Chicken is having a moment.
I’m not sure the birds themselves would agree, but there are reportedly huge queues outside the Manchester chicken parm shops in Burnage, Korean fried chicken is everywhere (even The Guardian has a recipe for it), and a ‘cheeky Nandos’ has become a cultural meme. So is there room for a new chicken-based resto franchise? The owner of Butter Bird in Manchester’s Ancoats clearly thinks so.
The concept is a half or whole rotisserie chicken served with flavoured butters, some sides and a glass or two of Crémant, all served in a pleasant, post-industrial chic space. The schtick is the huge rotisserie and the delicious, flavoured butters.
Rotisserie chicken always seems the juiciest to me, and this chicken was extremely succulent with crisp skin. You might think that pouring a flavoured butter on a juicy chicken is gilding the lily, but it’s a bit like lemon and salt – they bring out the best in each other. As for the flavours, there is a choice of three: preserved lemon and thyme, tarragon and dijon mustard, and Moroccan spice chermoula. I recommend the lemon and thyme.
If any of the party are veggie, like my Editor, they do a whole roasted skinless aubergine, which she had. It is smoky and spicy and comes on a bed of feta and chick peas. You are at liberty to pour butter over that too. 
The sides are largely veggie-friendly. There’s a braised basmati rice with lentils and caramelised onions which is a take on that wonderful Levantine dish mujaddara, a mac ‘n’ smoked cheese, and salt-baked sweet potato with sour cream. We had the ‘almost Caesar salad’ (no anchovies but loads of croutons and an excellent dressing), a fattoush salad, charred hispi cabbage, and ratatouille. The cabbage was fine but I thought the ratatouille rather too tomatoey.
On the advice of the manager, the charming Dean, we drank Crémant, the French fizz that can’t call itself champagne but is made in the same way, with the grape depending on the region. They have four white and a rosé here. I had the dry lemony Langlois and she had the slightly honeyed Moillard-Grivot, and they do go well with chicken. Other wines, beers and cocktails are available.
Dean also advised my Editor to have the Crémant and sorbet pudding, which was exactly that – Crémant poured over lemon sorbet, and I have no idea why I didn’t think of it before. I insisted on the dark chocolate truffle pot with a scattering of honeycomb on top. The ganache was rather thick, perhaps too thick even for my taste, but very chocolatey.
Also on Dean’s advice, at the start of the meal we began with a bowl of ‘while you wait’ chicken fat popcorn, followed by a toasted flatbread with terrific whipped feta big enough to feed four. We didn’t finish the popcorn, and I was sorry to see it go, but by the end we were so stuffed we could barely move.
Butter Bird is in the square on Manchester’s Blossom Street, on the side adjacent to the iconic Rudy’s. Rudy’s was, as any fule kno, bought out by a conglomerate and is everywhere now, including Soho in London. That is the joy of the concept resto. If you’re lucky, a hedge fund will come and snap you up. Concept restos tend to the average over time, so get down to Butter Bird while it’s still exceptional. They don’t do a lot here, but what they do, they do very well.
Main image courtesy of Butter Bird
££
Butter Bird
