Grace Dent reviews Fire and Feathers

If I had to select an emoji to denote my expression when editors suggest I review ‘posh’ chicken joints, it would be the flat-line mouth smiley that signifies: ‘Are you kidding?’
The interior of Fire and Feathers
Grace Dent14 July 2014

Two trips to South West London in seven days last week. Two chances for me to jump confidently on to the Circle Line, be bamboozled by the Edgware Road interchange and foxed by the Metropolitan Line, the cad who cosies up as your friend then whisks you fast to Amersham.

I have been here 18 years and I am still continuously lost. Like most Londoners, I feel my way via landmarks of ‘Bars I’ve been quite refreshed in’ and ‘Restaurants I’ve loved or loathed’. I left my date for the 50th birthday party of Daphne’s in Chelsea — elegant new redesign, ‘art’ on display by Harry Styles — standing outside Chanel on Brompton Cross, tutting, for 25 whole minutes while I found my way there. Happily, Fire and Feathers, a new piri piri joint on the Fulham Road, stays open until midnight, so I was still in with a shout of eating dinner by the time I found it.

If I had to select an emoji to denote my expression when editors suggest I review ‘posh’ chicken joints, it would be the smiley with flat-line mouth that signifies: ‘Are you actually kidding? I am processing this information quietly; don’t rule out violence.’

There’s a storyline in the excellent HBO series Looking, set in San Francisco, where one of the key characters longs to follow his dream and open a piri piri joint. I say Looking is excellent, but the ‘I dream of bringing piri piri chicken to the people’ speeches are a good time to check Twitter. There is limited plot jeopardy in the ambition to rub chickens with a blend of paprika and cayenne pepper. Nevertheless, I went to Fire and Feathers hoping that it would awaken a fresh excitement in me for piri piri, and offer an alternative to my usual, Westfield Stratford Nando’s, which is little more than an organised brawl with olives.

One strong bonus Fire and Feathers offers is decent, potent cocktails. We drank a glorious Praia da Luz full of Zubrowka bison grass vodka, cucumber, kiwi and apple juice. The raspberry vodka martini was large, cold, delicately sweet and potentially drinkable by the bucket. Fire and Feathers owner Harry Deighton has created a pretty, pared-down mock-Portuguese piri piri café — tables for two at the front, large booths for groups further back — representing his idea of food heaven when he was a child on holidays to the Algarve.

Some of his vision is executed dreamily. The garlic prawns, for example, are large, meaty, spicy and caked in a secret-recipe crunchy, gobblesome marinade. They arrive shelled but with the heads waiting to be snapped off. The other starter, a bowl of fiery, sliced chorizo, was simply hewn and satisfying, but in places slightly burned. We ordered a whole piri piri chicken for two people with sides, but were informed the chicken was small, thus we’d need two.

They weren’t fibbing, the chicken was slightly larger than a poussin. A tiny pipsqueak of a bird. The problem here is that regardless of the piri piri marinade being the most excellent I have ever tasted, one has to pick through a lot of bones to get to the meat. Our other chicken was lemon and herb, although I detected little of either. Fries were OK; peas not as great as Nando’s Macho peas; tomato and onion salad fresh and affable.

One point of opting for piri piri for dinner should be that it’s cheap, cheerful and plentiful, which I’m not certain this was. However, there’s a lot to love at Fire and Feathers. The wholly drinkable house red is £15.50 for a 750ml carafe. The warm pastel de nata with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drizzled in berry jus, was a satisfying sugar jolt. On a warm summer night one can order some chicken and a glass of red then observe the Chelsea youths in their natural mating environment — false eyelashes, skirts as big as belts — smoking outside Goat. If you’re going to get lost in South West London, there are worse places to go off-track.

Fire and Feathers

343 Fulham Road, SW10 (020 3011 0081; fireandfeathers.co.uk)

1 Praia da Luz £6.95

1 raspberry martini £6.95

1 garlic prawns £8.95

1 chorizo in red wine £5.95

1 large piri piri chicken £12.95

1 large lemon & herb chicken £12.95

1 chips £2.50

1 carafe Fire and Feathers red £15.50

1 pastel de nata £4.95

1 bread £1.50

TOTAL £79.15

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