Thunderbird, Brixton

Although the lineup is constantly changing, there's always more than one reason to visit Brixton's Market Row. Salon has been South London's favourite brunch spot for a number of years now, the original Franco Manca is still the best (and most popular), and if Nanban isn't the absolute best way to do fusion Japanese cooking then I don't know what is. Try their goat ramen, it'll change your life.

Latest to join this hallowed company is Thunderbird, following the solid London tradition of graduating from streetfood stars to this, their first bricks-and-mortar restaurant. I was always likely to visit, as the search for buffalo wings is a kind of mini obsession of mine, but an invite from a PR company gave me the nudge I needed and so one cold February evening I found myself in this brightly coloured and rather noisy space, blinking incredulously at the idea of "Salted caramel chicken wings".

But more on those later. Firstly let's talk about the Thunderbird Buffalo wings, or rather "Chipuffalo" as they call them as the sauce somewhat non-traditionally involves chipotle. The good news is that they're doing almost everything right in this regard. The sauce is spicy and buttery, and despite the fact I didn't detect much in the way of chipotle this is probably for the best. The blue cheese "dip" was in fact not the usual thin ranch dressing but instead a solid paste, seemingly little other than pure blue cheese - again, hardly traditional but I had no complaints. But the real star was the chicken itself, delightfully crunchy on the outside and without a hint of dryness or overcooking inside, they were about as good as you could possibly want - the natural result, I'm sure, of a great deal of experimentation and tweaking of recipe and method over quite a bit of time.

The only element of the order I didn't much enjoy was the pickled celery. There's something about the way sticks of celery go when pickled that makes them rather rubbery and difficult to eat, which is why you usually find them cut into small slices. Anyway, why bother pickling it at all? A stick of fresh celery would make much more sense. Still, a minor quibble overall, and not enough to stop Thunderbird's "Chipuffalo" easily competing with some of the best in town (if you get a chance, check out Sticky Wings, Chick'n'Sours and Orange Buffalo).

I also enjoyed the "Thunderbun", which in contrast to the mile-high superburgers that seem to be the norm these days, was instead the perfect height for eating, a compact little thing with a good chicken-sauce ratio and a lovely soft bun (by Millers) in the potato roll style.

Chips were fine. It goes without saying that they pale in comparison to places like Chick'n'Sours, who cook theirs in beef dripping, but they still did a decent enough job, dusted with cajun spicing and dressed in "Awesome Sauce" (mayo-based, same as used in the bun).

Salted Caramel Chicken Wings, were, as you might be forgiven to expect, horrid. Part of me admires, in a twisted way, that this car-crash of an idea got all the way from the drawing block to the printed menu without anyone saying "what the hell are you thinking" - in a largely identikit trend-chasing world we could do with a few more completely batshit ideas to spice things up a bit. But yeah, full marks for originality, zero marks for execution. Sweet and weird and completely wrong.

But look, there's a slim chance - a very slim chance, but still a chance - that salted caramel chicken wings are to somebody's taste out there, and anyway it's not like anyone's forcing you to order them. And with the Buffalo - sorry, Chipuffalo - wings and the Thunderbun there's still plenty else to enjoy, so much so that a couple of weeks later I snuck back in on my own dollar to check that they were as good as the first time. And they were. So welcome to Brixton, Thunderbird - it looks like you'll fit right in. Salted caramel wings and all.

8/10

My first visit to Thunderbird was on the house, then I paid myself for a return trip.

Red Rooster, Shoreditch

Please don't think that this review is the result of the fact I've not had a truly terrible meal for a while and I'm short on some kind of slating quota. I never want to have bad meals - nobody does. Quite the opposite; I spend most of my life trying - with considerable success, considering the numbers involved - to avoid them. But no matter how cautious and vigilant, you only need to let your guard down for a second to be in trouble. A bad meal is always out there somewhere; they creep upon you, stalk you like jungle cats, getting closer and closer as you wait naive and oblivious until at the last moment they strike, and you can only struggle helplessly as they tear at your soul and your wallet.

The problem with a lot of bad restaurants is that while seemingly caring little about what ends up on the plate they often manage to scrape together enough money - somehow - to employ people who can write a good menu. And the Red Rooster menu reads well - well enough, clearly, for one to assume a decent dinner there wasn't outside the realms of possibility. An interesting international melange of influences, ceviche, gravlax and fried chicken sat beside jerk pork, clam chowder and a cheeseburger - London has seen Southern US soul food before (most recently and most successfully at the late, lamented Lockhart and Shotgun) but this seemed something genuinely new, reflecting the fascinating (and well worth reading up on) background of head chef Marcus Samuelsson. The point is, we thought it was going to be good. Otherwise why bother?

Worried by the potential size of the £58 main course we had our eyes on (more on that later) we decided to share a starter of what we'd been led to believe was a Red Rooster classic - fried chicken and waffles. What arrived was a small, butterflied thigh piece, topped with chilli sauce and pickle, on top of maple waffle. The chicken itself wasn't bad, just boring - watery and plain and desperately needing more spice and seasoning. The waffle was cold and chewy but otherwise OK with a nice maltiness, and the chilli - sorry, Rooster - sauce was best described as "wet". Pickle was bizarrely good, though, so there is that.

OK, so far so bland. The "famous" Red Rooster fried chicken wasn't even the best in the East of London (certainly not with Chick'n'Sours a short bus ride away) never mind the Western Hemisphere. So perhaps the main course would redeem the place? Well, no. No, it really wouldn't. For an astronomical £58 you get three "bonemarrow" dumplings which tasted of little more than suet, a strange bed of frozen [SEE EDIT BELOW] peas, corn and chopped asparagus, and on top a two-bone piece of beef (very) short rib, I'm guessing no more than 400g or so including the bones.

We dutifully carved our miniature rib roast into two, and tried it. It was chewy from not having been cooked long enough, but to be honest I don't mind a bit of bite from a rib roast. What I do mind is paying £58 for a piece of beef so completely underseasoned - literally not a hint of salt - and underpowered that it hardly could pass as beef at all; this was a desperately poor quality bit of cow. If you had been presented with this strange pan full of frozen veg and mystery meat at a dinner party, you'd dutifully eat it, murmur quiet appreciations and quietly decide never to return, but to be asked to pay £58 for it in a hotel restaurant in Shoreditch is insane. This apparently is their signature dish, the name "Obama ribs" reflecting some kind of connection with the ex-president from which he'd be best advised to distance himself.

In a desperate effort to claw some positives from the evening I should point out that the house aquavit that came with the bill was very decent, all staff were lovely and smiley, and our waitress in particular seemed to genuinely be interested in learning that £58 is quite a lot to pay for a couple of mouthfuls of beef. And though the table they had initially given us was terrifyingly close to a live band, they quickly and happily reseated us in the conservatory when requested. But really, these are things that we should be taking for granted in a London restaurant in 2017; I'm doing them a favour for even pointing it out.

We noted with some alarm that another of the main courses - a whole fried chicken (£55!) - comes to the table adorned with a lit firework. Had our dinner been better - a lot better - this could perhaps be appreciated as a bit of naff but guiltily enjoyable theatre, a gimmick but not without its charms. However in the context of our dreadful evening, it felt like a distraction technique - that they hoped somehow people would put up with paying astronomical prices for clumsily presented, sloppily cooked food as long as was camouflaged by enough TGI Friday's flair. Well, it may have worked in Harlem but I'm afraid this is London, and up with this kind of shit we will not put. Red Rooster doesn't deserve this prestigious spot on Curtain Road and I hope this vast space is very soon put to better use. I wonder if Chick'n'Sours are looking to expand?

3/10

[EDIT: I've been assured by the PR that the peas were in fact fresh, not frozen. I'm sure I'm no expert but my friend with whom I ate the above meal still swears they were frozen. Take your pick.]

Chick'n'Sours, Covent Garden

"It has runaway success written all over it," I said about the original Chick'n'Sours in Kingsland Road, and with my predictions being so very rarely correct I hope you'll indulge me this opportunity to brag just a little about getting this one bang-on. With their unique and timely vision of Asian-influenced US comfort food this lively little spot in Dalston caught the public's imagination - and appetite - from day one, and in retrospect it was inevitable they'd want to open a 2nd branch at some point.

And ordinarily I'd wish them well and leave them to it; I rarely make an effort to review multiple branches from the same team because, well, usually I've said everything that needed to be said the first time around, and however welcome it would be to have a Chick'n'Sours on every street corner (and that would be very welcome indeed), hopefully all the same reasons for visiting would apply each time. There's no need to labour the point.

Except here we are, and I am going to the labour the point about Chick'n'Sours, not least because there's more than enough new and improved here in Covent Garden to fill the pages of another blog post but because also, even if the menu, the quality of the food and the style in which it is served was a complete carbon copy of the Kingsland Road original, I'd still feel duty bound to tell you about it for one simple reason - Chick'n'Sours... is... brilliant.

Let's start with a new entry in the Covent Garden menu - an irresistable snack called Mexi-nese Nachos. Corn chips soaked in a rich cheese sauce, looser than melted American and with more flavour though don't ask me how, studded with warm bacon bits and "Chengdu chicken" (crunchy skin I think but don't quote me), all topped with some fantastic crisp kimchee and green chilli. Nachos have been reimagined and reinvented so many times in so many dive bars it's a miracle C'n'S have come up with something original at all, least of all something that could very well spoil every other plate of nachos you've ever eaten in your life. A must order.

A must order too are the disco wings, available in a variety of different treatments. Pictured are the 'hot', best described as a vinegar-chilli Buffalo-style sauce, but with extra levels of deeply satisfying umami flavour, the bubbly crust of the wings holding so much of the sauce that biting into each one was a gloriously messy affair. They are the best chicken wings I've ever found in London, combining great quality, meaty chicken with supremely addictive coating and sauce. And that's even before they're introduced to the cooling, creamy St Agur dip.

I worry I'm sounding a bit like a press release, but Chick'n'Sours is one of those places that makes advocates of us all. The house pickles are a colourful selection of Asian-fringed flavours, sweet and sour, from soft chunks of cucumber to squishy cabbage. The pickling is clearly finely honed, a process presumably evolved from the very earliest days in Haggerston, and before that when head chef Carl Clarke was organising Korean popups around town.

Smacked ("Hunan-style") cucumbers, soaked in sesame oil and with a healthy slick of chilli, also satisfied on every level. It seems to be a Sichuan (or at least vaguely Southern Chinese) trick to combine something cooling (cucumbers) with chilli heat, to end up with an addictive contrast of pain and pleasure in every mouthful.

That same contrast is what makes the famous pickled watermelon side so good, a stalwart from Kingsland Road we couldn't help ordering again, refreshing chunks of fresh watermelon that soothe at first before the tingle of chilli kicks in a few seconds later. It's all enormous fun.

Finally, coriander and sesame chicken tenders, doing that same extraordinary balancing act of crunchy, moist, soft, sharp, sweet, you name it. Exciting, innovative comfort food that you'd happily order again and again.

All this is, in short, why I pay other people to make food for me. I said that "in retrospect" it was inevitable that Chick'n'Sours would want to open a second branch but actually, back in May 2015 you can't really blame them for just hoping they'd make it through to Christmas and that they'd find a sensible way of managing the queues. It's only with the passage of time we can appreciate the place for what it was - a genuine game-changer that found a way of reinvigorating the US comfort food trend with exciting Asian flavours and deserved every bit of the "runaway success" (© Cheese and Biscuits 2015) that came their way. And judging by the full house at 12:30 on a Monday lunchtime, this may just be the beginning. Chick'n'Sours is brilliant.

10/10

No chance this gem is being left off the next version of the app. Meantime see where else is good.

Chick'n'Sours, Dalston

You'd be forgiven for thinking the last thing East London needed was another fried chicken joint. Scourge of the high street, bane of the nation's health, they are seemingly beaten only by betting shops in their ability to suck the joy and life out of a place, and have a similarly virus-like capacity to multiply and conquer an urban center. Where once were charity shops and Poundlands are now Tennessee Fried Chickens and William Hills. It's not exactly progress.

But not all fried chicken shops are created equal. Proper fried chicken from the Southern States of America, the kind popularised by Colonel Sanders before he sold his share of the business and standards slipped in the 1960s, was by all accounts - and is, if you know where to find it - a wonderful thing. The closest I've come to the real deal is Streetcar Merchants of San Diego, whose salt-brined chicken, served white or dark to order, was almost enough to banish the memory of Chicken Cottage forever. My friend Helen wrote about it here; you can see why we fell in love with the place.

Even if Chick'n'Sours served nothing but seasoned drumsticks and thighs it would still be better than anywhere else in London doing the same, thanks partly to some extraordinarily good fowl (good strong bones and plenty of rich dark meat, a million miles away from the usual broiler birds) but also to a nifty hand with a pressure-fryer, which welds the coating onto the skin and ensures every bite has a mix of crunch, seasoning and good, firm flesh. This is extremely good fried chicken, enough reason to visit in itself.

On top of that though, the menu offer a range of variations on an Asian-inspired theme that (somewhat against expectations, I have to admit) compliment the house fry whilst also making the whole lot feel more attractively London, or at least more Kingsland Road. I love chicken with biscuits and gravy, Southern style, but I also love crunchy fried chicken doused in sharp Thai chilli jam, toasted shallots, Thai basil, mint and spring onion. And in this part of town, the light, fresh notes of colourful SE Asian herbs and spices seem a lot more relevant.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with your bog standard breadcrumbed chicken fillet with sweet mayonnaise in a bun (in fact even modern KFC's version has a certain ersatz charm) but how much better is this beauty, a vast juicy chunk of breast meat with Korean mayonnaise, chilli vinegar and coleslaw? A lot better, I'd say, even at the £10 price point given the huge amount of meat inside.

Salads are many and varied, continuing the Asian theme. Szechuan aubergine had a beguiling mix of spices and chilli oil, texture provided by some striking monochrome sesame seeds. "Yaw bean slaw" was light and fresh and had an addictive miso savouriness, again a twist on a classic that was different not just for the sake of being different. But my favourite was pickled watermelon with peanut and coriander, an astonishing mix of chilli heat and watermelon cool, studded with crunchy peanuts, that hit just about every pleasure point a salad could aim for. Only a broccoli and green bean arrangement seemed out of place - nice enough but a bit soggy and forgettable.

Mostly, though, Chick'n'Sours gets things right. Wines are by (here's that name again) Zeren Wilson, a man who has the ability to conjure up wines of personality and power for a meagre £18 a bottle. The "sours" are lovely sharp fruity cocktails served in half pint glasses, colourful and ice cold and so easy to drink you risk an ice cream headache. Even the fries are good - cooked in beef dripping, aggressively seasoned and just soft enough rather than the cardboard-crunch so many places favour over flavour. Try them dipped in the blue cheese sauce - you'll never want them to end.

Perhaps objectively there isn't anything radically new going on here - fried chicken concepts have come and gone over the years, you can get things like Kara-age in most decent Japanese restaurants (Tonkotsu's is good), similarly Mama Lan's do a good line in crunchy Chinese style wings and for Southern US, Lockhart's is hard to beat. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel to be very good at what you do, and there are enough terrible attempts at even high-end fried chicken (if that's not a contradiction) to demonstrate that getting it right - and certainly getting it so very right as Chick'n'Sours do - is not at all easy.

I loved Chick'n'Sours not because of what it's trying to be but what it is - a relentlessly entertaining, energetic little operation serving near-faultless fried chicken complimented by a range of punchy pan-Asian sides that are never anything less than enormous fun to eat. It has runaway success written all over it.

9/10

There's every chance Chick'n'Sours will appear in the next version of the app. Meantime, see where else is good in Dalston by downloading it here.

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

The Lockhart, Marylebone

There are precious few restaurants that have a menu so comprehensively well drawn-up that you would be happy eating every single item from it. This is because most restaurants, like most people, aren't good at everything and tend to focus on their strengths while producing a couple of token offerings for minority interests (usually vegetarians or other niche dietary requirements). Hence the burger bars with the tragic lentil alternative, or the fish & chip restaurant doing frozen burgers to keep fussy non-fish-eaters happy. It's simple economics - you've less of a chance of a vegan vetoing a birthday trip to your favourite tapas joint if they are able to order at least something, and though you can't please everyone all of the time, there's at least a possibility you could stop them banging on about the rights of the unborn chicken foetus for five bloody minutes while you have your croquettas. And while you do, the restaurant in question is making money.

Sometimes though it's nice to come across a menu in which no dish appears to be a half-hearted niche-interest offering, and everything sounds as good as everything else. It's nice, because you know instantly this is the kind of place that is doing nothing but what they're good at, and if they're not good at whatever it is floats your particular boat, then you're better off elsewhere. But it's also nice because it gave me and a few friends the chance to order, Mr. Creosote-style "the lot, twice" without a second thought, safe in the knowledge that we wouldn't be presented with anything that wasn't exactly the kind of thing Lockhart wanted to make.

What the Lockhart want to make, then, is American food with a Southern states lean, but using British ingredients and with a certain added British refinement in service and atmosphere. If that seems a bit mean to the Southern US then I don't mean it to be, just that Marylebone is not Louisiana, and you ignore local interests at your peril. Simply copying exactly a restaurant from somewhere else is not a commendable insistence on authenticity, it's a theme park.

First to arrive, while we were still in the downstairs bar, was something called a "muffaletta" which I'm afraid hadn't crossed my consciousness before but which apparently originated in New Orleans and contained layers of mortadella, salami, mozzarella and all sorts, alongside mixed pickled veg. The effect was just as good as you might think layer upon layer of ham, cheese and pickle would be, but it was still remarkably light for what looked like something you could have used to prop open your front door. I think most of it disappeared pretty quickly. Read sandwich expert Helen Graves' writeup of it here, and have a go making it yourself from a recipe in her book.

Upstairs for the full menu, and the real fireworks. Just a few highlights, to save space and because these are the only photos that were even close to publishable. Buttermilk wedge salad was a huge, crunchy pile of comfort and colour, bacon and egg and lettuce bound together with a gorgeous creamy dressing. Shrimp and grits were super, too - perfectly timed prawns (not something many places can manage) on a seasoned bed of rich polenta.

Stuffed quail was a lovely thing, its crisp, golden brown skin holding moist flesh largely unencumbered by bones (well done whoever's tedious job that was), on a bed of creamed cabbage. Saddle of venison, again perfectly cooked, came with a little quenelle of roast apple sauce, and one of those thick, cheffy gravies that makes you want to lick your plate clean. I licked my plate clean.

Another stunning bit of food was a ribeye of beef for two, which served to remind that there are other ways of doing justice to top-end cow without cremating it in a Josper. Gently browned, with a powerful grass-fed flavour, it was quite the best bit of beef I've enjoyed since my last trip to Goodman, and and anyone who's ever been to Goodman will tell you, there are few higher compliments than that. No photo of the beef though I'm afraid. Well, there is but I won't let you see it for fear of retribution. Oh, I almost forgot the fried chicken - also great, even though my photo of it looked like something being removed from an operating theatre.

So, as you can gather, there are lots of reasons to like the Lockhart. Not just the food, not just the whole "we like it so you should too" attitude to the menu, but the uniqueness of the whole concept - Southern US grace matched with central London style. There are, God knows, so many American diner and BBQ shack concepts flooding the city at the moment and to do exactly that again would have made perfect business sense. But the Lockhart is, confidently, brilliantly, its own animal, a fusion of London and New Orleans, and a perfectly charming place to spend an evening. I thoroughly recommend it - just don't bring a vegetarian.

9/10