A lot of my thinking has turned recently to the currency-free sub-economy of food maps. You have to know me pretty well to get one of my food maps. Being gifted access to one of my maps of Manchester, or Barcelona or Lisbon or New York is a great mark of respect in my personal culture. I don’t share these things with anyone. You have to be either a great, beloved friend, or I fancy you a lot. And what drives me insane at the moment is when someone sends me their own food map and it’s… just a list of places.
What do you mean, just a list of places? A food map lives and dies by the how and the why. What time do I need to go there? Do I need to dress up? Who says it’s good, and why do they say it? What can I not leave without having ordered? Recently I went to Manchester and needed breakfast, and consulted my map, assembled in deep consultation with my great northwestern friends Joe, Jake, and Australian Tom. I found a place nearby doing breakfast. “Go late in the morning and get divorced eggs, black coffee and cherry pie,” the map instructed me. “Do not get the fry-up.” I did this, and it was outstanding. I looked at a fry-up on the next table over and knew how wrong it was. I thanked the map in holy reverie. A food map does not exist if it is just a list of places. It has to tell me, exactly, the Move.
At Norbert’s, my friend Ben had already told me the Move precisely: “Whole chicken, fries and potatoes, all the sauces, bottle of cremant.” I muttered the order to myself like a prayer as we stumbled into this cosy neighbourhood kitchen between the Saturday lunchtime rush and the Saturday all-night rush and interrupted their staff meal, which I am still very sorry for: whole chicken, fries and potatoes, all the sauces, bottle of cremant, please. There are other items on the menu, I’m sure – I’ve heard wonderful things about the paté, for instance – but that’s none of my business today. I am living and dying by the Move. Looking at the chalkboard menu is for cowards.
We should discuss what Norbert’s is, which is a neighbourhood restaurant that has got a bit out of hand. There’s a handful of tables, for walk-ins only, a deliciously succinct menu, rotisserie chicken and two kinds of potato, and not much else. That’s it. But “that’s it” is sort of the essence of Norbert’s, and why my friend Joel and I (yes, we are both called Joel; yes, we get off on this an outsized amount) had both made the treacherous cross-Thames journey south to see it – legend of the place has spread far beyond the postcode it was meant to cosily serve when it first opened, nine months ago. As “all the sauces” (a Sunday-worthy chicken gravy, a delightfully crackly pepper-butter, aïoli with the umlaut and, simply, Frank’s RedHot sauce) hit our table, everyone in southeast London descends on the place at once, and we are suddenly surrounded by the right kind of bustle: a solo diner taking on a half-chicken in devout silence; a group of men with moustaches who started supporting Dulwich Hamlet two weeks ago; seven others who have seemingly never been to a restaurant before and want to start here, tonight, which is sweet of them, isn’t it?
I can only focus on the bird, then. It’s a masterpiece. Brined and well-sourced and turned and basted and cooked, it is charred on the outside without turning a rigid, charcoaly black; the skin clings to the meat without flopping off in a gelatinous slough; the bird is juicy without leaving “that water” on the plate; it oozes the most unctuous chicken fat over every potato it touches; it is unbelievable how well the thigh is cooked, and the breast as well, and all the other bits of the chicken that I don’t really know the names for. (Neck? That has to be in there, surely. I triumphantly retrieve both oysters, actually, and eat them without telling Joel #2 that they’re in there).
The fries are deliberately uneventful – I’m not even sure they’re salted – and the chicken-fat potatoes are deliciously there, but I can eat a potato at home. I’m here to dip chicken meat into every sauce going and wash it down with an outstanding French sparkling wine. This is worth the 130-minute round trip.
We pick at the thing for a couple of joyfully lazy hours while people come and go, turning the cremant bottle over and ordering a piña colada (perfectly silly, with three candied cherries skewered on top – and if there hadn’t been a queue jostling outside, I could have sat and gone through about four more of them) and an ingenious spicy margarita with the glass rimmed in the same dry rub that goes on the chicken (“This is now the best spicy margarita in town,” Joel #2 said, holding it up like a trophy.)
Every time I think I’m done with the chicken, I idly turn a thigh over and find another succulent just-charred little morsel; I forgo pudding, something I almost never willingly do (a greengage panna cotta calls to me from the chalkboard!), in favour of more bird. The ambition of the place is so perfectly sized, is what you realise, a third of a way into your allotted meal: if the menu were any bigger, it would dilute the majesty of the rotisserie; if the restaurant were any bigger, the atmosphere would be thinned and dulled. Sit there, Norbert’s says, eat this. I do always find myself drawn to the confidence of a scant menu. This place takes that idea and does an Ironman with it.
Norbert’s is casual, and I want it to stay that way – you will touch elbows with someone; you will say “Erkk!” as you move past a couple of tightly tessellated chairs and tables – because the air just crackles with this undeniable hum of fun. Everyone just seems really happy at the absurdity of coming here to eat a chicken.
“I feel like a competition winner,” Joel #2 says, as he dips a slice of chicken thigh into some Frank’s RedHot sauce. (I love that the hot sauce is just Frank’s, instead of some homebrew nonsense. It’s red, it’s vinegary, it’s excellent – that’s it) and I have to agree with him. As several of my food maps now intone: “I don’t care how long it takes, get yourself there.”
Norbert’s 5-6 Melbourne Terrace, Melbourne Grove, London SE22 8RE (norbertslondon.com). Whole chicken £30, half chicken £18, wine from £35