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It is always strange when confronted with two chicken shops consecutive to each other. Placed between the 24 hour off license I visit daily and the bus stop which I generally use to go towards the City, these two seemed like the obvious shops to pit against each other in order to find my premier local. The PFC near Stepney Green park on Stepney Way is not worth considering.
Sancho's
Whilst performing a sortie on each, I was beckoned into Sancho's, by a man who was almost certainly not Sancho himself, and, I think it's safe to say, not employed by anyway by the name of Sancho. I ordered a 1 piece and chips, priced at, if I remember correctly, £1.80. Reasonable portion of chips, the standard for any East London chicken shop really, though I nearly ruined mine with chili sauce, which always is onlya slightly different shade to ketchup. I got a rib with a reasonable amount of meat on the bone. The batter was good and the meat was tender and came off the bone easily, though it was slightly pink - always a bad sign for the stomach. Fanta was available as a beverage.
All in all a standard meal. I would have considered this again had it not been for the quality of Chill Grill and the slight rawness of the meat messing with my stomach.
Rating (/10)
Aesthetics: 8.25
Chips: 9
Size: 8
Fat: 8
Amount/Quality of meat: 4.5
Stomach Damage post-meal: 10
Map
Chill Grill
After my stomach recovered from Sancho's chicken, I tried Chill Grill. This time I ordered a 2 piece and chips meal, which came to £2.50. The size and the quality of meat here was exceptional: again average chips, but I was given 2 very large chicken breasts which were cooked to perfection. The meat was completely white, and a large amount of the fat had evidently been removed pre-cooking, though not so much as the breast was unable to stick together in the batter. The batter itself was also perfect, and I was able to remove it in conjunction with a similar sized chunk of meat. Probably due to the exceptional meat preparation, my stomach also suffered no adverse affect post-meal.
The only negative point was that halfway through my meal, what had previously been the half-serenity of the Chill Grill was shattered by some particularly rawkus kids. I have no beef with this, it is to be expected, and they were having a great time doing whatever the hell they were doing, but I was unable to 'chill' as it might be expected to do so in the Chill Grill.
Here are some pictures I took of the food:
Chill Grill Rating (/10)
Aesthetics: 9
Chips: 9
Size: 10
Fat: 9
Amount/Quality of meat: 10
Stomach Damage post-meal: 0
Map
I found myself in a rush earlier and I needed to get the tube at Stepney Green so I was in a bit of a Chicken no mans land. Mile End Road/into Whitechapel Road is a very difficult place for chicken, purely because of the abundance of choice. It is one of the most over subscribed chicken hotspots in London, and unfortunately it is quantity over quality. I cannot begin to understand how this amount of chicken shops in about a mile of straight road is economically viable: somehow the majority of these shops manage to stay afloat and it is possible to find at least one customer in each during opening hours. After visiting a TGI Fridays-style restaurant under the Mile End bridge called Rock It and enjoying great Mexican/American food for £5, it shocked me to find that, in contrast to the aforementioned chicken shops, it suffers from minimal custom. I am at a loss to explain this. Especially whilst Halal Bite exists.
Halal Bite offers average priced meals. I ordered 1 piece, chips and a drink for £1.95. The first hindrance was that the salt had expired. After getting some new salt sachets, aesthetically the box was reasonable. The chips were average, and the piece looked larger than usual from one-piece meals. However, once I got to the chicken, I found it to be a ribcage with little meat. The meat that I managed to get off the bone frequently had bones and there was a lot of fat. The batter was ok, but without meat this seemed pointless. The only positive was the chips and that Fanta was available as a beverage as opposed to the various dubious brands usually on offer.
Rating (/10):
Aesthetics: 7
Chips: 7
Size: 6
Fat: 4
Amount/Quality of meat: 3
Stomach Damage post-meal: 7
Map
This blog is intended to be a list, as much for myself as for anyone else, of chicken shops in East London. I am a regular patron of chicken shops in the Whitechapel/Bow/Mile End/Stepney area but frequently have the problem of not being able to remember which of the many chicken shops to avoid/which to travel to, as I find that the chicken in East London can be some of the best food in existence, but can also be the most disgusting, food poisoning merchant. It is with this in mind that I intend to document as many chicken shops as possible.
