Humble Chicken, 54 Frith Street, London W1D 4SJ (humblechickenuk.com). Yakitori PS3-PS4.80 Other meals PS5-PS16 and desserts PS6-PS8.50 and wines starting at PS30.
Confronted with Humble Chicken’s food menu of Humble Chicken, it’s difficult to stay fully mature. The menu item that is available is “Inner Thigh”. Would you like to see some inside thigh? Always, love. Always. It also adds a unique value on top of the package of tail, breast, as well as soft knee. Would you like a soft knees that match your thigh? Oh, behave. Well, I’m sorry. I’m not being a good person. I want everything. While the menu is able to bring out the childish snark within me, it’s extremely serious. Sitting at the counter of what was the original tapas restaurant of masters Barrafina located in the London’s Soho I observe the head chef Angelo Sato tend his grill with his hachimaki headband on. I feel the joy in my heart that comes from the comforting knowledge that I’m in the right spot.
Yakitori is not new to the UK. Many restaurants offer small selections of food items made with sticks and cooked over coal. I was very impressed by the bulky quality in The London variation of Bincho Yakitori (now located in Brighton). However, Humble Chicken takes it somewhere other than Brighton: to a location where they can speak with a booming intensity with a furrowed brow, and a sly focus on particulars.
Japanese-born Sato has been working in the company of Clare Smyth in London as well as on the Eleven Madison Park in New York. He has performed the exact swiftly tweezered multi-Michelin dance. The deceivingly named Humble Chicken, in which the chicken’s humbleness is elevated over the ordinary the humble, he’s circled back to Japan. Some time ago, on the very first night of our family vacation here, the family were escorted by a shrewd Tokyo resident to an local yakitori shop. The young men were equally passionate and tending to tiny sticks of precisely cut animal on carefully calibrated charcoal that was glowing and smouldering. It was quite an experience. A large part of the reason was in a menu that recognized the various parts of an animal demanded a distinct approach. It is not possible to cook pork belly in the same way as you prepare pork loin.
This is also true for. The humble The chicken has everything that I loved about that humid evening in the Tokyo Back Alley. I’ve got a motto that is: authentic isn’t always synonymous with good. In this instance, authentic is just as good. At the center to the food menu lies a grid made up of 19 skewers that cost around PS3 and PS4.80 as well as the chef’s choice of 5 for PS16. In addition to shiitake mushroom and meatballs cuts of chicken that are the entire way. Tonight, they’ve gone out of mixed offal and liver and the liver, which is disappointing. Just a few blocks away on Frith Street from Humble Chicken is a Nando’s branch that is glistening by Pride Month rainbows. I think about suggesting that customers visit the store to replenish their stocks of livers. Have you tried meatless Nando’s livers? God, they’re good.
Whatever. Cubes of thigh, alternated with slices of spring onion grilled and seasoned with the right amount of seasoning of salt and. The thigh’s inner part is coated with a glaze of spicy miso, and sprinkled with sesame seeds. The pale pieces of fillet are infused with the smell of wasabi. They aren’t dry from the temperature. Crisp seared outer skins change into soft and beautiful inside. They’ve been well-loved and cared for. However, for me, the greatest pleasures are in the parts people might not want. I’m enthralled by a collection of four parson’s noses cooked to a delicious crisp, yet still flowing with juices. I love the folded layers of darkly glazed and crispy chicken skin. I am totally enthralled by the soft knees and by the delicious, squeaky salted sound of the limbs. If you’re not a meat lover no words I’m about to say will make you smile with relief and think, “Well that’s OK, then.” However, everyone else must surely be applauding both the rise of the humble as well as the eradication of waste. Yes, I’m standing there and cheering. It’s possible to sit down and get very angry. I understand. Don’t hate me. I am enough loved for us everyone.
There are many other dishes to choose from. While our eyes are widened by the chicken anatomy on the menu and the chicken anatomy lesson, they serve us the cool, fresh white cabbage, tossed in the dazzling soy Ponzu dressing. We continue to empty the bowl. They continue refilling it. It’s just a single oyster in a creamy dressing that’s flavoured with chilli and citrus. The cured mackerel is served with their skins up in a tomato – and ponzu-flavored jelly with curly curls of battered with deep-fried seaweed. Thin , velvety tuna flakes sit in a pool of another soy-citrus dressing and are sprinkled with toy-town tubes of white asparagus fermented. A platter of pickles ends into something that resembles things ripped out of the candy container. There are shiny cherries with red rods tomatoes and gleaming pink pieces of turnip as well as the pale green of crisp cucumber. The palate is cleaned. The palate thanks you.