With my gourmet junk-food addiction showing no signs of letting up you can imagine my excitement when the guys behind MEATliquor opened their latest venture into fast food-Wishbone. Located in Brixton’s hipster foodie hangout Market Row this little fried chicken restaurant is paving the way for new-age fried fodder. Forget any Nando’s or even KFC preconceptions you may have, Wishbone is reinventing the chicken stereotype making it not only tasty but cool – with a little help behind the bar from cocktail experts Soul Shakers.
The place itself is small, and when we arrive around 4pm on Saturday it’s surprisingly quiet but soon fills up with a young, hipster clientele. Menus are presented on sheets of A4 paper and the staff are extremely attentive. To order cocktails we were told to choose, one; spirit, two; egg or no egg, three; rocks or straight-up then a sour mix would be added to each. We had a variety between us and found it almost impossible to decide upon our favourite-they were that good. Next came the food, there’s small menu consisting of a variety of wings, thighs, quarter/halves of chicken and a range of conventional sides so we typically order a bit of everything. Salt n’ Pepper thighs arrive off the bone and portioned into nuggets (imagine a much better version of popcorn chicken) with a super crisp batter and a soft succulent inside – an accompanying asian mayo added a pleasant sharpness. Buffalo wings coated in a tangy marinade sprinkled with pickled celery were the highlight for me, a rich blue cheese dip gave them an extra dimension of bold flavour. The Chicken Shop wings were a little heavy on the batter for my liking but nonetheless if you’re a traditional southern fried fan I would recommend these. ‘Hot Mess’ was the champion of the sides, skinny fries coated in a buffalo sauce with pickles, hot jalapeños and flecks of blue cheese – sensational. Highly indulgent and bordering on sickly, these are definitely for sharing but the mixture of the sour sauce, with the spicy peppers and the salty cheese was superbly satisfying. Coleslaw and regular fries provided no surprises but the black eye pea salad gave a much-needed refreshing hit. It has to be said that the portions were extremely generous, wings especially (where they find chickens with wings that big I’ll never know) but we weren’t complaining with mains all priced around the £5 mark.
Having read several mixed reviews, I did have my reservations about Wishbone. I also wondered whether it was merely a food-fad gimmick and simply an opportunity to exploit the current bad-food-done-good trend dominating London. However I was pleasantly surprised to find a buzzy atmosphere, great cocktails, and even better chicken so hats off to MEATliquor’s main man Scott Collins – looks like he’s done it again.
fashionforfood 
Sounds Yummy x