Unit 12, Market Road, Brixton, London SW9 (020 7274 0939). Meal for two, including drinks: £45
It was inevitable. From the moment the first "let's-put-on-the-show-right-here-in-the-barn" restaurant opened in the covered markets of Brixton, the clock was ticking. Something was bound to come along to sour the whole affair; to give the naysayers all the ammunition they needed. Hell, to load the gun for the naysayers and hand it to them. Something has. That something is called Wishbone. It's a café in Brixton's old Market Row serving fried chicken and cocktails. It's all those pimped-up dirty-food clichés you've been reading about in one messy, shoot-me-now package. And it's just wrong.
Some backstory. Brixton has a history both of deprivation and tensions between incoming gentrifiers and the longstanding community. From the mid-noughties onwards, cheap restaurants began opening in the covered markets. In 2009 a social enterprise property company took over Granville Arcade (now Brixton Village), much of which was empty, and began handing out short, rent-free lets. This triggered the boom in small, cheap food businesses. More people started visiting Brixton.
Many within the community, including me, thought this a Good Thing. Money was coming in. Brixton had stopped being synonymous with trouble and strife. Critics, however, saw it as being too exclusive, dragging in white twentysomethings who had no interest in the area, save its ability to feed them well. My argument: while the businesses were local and cheap and good it was to be applauded. I was accused of being part of the problem. I was called a one-man gentrification machine. Hey ho. I've been called much worse. Then Wishbone shows up and mounting a defence is much harder. This is not just a Brixton-specific problem. There are lessons here for any urban area where this sort of economic development is happening. First there are its antecedents. Yes, William Leigh, the chef – I use the term loosely – is local, but he's in partnership with Scott Collins, who was behind the dirty-food behemoth that is Meat Liquor. Wishbone took major investment, and it shows. It's all shiny polished floors and chrome-accessorised bars. It looks like a lump of Soho transported south of the river. It feels completely out of place. The ground-floor dining room has high breakfast-bar-style tables and stools. Which brings us to the second problem. If ever there was a restaurant designed by blasé children this is it. It's completely inaccessible. You couldn't even eat inside with a toddler in a buggy, let alone if you have any mobility problems. Wishbone thinks it's being smart by offering something as democratic as fancy fried chicken; instead it is, in its own way, as exclusive as the Ivy.
Finally there's the food. It's awful – a cataclysmic waste of their much-advertised free-range Cotswold Whites. It starts with the wings, which they can't be bothered to joint. Full wings like this are horrendously difficult to cook evenly. You have the thick-boned drum stick, the two-boned middle section, the pointless tip. Each requires a different cooking time, or you end up – as here – with something flabby and sweaty at one end and something overcooked at the other. Plus, they are bloody hard to eat. The Korean and buffalo wings are first battered and deep fried, then drenched in violent, vinegary sauces which make you wince and the batter soggy. Try tearing one of those apart without splattering the walls. Or yourself. Or your kids. Just chop the damn things up for us. The "chicken shop" wings, come in a hard, dark, bitter crumb that genuinely makes you wistful for the lightness and skill of KFC. The chicken sandwich is full of more hard, dry lumps of sacrificed white meat in a dense baguette. The "thighs" bring bad examples of chicken nuggets.
Of the sides the best is a sprightly citrus-dressed black-eyed pea salad. The fries taste exactly like the sort you get by very professionally opening those from a freezer bag. The deep-fried Mac'n'Cheese sounds like some esoteric sexual practice involving rubber tubing and a wet room. You know there are consenting adults who can get something out of it, but that doesn't mean you want to give it a go. Staff are friendly and brisk. And of course it's small money – £4.50 gets you four of their cumbersome, unpleasant wings. But who wants to spend even £4.50 on something that isn't nice to eat? Not me.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
