Fried Chicken at Bird, Shoreditch

Bird is an east London diner specialised in fried chicken. Not the tasteless and greasy type you might get from a takeaway after a late night out. We are talking about 100% free range chicken from British farms, delivered fresh daily and prepared high quality ingredients. This chicken is sourced responsibly and cooked with recipes developed by Bird’s founders after researching on the best fried chickens in US and Asia.

‘Free Range & Fried’ describes our product and how it’s prepared, but it also describes our attitude to what we do – naughty but nice.

I rarely eat fried food in general, but every now and then it’s hard to resist to a perfectly-cooked, crispy and delicious fried chicken! So when I received an invite to review Bird in Shoreditch I immediately took the chance to try their dishes.

I went there for lunch on Saturday with my brother Paolo; the restaurant wasn’t busy at all, but I think it’s the kind of restaurant that gets very busy on Friday and Saturday evenings and late nights. The location is on Kingsland Road at the crossover between Shoreditch and Dalston, a part of London that gets very busy in the evenings.

The decor reminds me on an American diner with the neon lights, red chairs, doughnuts trays and filter coffee machine, but there’s a touch of east-London cool with the industrial look and bare brick walls.

I like the branding a lot, especially the little bird logo on the blue tables. Subtle and smart branding!

I started with a frozen Passion Fruit Margarita which was delicious!

The menu is simple: you can choose from fried chicken platters (with different glazes and sauces) or burgers and sandwiches. If you order a platter, you have a choice between “white”, “dark” or “mixed” chicken pieces with the white being breast and the dark being drumsticks and thighs. We ordered 4 mixed pieces with sweet plum and buttermilk ranch sauces on the side, and we got two drumsticks, one thigh and one breast.The smaller pieces were perfect, especially with a drizzle of sweet plum sauce.

The breast piece had perhaps too much meat so the ratio of meat / fried crust wasn’t perfectly balanced.

The signature dish at Bird is Chicken and Waffle: two pieces of fried chicken on a fresh cheddar & onion waffle, with Canadian maple syrup.

This dish was really good, with soft waffles and tasty meat with a crunchy fried crust. It’s perfect as a weekend brunch dish!

To add a bit of greens to our meal we ordered two salads: house slaw with cider vinegar dressing and little green salad with buttermilk ranch dressing. Both sides were disappointing unfortunately, neither of them having much flavours. I was tempted the order the jalapeno corn pudding, so maybe I will choose that next time.

Since it was a weekend and by now I had already given up all hopes of a January detox, I ordered the Ice Cream Doughnut Sandwich for dessert. At Bird they bake doughnuts everyday in two flavours, on Saturday the choice was between Cinnamon Glaze and Dark Chocolate. The sandwich is a doughnut filled with one scoop of vanilla, fresh whipped cream, chocolate and caramel sauces.

I love doughnuts and this one was very good, but I would have definitely enjoyed it more on its own.

The sandwich was overly rich and sweet even for a sugar-lover like me. The dough was too thick to cut through it with a spoon, but at the same time the sandwich was too big to eat with hands. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it.

My brother didn’t want to share it, feeling full (and guilty) after all the fried chicken, so I attempted to break pieces of the doughnut with my hands, leaving the ice-cream and cream aside.

Despite a few hiccups, I overall enjoyed my lunch at Bird. I went there for the fried chicken and that didn’t disappoint. As they say, it was “naughty but nice”!

Disclaimer: I was a guest at Bird. All opinions are my own.