Fried chicken The bird is the word but unfortunately the word is ‘Nothing special’

JOHNNY Cash is rattling out Hey, Porter on the sound system, staff are standing talking at the bar, I’m sitting thinking tickety-tock, tickety-tock. When I started doing these reviews, I’d say service was slow in about one out of three restaurants. Nowadays, it happens so rarely that I realise tonight I didn’t take a note of the time when

I wandered in off Glasgow’s Nelson Mandela Place. Damn.

The first thing I see when I enter is a lurid pink bar, like a cowboy Wendy house. It blocks the entrance and is inhabited by two languid young studenty dudes who interrupt their chat and kind of blink blankety-blank at me before one says: “Food?” Yeah, man. Food.

There’s a more traditional welcome on the other side of the bar from a bright and breezy waitress. I’m a vegetarian, she’ll later confide, when I ask what the wings are like. I’ll wish I had been a vegetarian, too, I think, when I taste them.

What can I say? London chicken chain moves to Glasgow. In a cute peace offering to the restless natives it takes the local fizzy orange concoction and coats chicken wings in it. It would have been rude not to try. It’s pretty much as expected, however: sickly, sweetly, medicinally unpleasant.

A similar sensation of disappointment awaits when I try the steel pan of cornbread that arrived a moment or two ago. Sweet, savoury but also unfortunately totally leaden in texture, like a loaf that hasn’t risen.

I can’t help wondering if that initial tardiness in getting the food to the table may have been caused by Glasgow chefs in the kitchen below staring at this very strange dish and saying: “Nah, it’s not going to rise any more”.

The side order onion rings at least are made with 100 per cent real onion but are coated with a hard batter that’s not only a tad too oily but seems to have some trouble staying attached to the onions themselves. Back to the drawing board on these too, I’d say.

This is not boding well for the actual chicken itself, which is right now relaxing at the table waiting patiently to be tried. It’s freshly, sizzling hot from the frier – yes, a good thing – so let’s give it a minute or two longer.

Now sit-down fried chicken probably is the UK’s last great casual food frontier. The people who dream up these chain restaurant assaults on the public pick the music, plan the decor, write the cheesy blurbs and then – according to me – get round to thinking about the food itself.

Fried chicken is a great untapped wasteland dripping with potential riches located somewhere between the tackily downmarket but surprisingly durable KFC-land and the strangely hip and still happening Nando’s.