THE HOLY BIRDS, SPITALFIELDS

I feel like a lot of my eating out in London recently has revolved around specific types of meat. A few weeks ago I was at The Holy Birds, who specialise in poultry and game birds, and last week I went to SMITHS of Smithfield, in Cannon Street for a night of steak options. Both of which were actually pretty good, despite my initial doubts about eating out in The City.

The Holy Birds is a super retro restaurant in between Liverpool Street Station and Brick Lane, just south of Spitalfields market. We headed there from TT Liquor (blog on that to follow) and settled down with some delicious cocktails - a rum punch for him and an excellent whisky sour for me. The cocktail list at The Holy Birds is long, all encompassing and really good value - £9.50 for the very punchy punch, and the same for my whisky fizz.

As I mentioned the food revolves around birds. For starters we had a really well made goose and apricot terrine, that was rich and fruity and the perfect sized portion. Our other starter was equally as rich - a sort of eggs en cocotte, with a hen egg in melted blue cheese and cream. Not exactly healthy but seriously yummy, and also the kind of dish I would just pop in for on its own. The menu changes regularly and since we visited they've added smoked BBQ wings, paprika duck sausage roll with date chutney, and a duck scotch egg to the starter options. 

Keeping with the theme, mains are more birds, and the star of the show is the rotisserie chicken. I'm a big fan anyway, but this was really tasty and juicy. The chips and gravy were the perfect accompaniment. Sadly I wasn't so keen on the slightly over cooked pigeon dish, but it's not on the menu anymore anyway, so the less said about the better!

The Holy Birds is a decent, good value chicken and more restaurant in The City - worth a visit for the food, worth going back for the cocktails.