Humble Chicken, Soho: ‘high-quality avian deconstruction’ — restaurant review

Call me a nerd, but I’ve been waiting for almost as long as I can remember for decent yakitori in London. In Japan, the yakitori-ya is where you go with friends to drink beer and have all the different parts of a chicken brought to you grilled on skewers. And when I say “parts” I’m not just talking leg or breast. With yakitori, things are a bit more specialised.

Chef Angelo Sato is ambitious. At 17, he flew from Tokyo to London with £300 in his pocket and hung around outside Restaurant Gordon Ramsay until chef Clare Smyth gave him a job. He worked at New York’s Eleven Madison Park and as head chef at the critically feted Restaurant Story in Bermondsey.

Branching out on his own, he began with a couple of street food wagons and now has finally opened Humble Chicken in Soho in the auspicious premises that previously housed both Freak Scene and the original Barrafina.

Sato works the konro grill himself. It’s a long metal box filled with clean-burning binchotan charcoal over which he jiggles and fusses with each skewer. He’s very intense, picking up and examining each piece, judging the cuisson, occasionally dipping one into a cauldron of tare sauce and plying a batterie of sprays and sprinkles. The finished skewer is passed to a counter chef who finishes it with more toppings or kosho, a pickle of fermented citrus, before placing it in front of you with the appropriate reverence.

Now excuse me while I nerd out.

Chicken liver is not unfamiliar in western cuisine. I expect it to be deep and bassy, that’s the whole point, and any good cook is going to serve it decently pink. But a savagely crisped crust, built by layers of tare and a thick smear of karashi mustard, elevates it to something rich and rare.

Many westerners, particularly foolish ones, discard chicken skin. The few who don’t tend to consume it furtively, knowing it has potential. In the yakitori tradition, a whole skewer is packed with the stuff and then much of the fat is grilled out. Here it’s a revelation — light, crisp and dressed with a kosho containing a numbing pepper.

The “tail” skewer provokes terrifying visions of great fat parson’s noses on a stick, but these feature just a tiny cone of fatty indulgence from the very tip — half a dozen of them strung like pearls and crisped to popping texture.

“Inner thigh” reminds me why chicken legs are always more interesting than breast: well worked, strong-flavoured, creamy with fats. Butchering out this single muscular piece presents the unusual opportunity to focus on it.

I am, by now, going off-piste, arriving at the bits that are more difficult to get my Anglo mind around. We expect giblets in a plastic bag, not threaded on to a “mixed offal” skewer. And not just the usual suspects of chewy heart and smooth liver but some rich little bits that feel like digestive tract and . . . God knows. Do chickens even have spleens? The idea is terrifying, the texture challenging, but the flavour is beyond gorgeous.

“Achilles” yakitori? I have no idea. This level of avian physiology is doing my nut in, but wherever it originates on the bird, the “Achilles” produces yet another subtly different flavour and texture, dressed, this time, with citrus kosho and “charcoal fat” drippings.

Everything builds to a final challenge: “inner knee and cartilage”. I mean, come on. It sounds like a sports injury and features the only bit of a chicken you can guarantee every Brit has at some point carefully spat into their napkin. In fact, the meat is the best yet and the cartilage is trimmed so delicately that it adds just a bare hint of crunch, more like celery than gristle.

There are a few more substantial courses available but you should really be there for the skewers. Propped up at the bar, head down, moaning appreciatively and generally digging some high-quality avian deconstruction — shoulder to shoulder with the off-duty chefs, the itinerant poultry perverts and the returning restaurant critics.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward and email him at tim.hayward@ft.com

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