways, wraps, burgers and a variety of interesting sides.

First things first and if you take only one bit of information away from this post, make sure it's this - the Sticky Wings' American Buffalo wings are about as good an example as I've found anywhere in the world. They're great big healthy-looking things, with thick, strong bones and good, firm, flavoursome flesh. The skin is crisped up perfectly, bubbly and with a great crunch thanks to a deft hand with the fryer. And each are coated with a generous amount of classic Frank's hot sauce cut with butter. Dipped in some of the Sticky Wings blue cheese, they are impossible not to love.

For the sake of completeness, we tried a couple of other options. The boneless wings were in fact not wings but breasts, but were commendably moist and would make a good option for anyone too lazy to eat around the bones. Garlic mushrooms were nice and garlicky, jalapeno balls (the only item they don't make in-house we were told) had a lovely cheesy filling and were just spicy enough, and deep fried corn was dusted in some kind of BBQ rub which worked incredibly well.

We also tried a small portion of the hot chilli wings, their fierce heat generated by pickled ghost chilli amongst other things. Pickling the ghost chilli apparently tames the heat but retains all of the flavour, and it's certainly true they had more than just a dry heat; fresh herbs and spices created a complex and very satisfying effect. I'm glad we only got a small portion though - one was enough to have me reaching for an ice-cold Sam Adams.

There are more reasons to love Sticky Wings that don't have anything to do with the food. Firstly, the owners love to chat, and so service is just as much about welcoming you like an old friend as it is about bringing another round of seriously cold beer. And they won't even let you pay for said service - tips are not encouraged, but if you do insist on leaving something (as we did last night) they get donated to a local children's hospital. So you can enjoy of the best wings in the world whilst doing your bit for a good cause. I doubt anyone will need any more reasons to visit - this place is destined to be a huge hit.

9/10

Chooks, Muswell Hill, and Orange Buffalo, Brick Lane

"Shoestring, Taggart, Spender, Bergerac, Morse. What does that say to you about regional detective series'?"

"There's too many of them?"

"That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, 'people like them, let's make some more of them'."

The joke in the above exchange between Alan Partridge and the Chief Commissioning Editor of the BBC was that, bereft of successful ideas himself, Alan merely spotted the most convenient bandwagon and attempted to ride it to success. And as well as being a handy way of shoehorning an Alan Partridge quote into a food blog, it has a (slightly tortured) parallel with what's happening in certain corners of the London restaurant business.

The Giraffe group has by no means the monopoly on bandwagon-jumping but they have definitely been one of the highest-profile offenders over recent years. Strike One was Guerilla Burgers back in February 2010, where, spotting the frenzy surrounding the Meatwagon appearances in South London, they decided there was money to be made selling 'authentic West-coast burgers' in a desirable Marylebone location. Unfortunately 'authenticity' is a subjective term, and to various people's crushing disappointment, not least my own, Guerilla Burgers turned out to be a glorified pub burger served with frozen crinkle-cut chips at a massive mark-up. It was quietly rebranded within the year.

And now, as any food geek will tell you (don't look so surprised, you know who you are), the Next Big Thing is going to be chicken - whether fried, rotisseried or served as wings. Giraffe knows this, too, so they've rushed into field with Chooks, a desperate trend-chasing exercise in creative bankruptcy that has recently reared its ugly neck in Muswell Hill. It is, and I'm saving you the miserable experience of travelling to Muswell Hill to find out the same for yourself, completely awful; overpriced, ineptly constructed food served slowly by inexperienced staff in a room that's a bit like - actually, very like - Meatliquor with the hard edges filed off. The sweet Margaritas are served in jam jars, the cutlery comes in white metal tins, there's even ironic corporate "graffiti" in the toilets. As for the food itself, well, the fried chicken tasted of water and grease, and flabby buffalo wings came with a "blue cheese sauce" that was as thin as mouldy milk. Please promise me you'll never go.

But! But. Thank God not everyone with the desire to operate a food business in central London has timid investors to please or the imagination of a sand fly. I'm not going to waste any more words on Chooks, it doesn't even deserve the SEO score, so instead let's focus on a stall just off Brick Lane that treats its chickens - and its customers - with respect.

Orange Buffalo care about what they do. The wings themselves come in a choice of four flavours, from 'Original' (tangy, mild) through 'Woof Woof' (hotter, more complex) and to the top level 'Viper' which I'm yet to try but given that it contains the fearsome naga chilli I assume packs quite a punch. They are deep fried to a marvellous crispy skin then (correctly, as per the authentic New York state method) rolled in the hot sauce by hand before being presented on a paper tray of chunky blue cheese dip, sticks of celery and side of either onion rings or fries.

The wings themselves are fantastic, made with skill and using very good quality, meaty chicken. The onion rings are little bitesize things, greaselessly fried and with a good crunch, ditto the fries. The blue cheese dip, though, was almost the standout element - a chunky, creamy pile of cooling dairy that provided the absolute perfect antidote to the chillified chicken. Six wings, with the blue cheese dip, celery and a generous pile of either onion rings or fries was £6.50.

I know Orange Buffalo aren't the first people to serve chicken wings. The Meatwagon weren't the first people to serve bacon cheeseburgers, Big Apple didn't invent gourmet hot dogs, and Banh Mi 11 didn't invent Vietnamese pork paté baguettes. But each of these operations were successful - and great - not because they saw a trend and tried to make some money from it, but because they started selling the kind of food they wanted to eat themselves, and their passion for doing so was evident in the end product. The lesson to be learned, time and time again, is this - make the kind of food you want to eat, make it with care, and to hell with what anyone else thinks. A bandwagon is never a good enough reason for a restaurant.

Chooks 2/10
Orange Buffalo 9/10

EDIT 01/11/12: I have been asked to make it clear that the relationship between Chooks and Giraffe is familial not financial - Chooks is owned and run by the son of the founders of Giraffe and is a separate entity. That said, you can see the family resemblance...




I was invited to review Chooks

Curry Capital (delivery), Shoreditch

No matter how many miles you would happily travel for a good meal, how close your house or flat is to your favourite local restaurant or how good you are at whipping up a hearty dinner for ten in seconds flat, sometimes there's absolutely nothing better than kicking back in your own front room on a Saturday evening and tucking into a takeaway curry. When I first moved to London, I made a concerted effort to try all the local delivery places at least once so that if the opportunity arose I wouldn't inflict visiting friends and family with oily kebabs and soggy naans and send them back up North muttering about the standard of London food. A good, reliable delivery place is a valuable thing, as indispensible as a decent local minicab or a 24-hour off-licence in its contributions to a happy night in, and with that in mind I'd like to introduce you to the finest delivery service in East London - Curry Capital.


As with most of these places, the menu from Curry Capital is a mixture of familiar curry house favourites and the odd house speciality. It reads, let's be honest, like it could belong on any high street in the country, not just London, and is hardly the kind of thing to set pulses racing. But its strength isn't in the ambition of its Indian-Bangladeshi cuisine or the application of unusual techniques and ingredients - it's just that the main dishes from here are as good as I've had even in the best Indian restaurants in town, with a level of spicing and use of brilliant fresh ingredients that only seem to improve each time we make an order.


One item we never do without is the Lamb Xacuti. "Award winning" it's described on the menu, and we'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt, because it really is stunning. Tender strips of slow-cooked lamb rest in a thick spicy paste, slightly oiler than the Tayyabs dry meat perhaps but with almost the same level of meaty intensity. This week we also tried something called 'Kathmandu delicacy chicken', containing impossibly moist and tasty strips of grilled chicken in a fiery tomato/chilli sauce, as addictive and delicious as you could imagine. As if that wasn't enough, a starter portion of 'Mitah Changri' - tender king prawns in a sauce containing honey and fresh lime, amongst I'm sure many other things - was also superb, benefitting from wonderful fresh ingredients and a masterful command of spicing.



I should point out that I've never eaten in at their restaurant on Brick Lane - despite the excellent food coming out of their kitchens, that address is anathema to any self-respecting Londoner; if I'm going to leave the house for a meal I'll just keep walking to Whitechapel. But for those of you lucky enough to live within delivery distance I can only suggest next time you're in the mood for a lazy evening of curry-based indulgence and don't fancy leaving the flat, give them a call. And if you're reading this thinking "my favourite place looks better than that" then let me know and I'll give it a try - if it turns out you're right I'll be forever indebted. But after years of systematic testing of London's food delivery options, I can confidently say that operations like Curry Capital don't come along very often, and I consider myself its most loyal, and happiest, customer.

8/10