‘Chicken fetish? Gordo’s got one’: Butter Bird, reviewed

The English can’t cook chicken. It’s generally as dry as buggery. That’s the term my Granny Farrel used sixty years ago, God bless her; I had to put her right after a couple of boys in the third year at school told me what they were going to do to me at the back of the bicycle sheds if I didn’t buy them chips and gravy with scraps.

Chicken was always smothered in gravy, which on most occasions started life in a packet with a use-by date a couple of years earlier.

One day, walking out of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof on a blindingly cold January morning in 1972, dreaming of bumping into David Bowie, getting chatting and finishing up having beers and becoming best friends, I came across a flatbed truck with a rotisserie on the back. Over 50 chickens were roasting on spits, and people were queuing patiently beside them. The smell was unbelievable. The sign read: Yugoslavian Chicken Shop.

Genius.

People were buying whole birds, half birds or quarters to take home. Others had the meat stripped from the bones and stuffed into a large, muffin-like bread roll, slit open and dipped into the chicken-fat juices that collected in the tray beneath the rotisserie. The meat was piled in and eaten on the way to work, on the way home, however. I chose thigh meat with one of those chicken-fat-smeared rolls. I have never forgotten it. It remains one of the finest chicken experiences of my life. I did need a shower, mind.

Other notable encounters over the years have included a whole Poulet de Bresse (very posh French chicken) cooked over an open fire at Paul Bocuse’s three-Michelin-star restaurant in Lyon, in the side room, and a roast chicken lunch at Firehouse in Manchester with the Grandson; a restaurant essentially devoted to roasting the bird and taking time out to train the serving staff into super-stars.

Proving to myself that restaurant critics rarely make reliable chefs, I once bought a Poulet de Bresse from Harrods Food Hall along with a medium-sized black truffle. Total cost: £145. I slid butter and slices of truffle under the skin, taking great care not to tear it. Chilled it for three days in the fridge to develop the flavour. I shoved it in the oven on a Sunday afternoon and put my feet up for a twenty-minute power nap. It was the sound of the fire alarm that woke me up two hours later.

Buggered was the right term.

The chef-patron at 63 Degrees, Eric Moreau, the rather excellent French restaurant in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, once explained that the restaurant’s name refers to the perfect internal temperature for chicken breast.  His chicken with morels was superb.

Of the English, Eric never let the occasion pass to tell me “Les Anglaise n’ont aucune putain d’idéede comment on mange.” Use your chatbot. He went back to France a couple of years ago, declaring ill-health. I think that fourteen years of dealing with us lot got to him in the end.

And now, there is a new restaurant in Ancoats, Manchester, called Butter Bird. I had to try it.

Over the past 20 years, this area has transformed from a post-industrial grim fest into a charming selection of streets, full of caricature millennials doing their thing, walking boyfriends and small dogs around, or out running in extremely tight pants and boxy knitwear. Sometimes with baby buggies the size of Aston Martin SUV’s.

Butter Bird turns out to be a place devoted to my love of properly roasted chickens.

It was the first bright day in weeks. The site, formerly The Counter House, has been transformed. Gone is the Scandi fashion for hard surfaces, minimal decoration and no vegetation. In its place is warmth and comfort. One entire wall is covered floor-to-ceiling in living greenery, giving it a whole new quirky yet comfortable buzz, affecting the light in a mood lifting way.

Andy, who managed the previous gaff and is a friend, remains the general manager. He welcomes with efficient, genuine charm. The team is largely the same. It was a busy Valentine’s Day service, yet he found me a seat at the bar for lunch.

The place is built around rotisserie chicken, “done proper”. The birds are tea-brined and butter-basted to lock in moisture. The rotisserie does the heavy lifting, cooking them evenly and to the point of, I suspect, Eric’s 63 degrees. The seasoning tickles everything in a giggly way. You choose your butter; in my case, tarragon and lemon, which arrives in a small pot alongside my choice of half a bird. (£18; £10 for a quarter.)

I ordered potatoes cooked in the juices collected at the base of the rotisserie tray and seasoned with chicken salt. Who wouldn’t? Small new potatoes, so soft a four-year-old could crush them with a little fork. I don’t think I have eaten a better spud. Tasty is a banned word at Confidentials, but I’m going to make an exception and use it here.

I added chicken gravy (£2) for dipping. It was ridiculous. Deep, savoury, properly reduced. It didn’t come out of a packet.

Anyway, let’s talk vegetables. I liked the House Slaw. (£5) I’m not an expert with vegetables, particularly cabbage, but this was mainly purple, in a tight, sharp-ish dressing with a North African vibe. It cut through the richness of all those buttery juices, doing a well-honed balancing act.

The dessert menu is simple. I chose a warm sticky toffee pudding sundae with salted caramel ice cream and toffee sauce (£7). Sadly it was a miss. The place has got roasting chickens bang on, mainly by not mucking about with methods, but a recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding has (arguably) been mucked about with to the point where it’s a non-thing. If the team had delivered Francis Coulson’s 70’s classic, a slab of the cake, in a soup bowl, drowning in sticky toffee sauce topped off with the thick, yellow jersey cream, you’d have a hit. It’s nice, but using the name of the classic is disappointing.

I had a pint of the house lager. I’m pretty sure it was the house, ‘Spittin’ Feathers Lager (£5.90), but it says Camden Town Easy IPA (£7) on the bill. Incidentally, on checking the bill for the review, I was charged £10 for a quarter of chicken, a mistake. I’m declaring this, because the anonymous conspiracy theorists on Reddit will be calling me a right bastard, accepting payment for writing good reviews.

I’ve known the owner, Joe Akker, for 25 years. In all that time, the tight sod has never spent a penny on advertising. So, you lot can go and f**k yourselves.*

The beauty of Butter Chicken lies in its simplicity. It is about one thing. Great Chicken. Cooked beautifully.

Let’s do a good pudding, guys. It’s just as important.

Well done, Andy, the team and Joe Akker, the owner.  It’s a Gordo go.        

* By the way, the prize of £10,000 for anyone who can prove the accusations of taking money from restaurants for high scores, or any other crap, is still in place. It has been for 22 years,  31,000 articles and 1,056 scored reviews. And it has never been claimed. Because it’s not true.

Butter Bird, 35 Blossom St, Ancoats, Manchester M4 6AJ

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