Remember Chicken Run? A plucky group of hens escape from a farmer’s clutches and move to a paradisical island (in the second film). Well… this is the opposite of that.
Sal Whitehead and Hakan Guney now have two venues across Hackney, and it’s almost as though they have a personal vendetta against the birds. Whitehead moved from chippie Sutton and Sons to Peck Peck in 2019, which, with Guney, moved to a larger site on Mare Street in 2021.
Now, just round the corner to Hackney Church Brew Co, is the new arm of their roasting empire. The old church still has its original beams, benches and bubbling tanks on the way to the toilets, plus a novelty sink in the shape of a rusted metal bath. Expected, really, for an East London watering hole.
What I didn’t expect was the quality and range of food on offer. Boasting a more complex menu than Peck Peck in a more relaxed setting, Hendl is doing roast chicken right — and it blew me away.
The name is an Austro-Bavarian term for chicken, which traditionally comes with delicacies such as roasted Bratwurst. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Hendl’s offerings are meat-heavy. There is a miso brown-butter fire-roasted butternut squash, which can be made vegan, and three salads — we sampled the Caesar. But for us, this was meatin’ time, and we came carnivorous.
I started with a Maldon rock oyster in a jalapeño dressing — a salty palate cleanser. The award-winning peckalo wings are loaded with house ranch, sesame and micro coriander speckling; melt-off-the-bone, messy and marvellous. The cauli cheese might look more like a flat plate of raclette, but Gruyère and crispy breadcrumbs elevate the dish. The rotisserie potatoes are cooked in juicy, fatty goodness from the chicken.
This is the “art of rotisserie”. Brined for four hours and perpetually spinning, the birds are roasted on a low heat and basted as they turn until truly juicy, then doused in imaginative glazes. The meat is then served filleted on ovoid silver plates. The classic rotisserie jus is reduced for 10 hours, but it’s the other sauces that really make the dishes sing.
’Nduja butter combines Irish butter with Calabrian ’nduja. Ruby murray is an ochre play on butter chicken and served as a half bird instead of in pre-cut chunks. Aji verde is a lime, coriander and pesto sauce with an avocado hue and a tangy salsa verde lilt. We opted for the latter two, both intriguing enough to totally reinvent the dish and justify the £17 price tag. The succulence and moistness of the flesh are something of a work of art.
As my dining companion and I polished off our meal, surrounded by bones and discarded silver platelets, we felt like two very full giants. Having gorged ourselves on our mains, we were too full to sample Mrs Sutton’s famous sticky toffee pudding, and with the watering hole’s pub quiz beginning imminently, it was time to wrap things up.
Cradling our swollen bellies, we tottered out between the stack of silver kegs, a perfect way to continue the evening. When it comes to evenings at the pub, we’ve all endured enough wet burgers and bland beer — and if you, too, believe it’s time for a change, put your trust in Hendl. Try a creamy blast-off pale ale. Have an oyster and share a roasted rooster between you and your bros. You will certainly have something to cluck about.
Hendl. Hackney Church Brew Co. 16 & 17 Bohemia Place, E8 1DU.
