Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
Success does not always travel on straight tracks. The late restaurant critic Richard Vines, who died on Monday, lived as a reminder of this. It took a quarter of a century before he ended up professionally appraising the iciness of martinis; his left turns beforehand included time as a railway announcer and 13 years padding around Beijing and Hong Kong. He took the route as it came.
Restaurateurs Kieran Monteiro and Sam Mousawi may recognise the style. He seems too nice for it to be true, but Mousawi spent more than a decade in property before he turned to bars and bistros. Monteiro’s first chain, Boma, closed when he went into beer, his head turned by promises of a CEO role. But last year, both found their plans had unravelled. They decided to tie up their loose ends together, and now co-own Chuck’s.
Their circuitous route to get here may explain the straightforward concept. “We roast meat, and we look after people,” says the website, and they do. Chuck’s is cheerfully uncomplicated, and when Monteiro calls Mousawi “brother Sam”, there is added an impression of clinical communist efficiency, though broomstick moustaches have been kept to a minimum.
The pair work a rotisserie oven called Esmeralda, in which chicken, pork belly and potatoes cook. They sell whole or half chickens (£22/£12), but also shred both meats into boxes with salad and a sauce (£12), or fold it into a ciabatta sandwich (£10). It sounds like a takeaway and can be used that way. But, almost as if they couldn’t help it, into their shed of a site Monteiro and Mousawi have snuck in a fully-fledged restaurant.
It is neither attractive nor unattractive, a plain room of midnight blue with a blackboard menu. It is small, with only a handful of communal benches inside and out, and the menu doesn’t venture far. But it has something; it feels like somewhere to linger. On the speakers are Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane; there is table service; staff pour the wine for you. A snack bowl of smoked almonds arrives while the food cooks. On the counter sits a tempting magnum of negroni, pre-mixed the way Monteiro likes, using sweet Antica vermouth, which he says reminds him of foggy afternoons in Bar Termini. With a heavy hand he decants this into Picardie tumblers at £7 a go. Drinking is embraced here: wine comes from £4.80 a glass, but the shelves are stocked with bottles not listed on the menu, and corkage is £15. An afternoon of grüner veltliner awaits.
To cook the chicken takes an hour, until the skin is the colour of fallen leaves
“World-famous rotisserie” the menu reads. Steady on, the place has only just opened. At least they’re ambitious. Chicken is marinated for 24 hours on the Norfolk farm that supplies the place in a propriety blend of Greek yoghurt and lime juice, and handfuls of salt and pepper. To cook it takes an hour, until the skin is the colour of fallen leaves. This is chicken at its softest and most soothing. Nothing is superfluous, it could go with everything, the little black dress of dishes. Pork belly is perhaps more obviously arresting: lemon, lime, fennel seeds and garlic have been kneaded into the meat, and the sandwich it makes is spectacular, especially with a rope of hot sauce slung across it. Everything arrives on blue-rimmed enamel plates: we devoured what they held, eyeing each other resentfully about sharing.
Broccoli did not inspire the same acrimony. But never before has slaw inspired a hum of satisfaction as it did here, red and white cabbage tossed with a pungent apple cider vinaigrette. Mayonnaise is kept out of the picture, mercifully. I hate the stuff. It is a face cream masquerading as a condiment, and not all that convincingly either. Similarly good was a gem salad enlivened with hibiscus, while the potatoes — tasted every 10 minutes, allegedly for quality control — arrived with crackled skins, cooked in the fat of the chicken and pork and with all the spices from both. They could be gobbled like Maltesers.
Chuck’s is not offering a revolution; it is a rotisserie restaurant that almost everyone can afford. Still, it is one executed uncommonly well. Like Vines, Monteiro and Mousawi have taken things just as they’ve come. Success is surely just around the corner.
Chuck’s 9 Market Row, SW9. Meal for two about £50, chucksrotisserie.com
