Forget prawn toast, Haggerston's Chick 'n' Sours will have chicken toast on their menu

London's love affair with fried chicken is perennially sizzling. First, chicken shops went upmarket, with street food hits like Cluck and Mother Clucker. Now the capital’s poultry scene is becoming further gentri-fried, with chicken toast.

It’s just like Chinese prawn toast but with chicken, says chef Carl Clarke, who concocted the dish for his newly revamped chicken restaurant Chick ’n’ Sours in Haggerston. It opens next week and chicken toast is one of several Asian dishes to have been given a modern makeover after its popularity at the restaurant’s Brixton pop-up back in May.

Get your fried fix with these deep-fried chicken-coated bread strips flavoured with sesame and ginger and served with papaya slaw.

Clarke says he wanted to take something traditional and give it a “crazy twist”: the dish is made with chicken rather than prawns, flavoured with a bit of sesame and ginger, and served with a tamarind chilli caramel, like a posh chilli sauce.

It’s served with a side of green papaya slaw and kosho, a sort of fermented lime zest condiment, and tastes perfect with the restaurant’s sour cocktails, which cut through the richness. Clarke and his team make it all themselves, and all the chicken is free-range from Somerset and fried in British rapeseed oil for a healthy, crispier crumb containing nearly zero trans fats.

Nevertheless, there’s still an element of fowl play: the toast is “sticky and messy” and there’s a naughtiness to eating deep-fried chicken toast with your hands. Clarke says it fits the restaurant’s “trashy Asian flavour vibes” — his other additions to the new menu include crispy soy pickled shitake mushrooms, hot chicken and waffles, and a Ssam-style half-fried chicken pressure-cooked on the bone. It’s clucking good.

390 Kingsland Road, E8, chicknsours.co.uk