Even the smallest snacks at Angelo Sato's Soho restaurant are filled with tastebud-tingling flavour. Here's the Japanese-inspired menu and ode to the chicken
A ngelo Sato's Humble Chicken on Frith Street in London's Soho first opened in 2021 as a yakitori restaurant to rave reviews about Sato's clever cooking of obscure parts of a chicken's anatomy. But a tasting menu has always been on Sato's mind. Switching £5 chicken skewers for a £135 tasting menu was a big change in direction, but Sato's multi-Michelin-star background at the likes of Restaurant Story in London, Eleven Madison Park in New York and Narisawa in Tokyo provided him with more than enough experience to get his eight-course menu fine-tuned to perfection.
The move to tasting menu not only fulfils Sato's love of fine-dining, it makes business sense, in that his fine-dining menu can dictate a higher price point: "With small locations, you can't give a seat at 7pm for two hours for someone to spend £30," he says. "It's been a huge learning curve."
The menu kicks off with a course dear to his heart. "The bread course is just something I love," he says. "At every restaurant, I'm like ‘can I have more bread?'" But Sato wanted to do more than just "buy in sourdough and serve with butter". His shokupan is a Japanese milk bread similar to brioche which he bakes with clarified butter infused with miso and foie gras to create an umami richness. Cultured butter acts as a shell for layers of flavour, including roasted sesame and miso, fermented red cabbage with notes of red wine vinegar and apples, and a delicate chicken liver parfait, which is served alongside pickled red cabbage, mustard and pickled beetroots.
The aforementioned miso and foie gras is in fact a byproduct of one of his snacks – the miso-cured foie gras tart with kaki and almond brittle. "I wrap the foie in a muslin cloth and cure it in miso for two weeks until it takes on the fermented flavour. I then freeze it and grate it on top of the tart, which is a little pastry case filled with cool and crunchy Charentais melon, smoked with applewood chips which, combined with the slightly burnt, nutty and sweet brittle and the light and fluffy foie is so unique."
Sato also delights in his hand-dived mussels from Carmarthen in Wales, which are currently in season and are so big, they are "like small oysters". He steams these for another snack where a Japanese ponzu vinaigrette of fermented onion, tomato and clementine is gently seasoned with a home-made fermented chilli paste called kosho.
So much work goes into the smallest of bites. Sato and his team of four chefs spend all Monday and Tuesday prepping for service Wednesday to Saturday, while guests sit at the counter watching the theatre of the final moments.
"I spend a long time thinking about the menu and the smaller snacks are a fun way to eat. I try to cover all the tastebud bases with salt, sweet, umami and sour – they're meant to bring a smile to your face," says the chef, pointing to a ‘this little piggy' boa made from pig trotter, karashi and quail egg, with a little pig's face looking up at the diner from the top of the smooth bun.
The menu moves from ‘small' to ‘ocean', where a sashimi of shime saba (pickled mackerel), shiso, fermented plum and cucumber is joined by a dashi of grilled wild seabass, squid and alexander stem tartare, pickled shiro kombu, shiitake dashi and yuzu. This leads on to the grilled meat – ‘yakiniku' – slow-cooked and grilled short rib, yakiniku, miso and lettuce.
And, of course, there has to be a nod to the humble chicken itself, which makes an appearance as the Shokuji course – loosely translated as ‘the main course at the end of a meal'. There are several different elements, including Japanese pickled vegetables called tsukemono. "The last course really sings," he says. "There are different tastes and textures across the menu and it's hard to compete with everything else, so I had to go overboard to make sure it was memorable."
Guests are presented with individual donabes – the traditional clay pot that holds the kashiwa gohan (chicken rice) – garnished with chives and ginger and served with fermented mustard greens and braised bamboo. The chicken skewer itself is the achilles – the end of the drumstick with a little bit of the foot cartilage – which is grilled using Binchotan charcoal then finished with a brushed charcoal fat oil, fermented daikon and yuzu kosho. "It's all about celebrating the chicken," says Sato.
54 Frith Street, London W1D 4SJ
Instagram: @humblechicken_uk
From the menu
- Mussel, citrus kosho ponzu, avocado
- Miso-cured foie gras tart, kaki and almond brittle
- Tuna ravioli, otoro, tapioca tosazu, grilled koji otoro oil
- Bao – this little piggy – pig trotter, karashi and quail egg
- Grilled oyster, fermented kaki, citrus kosho beurre blanc, burnt chicken fat
- Shime saba, shiso, fermented plum, umeboshi and cucumber
- Grilled wild seabass, squid and alexander stem tartar, pickled shiro kombu, shiitake dashi and yuzu
- Grilled slow-cooked short rib, yakiniku, spicy miso and lettuce
- The Humble Chicken, shokugi – chicken schilles, charcoal fat, daikon oroshi, citrus kosho
- Shokupan and butter, miso sesame butter, chicken liver, fermented red cabbage
Omakase menu, £135 per person
