Poulet Rouge

Address: 7a Chestnut Grove, Balham SW12 8JA
Website: http://www.pouletrouge.co.uk/
Nearest tube station: Balham

This one feels like a bit of a cheat. It’s National Curry Week and we were intending to go for a Friday night curry at Cinnamon curry restaurant in Brockley. But my stupid job put paid to that idea and I ended up staying at work a few hours late. Yes, on a Friday.

We didn’t much feel like trekking over to Brockley by the time I had finished and so we headed closer to home to find somewhere for dinner, thinking that I wouldn’t have anything to write about afterwards. We plumped for Poulet Rouge in Balham, a few paces away from the Tube.

The choice of mains is pretty easy: a quarter or half a chicken; a quarter or half a duck; or one of seven savoury crepes. The more difficult choice is which sides to pick – there are five different potato sides alone and a selection of others including chorizo cassoulet, coleslaw and panzanella (which is not something that I expect to see outside Tuscany). 

What do we go for? I had a quarter of the eponymous chicken with chicken gravy and a side of broccoli with lemon butter and roasted almonds (a good addition in my view, but not the wife’s); and she had a Chinese-style quarter duck savoury crepe with duck fat chunky chips. Poor ducks. The speed with which it was all polished off tells me that we enjoyed it a lot. It’s not a fancy chicken shop (unlike the Chicken Shop in Tooting) – it’s much more of a proper restaurant.

We’d been told by our waiter that we could order more sides during dinner if we needed anything extra, as they can be prepared quickly – and two sides probably isn’t enough between two. 

Having said that, it did mean that we had room for dessert – my wife had a Nutella crepe and I had a Nutella, banana and honeycomb crepe, both of which were delicious.

What was the damage? Excluding drinks, a very reasonable £32.60, without service (which is not automatically added).

This is a normal restaurant, so why am I writing about it here? Well, they have just started a bring-your-own bottle night on Mondays, that traditionally quiet day in the restaurant trade – between 6pm and 9pm, according to their specials chalkboard, and with no corkage, according to the waiter. And they’re not the only ones at it: the Hawksmoor group has £5 corkage and Harrison’s in Balham has no corkage on Monday nights. A good excuse to visit them, I reckon.

If you want to visit on a Monday, you can pick up your drinks from the Oddbins almost opposite the Tube, the large Sainsbury’s a bit further away, the Waitrose on Balham Hill (if you’re a bit fancy) or We Brought Beer – a specialist beer shop on Hildreth Street, a few minutes' walk away.

Update (July 2015) - Poulet Rouge is now Poulet Fermé: it has shut up shop and been replaced by a branch of the Chicken Shop.