Another epic from PXandTarts. I was hopeful for Feather, but it seems there’s a way to go yet. The quest for properly good fried chicken continues. A noble quest, and someone’s got to do it. Support our hard, hard work by becoming a paying Saucer. Thanks! Meg X
Besides Chicken Run, Bristol has struggled on the poultry front. Chicken Shed lasted only slightly longer than it takes a genetically selected, blubbery broiler to reach eating size, before making the canny pivot to Root. Chronic crossed the bridge from Cardiff only to beat a hasty retreat. And the less said about the brief tenure of a restaurant that cared more about puerile anatomical gags and avoiding paying its staff than knocking up half-decent fried chicken the better. Richard E Grant’s self-sabotaging Traitors stint was nearly as long. Miss Millie’s has, at least, stood the test of time.
The new chick on the block has opened literally four doors down from the last arrival (and departure), but you know what they say: birds of a Feather Coq together. An eclectic menu featured everything from fried pickles with schmaltz to a prawn toast doughnut, with an unsurprising chicken bent. A couple of bowls of salty, fried things were swiftly dispatched to accompany a sumptuous espresso martini stout (£5.50) from Bristol beer stalwarts Wiper and True. Without wanting to tl;dr myself, it probably doesn’t bode well that this was the highlight of my meal. That said, many of the forthcoming quibbles need only a tweak.
Shards of bubbled, undulating chicken skin (£4.50) were addictively crisp and dissolved on the tongue like chickeny quavers after a few bites, but were too salty to enjoy more than a couple. A tropical sour (£10.50) across the table — pina colada vibes; better than the sesame old fashioned (£10.50) — soon disappeared. Puffed cheese ravioli (£4.75) were powdery and dry, as if someone in the Scampi Fries factory decided to give cheddar flavour a go. Why would you? Bacon is bad enough.
Duck croquettes with wakame salad (£8) had seen the orange cajun chutney from the original menu replaced with ponzu mayo. Probably a wise decision; that could have been a car crash of incoherence. These landed with more of a plop; the mayo lacking in ponzu power, the croquettes themselves mostly bechamel rather than the sticky, meaty duck jam that “pulled duck” conjured up. But they were well-fried, their creamy fillings steaming hot and oozing, the bronzed shells shattering to the bite.
That prawn toast doughnut (£8) could have been a Krispy Kreme wet dream or the stuff of diabetic nightmares. A pervasive dampness suggested the former but the realisation was more the latter, the overall effect sweet and soggy, with nowhere near enough of the bouncy little sea blighters. If you’re going to elevate or put a twist on a cheap, cheerful classic (and I’m all for such innovation) it needs to be better than the starting point.
With the popcorn chicken (£6.50) initial appearances were promising. Small fragments, knobbly and irregularly shaped, came slightly glistening from the oil but not greasy. Unfortunately they were spongy, with a homogeneous texture and vaguely sweet crumb that reminded me of the reformed dinosaur bone-shaped “nuggets” I loved at secondary school before Jamie Oliver got his hands on things.
Feather’s fried chicken burger £18) is supposed to come buffalo-style. My table-mate Matt didn’t want buffalo chicken because he is a spice wimp, and I didn’t want it because I’ve sworn off Frankenchicken since the Humane League videos. Just what is buffalo chicken anyway? Some sort of deranged bovine Pegasus? It boggles the mind. The only chicken hybrid I want is a turducken. I’m being facetious, of course. I know buffalo chicken is named for the place it originated. Like Hawaiian pizza.
So we stole the schmaltz aioli from the frickles to replace the buffalo sauce, with the blessing of the kitchen, who were probably relieved to have something to do; the only two other tables we saw all evening had by this point wandered off. This turned out to be a chicken-on-chicken masterstroke; the kind of secret menu item that could build up a cult following, if only they can sort the bloody coating, which started off rough and craggy and crackled nicely but sloughed itself from the meat all too easily.
The flesh itself was beautifully cooked. Still slightly pink, but not enough to alert the local parasitologist; a relief with the cardio team still on standby after the chicken scratchings. Fortunately no adverse effects were forthcoming, so if you don’t hear from me on these pages again it will simply be a result of the fowl pun at the start.
Chicken and bacon waffles (£17.50) soon turned gloopy and one note, that note being flat-track sweetness. A chilli maple butter certainly exhibited the expected sugariness of the syrup, if lacking woody umami moreishness, but evidence of the zip and zing of the spice had disappeared as quickly as mentions of the president from the Epstein Files.
Contemplating dessert, Matt claimed The Devonshire’s much-lauded sticky toffee pudding was the best he had ever eaten. Because of its lightness. A ludicrous take. STP should be a dense, dark, deeply sticky (the clue’s in the name FFS) wodge of date sponge utterly saturated in a smoky, caramelised sauce. Cream or ice cream is essential as a cooling, lightening balm, custard a borderline unacceptable substitute allowed only in exceptional circumstances: primary school, your grandparents’ house, hospital, aboard an aeroplane, or when your fridge-freezer has broken down and there’s a dusty packet of Bird’s lurking at the back of the cupboard.
Feather’s pudding was listed on the menu simply as “sticky toffee” (£8) but, if any of the three descriptors merited removal, it really should have been the sticky. A glossy lake of miso butterscotch pooled around the sponge, but the headliner, fluffy and, yes, light, was insufficiently toffee-logged. The touch of a feather, when I wanted a sledgehammer of sugar and fat. Matt of course loved it. A big old splodge of hazelnut cream was a sound idea, but this was more like a spoonful into which some nuts had accidentally fallen than silky dairy suffused with their flavour, though not considerably worse for it.
Pomelo and lime curd brulee (£11, serves 2) came inside a frozen half of the world’s largest citrus, and this was a fault of ideation not execution. What would normally be velvety custard was instead a thick, veering on stodgy, curd. A pleasing citric tang and a properly scorched crust didn’t make up for the fact eating it felt like trowelling through thick snow. Like school dinners, I loved my grandmother’s cooking, even if it was objectively quite terrible and all very soft for a grandad without teeth. Pineapple cheesecake was the exception; unequivocally delicious. Bar the time she accidentally put it in the freezer instead of the fridge. You can see where I am going with this…
Feather timed its opening to dovetail with the arrival of this year’s freshers, which probably seemed like sound commercial judgement given the fried chicken consumption of that demographic. As it is, I can’t see them being lured away from the newly rebranded Miss Millie’s. A couple more weeks tweaking and refining could have led to an end result with better prospects of longevity. There’s some way to go before it takes flight but, hey, at least it’s not Coq.
All words and photos by PXandTarts
Feather, Whiteladies Road, BS8 2PB
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