292-294 St Paul’s Road, London N1 (020 7359 5055). Meal for two, with drinks and service, £80
Step for a moment into my bedroom. Don’t worry. It’s safe. I merely want you to consider my bedside table and, in particular, the small square digital clock which sits upon it, pulsing out the time in diodes the colour of cheap jade. It’s not much, but on paper it does the job. It’s compact, and easily programmable. It is set to wake us at some ungodly hour every school morning, to the soothing tones of Today on Radio 4. Well of course it is.
If only it was tuned in properly. If only the signal was bang on. If only the dip and roll of John Humphrys’s voice could be guaranteed to come at us with the crystal clarity with which he shapes his questions. But it doesn’t. The damn thing is just ever so slightly off. It’s a plastic box of intermittent fizz and splutter which is so very almost but not quite. It drives me nuts. Because were it not for that failing I would declare my digital clock a design classic.
I feel about that lump of plastic and circuitry exactly as I do about Le Coq, a chicken rotisserie restaurant in Islington, north London. It could be brilliant. It could be the next midmarket chain waiting to happen, were it not for the fact that the tuning is slightly off. It fizzes and splutters. In many ways, it’s the downmarket companion to Beast, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. There, it was a set menu of steak and king crab, with a few other bits and pieces; here it’s a set menu of rotisserie chicken with a few other bits and pieces. There, a meal costs the gross domestic product of a small Latin American country; here it’s £22 for three courses (£17 for two).
In these days of endless choice, a no-choice menu has a lot going for it. You decide where to eat and after that it’s elbows on the table and tell me the gossip and here comes the food. The downside for the restaurant is that it leaves nowhere to hide. If you do one thing, you have to do that one thing brilliantly. Le Coq doesn’t do its one thing brilliantly, not quite. It doesn’t help that the thing is as totemic as roast chicken, a domestic dish our mothers make for us, which often sits uneasily within restaurants.
I do a great roast chicken at home. I spatchcock it so it’s flat and toadlike, then heap on fennel seeds, lots of crushed garlic, salt, olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Roast that on high for an hour, and all is domesticity and loveliness. Doubtless you have your own glorious way of roasting a chicken; feel free to tell me about it.
Likewise, I can recall with crystal clarity the best chickens I’ve eaten outside the home. One is the ludicrously expensive black leg chicken at La Petite Maison in London’s Mayfair, which you have to order when you book your table, it’s so popular. Sell a child to pay for it. Then there’s the whole roast poulet de Bresse served at L’Ami Louis in Paris, a glorious theme-park Parisian bistro which saves itself from being a total tourist trap by virtue of the cooking. There, the crisp-skinned roast chicken came with a green salad and a plate of rustling spindle-thin chips which in my memory was a foot high. Naturally it produced a bill of Beast-like proportions. Sell the other child.
But better than both of these was a chicken bought off a rotisserie stall in a street market just off the Bastille in Paris. It was hot and sticky and salty and tasted so very much of itself. It encouraged you to suck the bones clean. I recall it cost me all of €10 for the whole bird. Naturally it is that roast chicken against which I compare the offering at Le Coq. There is no questioning the impeccable quality of the animal they are using. Sutton Hoo chickens, from Suffolk, are the real thing: pampered and adored and allowed to run merrily hither and yon before they meet their maker. They may not be massaged with aromatherapy oils prior to slaughter, but bloody close.
The use of a good chicken is worthwhile. The breast and leg we are each served taste of chicken, which isn’t always the way. The problem is, it’s just not very well roasted. The kitchen seems terrified of dry meat, and so goes the other way. There’s moist and then there’s damp. This is damp chicken. When eating roast chicken you should crave the skin. You should want to rip it off with your hands, and hear it crunch between your teeth. Here, it is floppy and slippery. I was desperate to flash the bird through a blisteringly hot oven for another 10 minutes. And that’s the point. Like my digital clock it would need very little to make it a classic.
The fact is I wanted to like Le Coq. I like the buzz and clatter of the open kitchen, and much of the rest of the menu was good. There are just three starters, of which we tried a plate of thinly sliced pancetta served warm with hot toast so the ivory fat could start to melt into it. There was a good if slightly dry plate of fried gnocchi with wild mushrooms and parmesan; an extra £2.50 bought a few curls of black truffle.
The bird itself comes with kale dressed with tahini and smoked garlic and a jug of (slightly thin) roasting juices. They get top marks for acing roast potatoes – these were crisp and bronzed and soft within. They lose some of those marks for making them £3.75 extra. To serve chicken without roasties just feels perverse. Better I think to raise the overall price a little. And then dessert – an OK treacle tart with a soggy bottom, and a pleasing fig ice cream.
Let’s be clear: Le Coq is not promising gastronomic fireworks. It’s an upmarket Nando’s. I mean that in a good way. It’s dinner out for those who can’t be fagged to cook and can afford this as an alternative. Yes, I know. Remember, this is Islington. But even there, £80 or so for two is proper money, and for that you want a bird that’s totally tuned in.
Jay’s news bites
■ The mention of spatchcocked chicken allows me in turn to mention the Lisbon Grill on Brixton Hill. There are many Portuguese piri-piri houses in this part of south London, each with their fans – this is my favourite. Though I get regular takeaways there’s a lovely dining room out back for fiery chargrilled (spatchcocked) chicken, ribs, chorizo and seafood. It’s a hands-on job. And if you manage to spend more than £15 a head, you’re doing well (lisbon-grill.co.uk).
■ The Pain Quotidien group is doing something rather less everyday this Christmas: they’re running an entirely vegan menu alongside their usual offering. For £28 a head you get winter spiced cauliflower soup, followed by polenta and quinoa cake, with vegan Christmas pudding to finish (lepainquotidien.co.uk).
■ A sign that Birmingham’s famed balti triangle in the Sparkbrook district of the city is in decline: Saleem’s, one of the first to open on Ladypool Road, is to close after 45 years. Co-owner Saleem Waheed described the closure as a “bereavement”.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
