Yardbird
Chicken
3 Cavendish Parade, SW4 9DW
£
Coffee, Brunch, Chicken and Booze - the four things on the menu at fairly new Yardbird Clapham. A stone's throw from Clapham South tube and neighbouring popular bar Gigalum, Yardbird was set to be a hit with the nearby yuppies wanting to soak up the regrets of the night before with some pancakes, or better yet, fried chicken.
I've been to Yardbird on two occasions. Firstly, around April to sample the cocktails at happy hour (why pay £9 when you can pay £4.50?!) and also get my first proper fried chicken fix since graduating Uni. You can choose to have your chicken naked, jerk or dirty and to have either quarter, half or whole bird. Now if you're going to come to a restaurant which specialises in fried chicken, you gotta do it properly. Ordering a naked quarter bird here would be like those sad souls who go to Pizza Express and order a salad - seriously, what is the point?!
We went for a half dirty bird to share £11, along with some sweet potato fries topped with pulled chilli chicken, bacon salt and chicken skin (dayum) £6.50 and chicken mac and cheese bites £6. As you can see, we did it properly. We washed this down with two Pornstar Martini's, because I'm always a classy bird. The food was so-so to be perfectly honest - the mac and cheese bites lacked flavour whilst the dirty half bird lacked the crisp a deep fry should have. The sweet potato fries verged on the soggy side whilst the topping was also underwhelming, the chicken skin off of mum's Sunday Roast would win any day. Having said that, the Pornstar Martini was excellent, so for a cocktail joint this may still be worth a trip.
Yardbird then introduced the prospect of Brunch, a word which rarely can't win me over. In order to stand out from all the millions of other brunch joints between Clapham Common and Balham, Yardbird focuses on the meatiest feast you can imagine. My friend Hope ordered a Bagel filled with pork belly, black pudding, sausague, bacon, potato hash and bacon jam £11, whilst Asta got some eggs benny with chorizo on a potato hash £8.5. I ordered 'The Don' which consisted of 4 fluffy American style pancakes, topped with bacon, egg and maple syrup £9.5.
Whilst they all looked incredible, mine arrived cold and my yolk's weren't runny (waaaaaaaaaaa). This isn't the end of the world, but if I'm paying someone to make my eggs I expect them to be runny goddamnit, also cold pancakes never did sail well with anyone, let alone slightly undercooked bacon. The other two's meals looked great and they did enjoy them, so I potentially made a bad decision here... But still, I wouldn't brunch here again anytime soon.
Yardbird has closed in the daytimes now, so the coffee and light lunch must have not been working out as hoped. However, it's open in the evenings and all day on Saturday and Sunday if you want to give it a try! Although I haven't had the best experiences at Yardbird, others love it, furthermore it adds character and diversity to the bland old area of Clapham South, surrounded by 3 supermarkets and one overhyped and frankly, quite grim bar.
OVERALL RATING: ***
https://www.yardbirdclapham.com/
