Norbert's, East Dulwich

They're like the buses, these rotisserie places. You wait years for a decent, affordable spit-roast chicken in the capital, and then two come along at once.

I'm being slightly disingenuous and short-memoried, of course. Soho House's Chicken Shop was a reliably enjoyable place to get the good stuff, and was remarkable value as well. But for whatever reason - who know how these things work, certainly not me - the one in Holborn closed (where I would go at least once every couple of weeks back in the day), then Kentish Town, then Tooting, and then after hanging on for a year or two the final spot in St John's Wood shuttered.

And believe me, I've tried my best at the other end of the budget too. About a decade ago I tried Hélène Darroze's Sunday roast (sorry - Dimanche poulet) at the Connaught, and while some of the starter elements were very nice (particularly a genius-level chicken consommé and Armagnac shot - hook it into my veins) the main event was overcooked, dry and disappointing. And, of course, stupidly expensive.

So until recently - with certain notable exceptions - rotisserie chicken was just not something that London did well. But hot on the heels of the Knave of Clubs (in fact I believe they opened within a couple of months of each other) is Norbert's in East Dulwich, a much more modest operation than that grand old Victorian pub in Shoreditch (I'm sure Norbert's won't mind me saying) but still aiming to apply intelligence and skill to the business of roast poultry.

The menu is short - very short, just the aforementioned chicken with sides and a couple of starters - but then that's the whole point of a specialist place like this. This is not a restaurant that does chicken, it is a chicken restaurant, and if you're vegetarian, well, you can find somewhere else to eat. We started with taramasalata which in itself was lovely but the salt and vinegar crisps it came with was, I think, a flavour too far for the same dish, the astringency fighting with the seafood. Much better would have been plain, I think. But still, an excellent tarama.

Before the main event, though, I need to talk about service - particularly wine service. My female friend had picked out a bottle she wanted to try. It duly arrived, but was poured into my own glass to taste, and without thinking (I'm afraid I've still got some way to go in situations like this) I tasted it and said it was fine. Anyone who knows me will tell you a vote of confidence in a wine from me is about as useful and prestigious as a degree from Trump University, so inevitably, when the same wine was poured into my friend's own glass she in fact didn't like it, and was offered something else. In a hapless attempt to salvage both mine and the restaurant's mistake I offered to pay for the first wine anyway, so we ended up in the end spending a small fortune on wine, not all of which we ended up drinking.

Now clearly, the first mistake was theirs (offering the first taste to the person who hadn't ordered it - let's for their sake assume that was an honest mistake and nothing too worryingly gender-based), and the second was mine (tasting it instead of offering it to my friend - there's a small chance I may have been distracted by taramasalata but that's no excuse), but I think the final mistake was the restaurant's really, for not offering to just take back the unwanted wine. But maybe there's some other nuance I've not thought of - what do you think?

The chicken, though, was just about worth the stress. A healthily thick, dark skin packed with spice and seasoning, a brined but not in the least bit 'hammy' flesh, some excellent crisp fries that held their structure and flavour until the last bite, and a supremely crunchy, fresh salad. Perhaps it wasn't quite the same level as the Turner & George chicken from the Knave, for an almost identical price (salad and fries are extra here, but included at the Knave) but was still worth the journey.

We also found space for some nice cheese from Mons cheesemongers up the road, a gruyere style from Ireland which was a perfect temperature. Which didn't help our £72pp final bill but as I say, most of that was wine, whether we wanted it or not.

I'm in two minds about Norbert's. On the one hand it is perfectly acceptable chicken for not a huge amount of money and it's an unpretentious little addition to this corner of East Dulwich. On the other hand the whole business with the wine left us wishing the whole experience had gone differently, and yes it doesn't compare well with a certain other rival rotisserie spot in Shoreditch doing things a little bit better for pretty much the same price. I think I know where's more likely to get my repeat custom.

6/10

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The Knave of Clubs, Shoreditch

I wouldn't normally feel comfortable sticking a score on a place after sampling just 2 dishes from a menu, but I will make an exception for the Knave of Clubs for two reasons. Firstly, they have put the rotisserie "centre stage" at one end of the large dining room and that is what, I imagine, the large majority of their visitors will be ordering. Secondly, I bloody loved the place, so I don't think they'll mind me writing about it even without trying most of what their kitchens can offer.

We started, though, with oysters - an extremely reasonable £20 for 6 large, lean specimens supplied with all the correct condiments. In a town when the average price per bivalve is hovering around the £5 mark (and in some cases is well above that), it's nice to know that there's somewhere still offering value like this.

The same sense of value is evident in the rest of the menu. They really could charge a lot more for a whole chicken than £38, especially given the quality of these birds (from arguably London's best butcher Turner and George), and even if they didn't come with a giant helping of sides. For your money you get loads of chicken fat roasties, a nice sharply-dressed green salad, some slices of baguette and a little pot of light, homemade aioli.

All of this generosity would have come to naught if the chicken itself wasn't up to scratch, but fortunately thanks to the provenance I mentioned, plus judicious use of brining (not too salty but just enough to ensure every bit of the flesh is tender and juicy), plus a really lovely chermoula spice rub, the end result was a truly impressive bit of rotisserie - the best pub roast chicken I've had the pleasure to tear into in recent memory; certainly the best value. We absolutely demolished the chicken then spent many happy minutes mopping up the chermoula cooking juices with the slices of baguette, and for a while, all was well with the world.

The bill, with a £32 bottle of wine came to £51pp - you really can spend a lot more than this and get a lot less, and not just in central London. In fact the whole experience, including the lovely and attentive staff, made me forgive the only real complaint I have about the place - bloody communal tables. But the spots are spread out around them quite generously, and actually just gives me an excuse to return and try the bistro-style One Club Row upstairs in the same building, where chef Patrick Powell (ex- Allegra) is really stretching his wings. I bet it's great. Watch this space.

9/10

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Le Coq, Islington

I'd like to know why it took until 2013 for London restaurants to work out how to cook chicken properly. This is, after all, a skill possessed by the most reluctant of weekend chefs - even me, and I can overcook a pot noodle. But how many times have you sat down for half a bird in your local pub only to be presented with a dried-up old carcass with a texture like damp loft insulation, the flesh peeling off the bones in sweaty, claggy clumps? How many hotel restaurants have proudly unveiled a 'supreme' from beneath a silver dome and for it to taste like it's been crumbling under a hot lamp for the best part of a fortnight? I've eaten drumsticks that have been left on the barbeque coals for hours longer than they should have been and they've still been juicy and tender (albeit beneath a half-inch of carbon). Something about the processes required in a professional kitchen and the demands of service conspire to make chicken in a restaurant, almost invariably, a colossal disappointment.

So it's worth repeating a couple of the places that are Doing Roast Chicken Right. There is Clockjack Oven in Soho, a proto-chain yes and unashamedly so, but where each piece of spit-roasted poultry is bouncy and juicy and seasoned to perfection. The chips are some of the best in town, too, and although some aspects of the experience could be improved (the drinks list still reads like a wet Monday) you can't fail to enjoy their main product. And who could forget Chicken Shop, currently pride of Kentish Town but shortly to open in Tooting, where for very little money you can eat some lovely crispy-skinned bird with a side of crinkle-cut chips. It's places like these that make you wonder what the hell everyone else is finding so difficult.

And now there is Le Coq, in Islington, a sign that perhaps, oh God please, London finally has a grip on this thing. They may bristle with the comparisons with the rather more downmarket examples above - Le Coq is a classy, independent venture with a proper drinks offering and a weekly-changing menu of interesting starters and sides - but they still form part of that exclusive group of restaurants that somehow have managed to serve roast chicken without completely coq-ing it up (sorry).

Starters, despite the obvious (and understandable, as you will see) focus on the main event, were still worth bothering with. A salad of artichokes, capers and parmesan ticked all the flavour profile boxes and we particularly enjoyed the way the artichokes had been grilled to get little crispy bits on the petals. And a 'brown crab rarebit' tasted as odd as it sounded, but after the initial shock of the powerfully seafoody brown-meat had died down it was actually weirdly moreish, the cheese and crab mixture being salty and rich alongside that punch of the sea.

But we - and everyone else in the room for that matter - were here for the chicken, and the chicken we did have. Presented in two parts, the bright white flesh of the breast encased in a golden-brown skin, and the darker meat of the leg stretched out next to it, it was, every last morsel of it, quite beautifully done. The flavour of it, not least, was seriously impressive - perhaps thanks to this particular breed of chicken, perhaps the way they were reared, perhaps the skill of the kitchen at Le Coq. Whatever the reason, I can't think of a better roast chicken to be found in London, and certainly not for a very reasonable £17 for two courses. It came with a colcannon made with yet more artichokes (Jerusalem this time), a side which beats any green salad into a coq'ed hat (please somebody stop me), some excellent tarragon mayonnaise, and a teeny pot of chicken roasting juices which my friend had to stop me drinking like it was soup.

I should also make a special mention of the "rotisserie potatoes", which I like to think were gently cooked in the roasting fat from the chicken, and if they weren't certainly tasted like they were, all soft and glistening and browned with concentrated chicken flavour. Could Le Coq, not content with serving arguable the best roast chicken in London, also be home to the best roasties?

My only regret was not ordering a side of bread to soak up the rest of the juices, so if you make the trip to Islington yourself be sure you don't make the same mistake. Running your fingers feverishly round your plate trying desperately to get a final fix of that sticky chicken stock is not the most edifying way to end a meal, and I can only apologise to those around me for my behaviour last night.

Having completely failed to avoid making any cheap gags at the expense of the name of this restaurant thus far, I don't see why I should stop now, so it just remains for me to say that you really can't help falling in love with Le Coq. The main event is, as I say, impossible to fault, and if everything else had been a disaster it still would have been worth the hour-long Overground trip from Battersea. But add in the expertly-judged sides, the interesting (and resolutely British) starters and the finest roast potatoes in town you have yourself a real gem of a place. In fact they're so good even now, barely weeks after opening, the only question is where they go next. My advice is, don't get Coq'y.

9/10

I was invited to review Le Coq

Cookhouse Joe, Soho

One of the more distasteful things about the way the London restaurant arena operates - and despite the occasional whinge (like this one), there are still more reasons to be positive than not - is the relentless inevitability that as soon as a popular restaurant or style of eatery establishes itself, there will be a good half dozen or so weak, cynical clones attempting to cash in on its success.

The frightening number of sub-par burger places trying to mop up the dregs from the MeatLiquor crowds, or the nationwide sandwich chain that added a pulled pork bun to its shelves (for shame) in a pitiful attempt to grab a bit of the Pitt Cue custom, are proof that for every innovator, every creative force, everyone wanting to genuinely and honestly make nice food to make other people happy, there's a group of suits with a chequebook and the moral code of a tarantula ready to leap in and laminate some menus the second they see a queue forming.

The Next Big Thing, kicked off by Chicken Shop in Kentish Town and followed swiftly by Clockjack Oven in Soho, is rotisserie chicken. And why not, because rotisserie chicken, done well, is a very wonderful thing indeed. One of my happiest memories from childhood holidays in the Costa Brava is queueing up for a plump bird fresh off the spit from a roadside stall, skin darkened with Mediterranean herbs and crunchy with salt, accompanied by a portion of frozen chips. There are logistical reasons why this setup isn't quite right for London - at least not just yet; they dry out pretty quickly unless they're snapped up just when ready, so in Spain you book your chicken and turn up at your allotted time, something which would take the patience of a saint to organise in central London.

But I can dream, can't I? And anyway there are still ways around the problem, such as Clockjack Oven's brining method, which means they stay lovely and moist and firm for longer, or the turnover thanks to the hordes of hungry North Londoners piling through the doors at Chicken Shop, meaning nothing hangs around for long. Street stalls are a good bet, too, as they get through their stock pretty sharpish - see if you can't catch Spit and Roast at a market near you soon. Rotisserie chicken is yet to reach its zenith in London; imagine - just imagine - if one day a temple to spit-roast chicken such as Barcelona's Chez Coco opened here, serving golden-browned pollo in plush surroundings, but in the meantime, if you need a roast chicken fix, there are options.

What you shouldn't do is go to Cookhouse Joe. At first glance, it looks like a bargain; enough of a bargain in fact to tempt not just myself but a healthy crowd of Soho diners through the doors of a weekday lunchtime. For £6, you are offered a half of a free-range chicken, with fries and either salad or corn or coleslaw, a price point which gives even Nando's (£10 for the same) a run for its money. We ordered at the bar, and then waited on the artfully mismatched furniture for our order to arrive. Half a chicken, plus chips, AND corn, for £6. That should be enough to set the alarm bells ringing - which corners are being cut, here? How can they make the numbers work on a meal deal that's about 60% the price of an international chain?

We soon found out. The chicken itself was pretty much inedible - overcooked to the consistency of wet cotton wool, the flesh dripping off the bone in sad, slimy chunks. A salty brown skin stretched over the cadaver, the texture of used bandages and with an unnerving taste of cheap stock cube. It was, in all ways, repellent.

Sides were easier to eat, but then probably so were the napkins. I finished most of my dry fries not because they were any good but because I was hungry and they were just about edible where the chicken was not, although a very weird yoghurt mint dip thing remained largely untouched. Coleslaw was just moist cabbage, unseasoned and unloved.

A small portion of wings, ordered in a happier time before the mains arrived, was lazy beyond belief, just plain chicken, presumably pre-cooked somewhere then "finished off" ("finished off seemingly code for "burned in parts") on a grill. These, too, resisted any attempts to enjoy them. Where was the flavour, the spicy marinade, the selection of dipping sauces? Had they not eaten out in another London chicken restaurant in the last few years? Was any of it taste-tested? Where had it all gone so wrong?

It's worth making the point that I do not hate Cookhouse Joe because it's a proto-chain. Clockjack Oven is, demonstrably, a proto-chain but I liked their chicken, I liked their chips and although the pisspoor drinks list and stupid t-shirt slogans are annoying, they are not enough to spoil the experience of eating there. I hate Cookhouse Joe because they have one job - to serve roast chicken - and they are absolutely no good at it at all. And with the competition improving all the time, there is no point in valuable Soho retail space being wasted on such a half-arsed facsimile. Jog on, Joe.

2/10