I love chicken. If you ask me what I miss most from the Philippines, it will probably be Chickenjoy from Jollibee (a fastfood restaurant in the Philippines) and fried chicken from Max’s (am not quite sure this is a fastfood restaurant but it is Filipino and I grew up going to Max’s!). So it follows that when I moved to the UK, I would look for a chicken place to go to. And I thought I’d found a great chicken place.
We discovered Gallus, Empire of Chicken on Timeout. They were offering a £10 voucher for a £25 food spend. Alan said that as it was £10 for £25 of food, you couldn’t really complain. So we looked on the website and thought, what the hey, it’s something new. So on our next trip to London, off we went to Gallus! And let me tell you, £25 bought you a lot of food!
Gallus offered a lot of chicken choices – you had chicken skewers, chicken burgers, salad with chicken, sides (there were chips, side salads, coleslaw…and a lot more that I can’t remember!), desserts and a good selection of drinks!
We went back several times because the chicken was genuinely good. Because the chicken was marinated in several ways, you never really got bored of the chicken choices. You could go Mediterranean, Oriental, South Asian or Latin American. You could go mild, spicy, or umami. The servings were generous and it was excellent value for money. The staff were polite but very attentive and they knew their product – we never felt there was a question too silly about the food they served!
But if you notice that I keep talking in the past tense, it is, sadly, because Gallus has closed. We walked past the Charing Cross Road restaurant to find that all the windows were papered and the sign has been removed. I know that they didn’t really have a lot of footfall whenever we went (I think we managed about 4 trips – it was conveniently close to the theatres so it was brilliant for pre- and post-theatre meals) but I had hoped they were more popular and that people would cotton on to the fact that they were good.
It is sad that in the wonderful melting pot of wonderful places to eat that is London, Gallus was eaten up, swallowed and spitted out like, dare I say it, chicken bones. If you didn’t get to eat at Gallus, you missed a great chicken place that served succulent chicken pieces that offered a better option than KFC for almost the same price.
I have high hopes that Gallus will rise from the ashes like another fowl of myth. And maybe this time, their marketing will be much better and people will flock to the empire of chicken!
Yellywelly 