There are certain people in this world who could pop a turd in their top pocket and in a week’s time half the population would be walking around with soiled shirts.  These people are what we call “cool”.  They are the moustache bearing, man-bun sporting, pointy finger nail wearing, large spec, scarf toting trend setters, and I’m pissed off with them.  Pissed off because they keep bloody taking shit that us “non-coolies” like and making it cool – thus inevitably ruining it.  And when the next big thing comes along they toss it from their crib like a petulant child in “vintage” doc martins, returning it to us plebs cracked, broken and twice as expensive.

In this particular case the subject of my pissed-off-ish-ness is chicken, primarily of the fried variety.  When I moved to East London (the scuzzy bit) three and half years ago chicken shops out-numbered household pets 3 to 1.  There were at least 6 on my walk home from the station and every Friday or Saturday (let’s be honest any night of the week) my inebriated soul would find sanctuary in one of these greasy havens.  And yes, the grammatical and spelling errors in the signage would piss me off, and yes, the bright lights and mirror walls were a nasty reminder that I had vomited down myself only moments ago, but these were places where my kind would come to eat, attempt to sober up and maybe even pass out for a little while before staggering off to bed.

All it took to order was a mumbled “number 7 please, and, and mate an extra piece…er…yeh I’ll have an orange tango please mate”, and 5 to 10 minutes later you’d be handed a polystyrene box full of fried chickeney goodness.  Not just finger-licking good, but face-licking and hand-licking and shirt-licking and wherever else errant bits of fatty skin would land – that good!

Alas all of this has changed now.  The world has gone crazy for Michelin starred fast food.  Boutique hot dog stands and burger joints now offer toppings I can’t even pronounce, and will cost you half a month’s pay check for a meal that essentially equates to a McDonald’s with a bit of lipstick on.

So naturally when my friend suggested we go to Chicken Liquor for his birthday I was filled with curiosity.  Chicken Liquor, sister company of the better known Meat Liquor, is a quintessentially trendy concept restaurant that specialises in meat and booze (yum!).  How could you possibly mess that up?

Despite its simplicity I was impressed with Chicken Liquor’s menu; from classic greasy burgers to jerk chicken wings and Korean style boneless bites, as well as an equally lip-smacking selection of fatty but fabulous sides, they seem to have covered all bases.  To whet the whistle an array of delicious cocktails and several beers were on offer, or you could put together your own sours concoction.

Now I want to make it clear that the actual food and drink were utterly delicious.  I ordered the Korean style chicken bites with cheesy chips and a tankard of Grog (a mango infused rum cocktail), all delectably greasy (not the cocktail) and flavoursome, and all my table-mates were equally satisfied with their variations of fried poultry.

The service however was severely lacking.  Once seated we realised we didn’t know how to order.  Now, that’s not just because we had had a significant amount of rosé by this point, but because the cross over from chicken shop counter to chicken shop chic has us wondering if table service was included in the cool.  As it happens I would have much preferred to pay at the till as our very “cool” waiters were also very slow, and we were constantly left waiting.  It took over 45 minutes for our “fast food” to arrive, but we were kindly compensated for the inconvenience with a free round of drinks (which would have cost us £56), and given that we were in high spirits this did go some way to appease our hangryness.

Overall I had a great night, the food was great, the drinks were delicious and it wasn’t too expensive.  But really the whole concept of making this fast-food upmarket by making it “cool” was little more than a thinly veiled disguise for cheap and tacky with table service.  The food arrived in rubbish novelty card board containers and my friend had to eat her burger off nothing but a colourful piece of greaseproof paper.  And once all the finger-licking and lip-smacking had taken place a communal roll of stained kitchen paper was the only relief for sticky hands and faces on offer – besides one rather grotty toilet serving the entire restaurant.

In conclusion if it’s greasy, fried fast-food I’m after I’ll stick to the places that have been doing it for years.  There you get what you pay for and that’s the point – I don’t parade around pretending to be Scarlet Johansson and I expect the same honesty from my food.  Cool is a cliché, if I’m going to spend money on food then I’d rather keep it classy.