GRACE AND FLAVOUR

Grace Dent heads to Fire and Feathers, Fulham Road’s answer to Nando’s

Two trips to South West London in seven days last week. Two chances for me to jump confidently on to the Circle Line, be bamboozled by the Edgware Road interchange and foxed by the Metropolitan Line, the cad who cosies up as your friend then whisks you fast to Amersham.

I have been here 18 years and I am still continuously lost. Like most Londoners, I feel my way via landmarks of ‘Bars I’ve been quite refreshed in’ and ‘Restaurants I’ve loved or loathed’. I left my date for the 50th birthday party of Daphne’s in Chelsea — elegant new redesign, ‘art’ on display by Harry Styles — standing outside Chanel on Brompton Cross, tutting, for 25 whole minutes while I found my way there. Happily, Fire and Feathers, a new piri piri joint on the Fulham Road, stays open until midnight, so I was still in with a shout of eating dinner by the time I found it.

If I had to select an emoji to denote my expression when editors suggest I review ‘posh’ chicken joints, it would be the smiley with flat-line mouth that signifies: ‘Are you actually kidding? I am processing this information quietly; don’t rule out violence.’

There’s a storyline in the excellent HBO series Looking, set in San Francisco, where one of the key characters longs to follow his dream and open a piri piri joint. I say Looking is excellent, but the ‘I dream of bringing piri piri chicken to the people’ speeches are a good time to check Twitter. There is limited plot jeopardy in the ambition to rub chickens with a blend of paprika and cayenne pepper. Nevertheless, I went to Fire and Feathers hoping that it would awaken a fresh excitement in me for piri piri, and offer an alternative to my usual, Westfield Stratford Nando’s, which is little more than an organised brawl with olives. One strong bonus Fire and Feathers offers is decent, potent cocktails. We drank a glorious Praia da Luz full of Zubrowka bison grass vodka, cucumber, kiwi and apple juice. The raspberry vodka martini was large, cold, delicately sweet and potentially drinkable by the bucket. Fire and Feathers owner Harry Deighton has created a pretty, pared-down mockPortuguese piri piri café — tables for two at the front, large booths for groups further back — representing his