Here’s a place to chirp about…
Scrap that. Puns aren’t funny since AI muscled in on the territory. Perhaps they never were. Instead, how about this? We’ve just had a dining experience worth squawking about…
Hmm, no good either, but the Parakeet truly is the nest place for a perch-fect meal close to Camden.
Christ, not again. Let’s park(akeet) these shit puns right here, on the pavement outside Kentish Town station, dust ourselves down and go for a pint. We need a drink after that laboured business of the last couple paragraphs.
Have pints, not puns. Fortunately, just 100 yards after alighting, you can find yourself in the warm embrace of The Parakeet, which sits on the former site of the Oxford Tavern but is a very different proposition to that old warhorse of a Camden pub.
Wander in off Kentish Town road, and let yourself be comforted by the familiar trappings of an old-school but perfectly put together boozer. Inside, it’s all dark mahogany panelling, pine green paintwork, bourbon bar chairs, the click-clack under foot of hardwood flooring that was varnished just 18 months ago, and a truly statement back bar.
Trace your way across the words above that bar – FINEST CHOICE LONDON SPIRITS WINES & STOUT – trying to make a song of it, or at least get the iambic pentameter to land right. Admire the gently luminescent stained glass windows behind the premium bottles, all refracting light and suggestive twinkling, and ponder what all that commotion is behind the velvet curtain out back. It sounds heavy, kinetic even. There’s a smell of smoke, and it looks like there’s a fire flickering behind that stained glass… Perhaps it’s time to evacuate?
Nose and intrigue piqued, you might peruse the bar menu as you wait for your pint to be poured, if only for something to look at while you’re feeling awkward, a bit like when you read the back of a shampoo bottle while you’re sitting on the can. There are dressed oysters, gildas, prawn toasts and nduja flatbreads on that bar menu. It slowly dawns on you that this is a place that takes their food as seriously as their their ornamental glass.
Steve Ball and Riz Shaikh, who, under the Columbo Group umbrella, run several gig venues in the area as well as the ubiquitous Blues Kitchen, are behind the pub. Their mission statement is ‘to bridge the gap between music and hospitality’, and we assume that the Hendrix painting and the Guitar God’s relationship with parakeets is the rather tenuous gap being bridged here. Not to worry; honestly, I can’t remember what tunes were playing during our meal here, owing to the irresistible din of the dining room and the distracting beauty of my wife across the table.
Follow your ears and head inwards, drawn in by the crackle of conversation that’s resonating within, the glow of the stained glass baroque ceiling lamp that’s casting covetous, intimate shadows above, and the flicker of the wood fired grill at the back of the room that just defines everything.
Get turned back because your table isn’t ready, and actually have a pint. Have a second pint and then a second attempt, and settle into a tightly knit dining room that’s always rammed. The semi-open kitchen, dominated by that live-fire grill, remains the focal point of the room. And the menu, as it turns out.
It shouldn’t be a surprise the cooking here is so elemental; the kitchen is headed up by two chefs previously of East London grill restaurant Brat; head chef Ben Allen and sous Ed Jennings. Owing to that Brat connection, a whole fish is pretty much obligatory here, and the sea bream (£58 for two, to share), blistered, burnished and criss-crossed from its grill basket, and served head, fins and all, is the absolute highlight from a menu that reads as well as it eats.
Just as it is at Brat, Elkano and the latter’s many imitators, a dexterous waiter (here, the immitable, number one asset Federico) is on hand to dissect the reverse butterflied bream with a spoon and a sense of theatre, instructing us on which cuts should be especially savoured and in what order. Top tip; the skirts have that gorgeous gelatinous quality of a chicken wing and its cartilage.
It’s served with a piperade of finely sliced red peppers. Viscous and sweet, it’s the ideal foil for the charred edges of that bream. It’s magic, and another simple side of Jersey Royals drenched in beurre noisette is all you need to complete the party.
All that said, The Parakeet is so much more than just a hyperreal simulacrum of Brat or indeed Elkano. London’s proliferating cosplay restaurants are getting real boring, but this pub isn’t so.
Instead, there’s a kind of freewheeling vibe to the menu, unconstrained by being at a Basque beach or indeed a Shoreditch warehouse. The boisterous location in the back of a pub seems to suit a menu and cooking sensibility that’s less austere as a result of its surroundings. With one ear on the pub and one in the dining room, you could even join in the Tuesday night pub quiz, a mouth full of oyster, pickled rose and ginger obscuring your answer to the “What is the most common British male name?” tie breaker.
It’s a good idea to start with some dantier stuff, aware of the larger sharing plates to come. At £6, a pair of cylindrical crab and artichoke croquettes are rich and thrumming low with that unmistakable brown crab moodiness. On top, a fine dice of pickled shallot and some pretty, dainty coriander leaves lightened the mood.
Another delicate snack of duck leg tartlets – two for a tenner – followed, their pastry so gossamer thin that their feuille de brick shell needed doubling up to contain a generous mound of confit duck, which was not shredded but still pleasingly chunky, umami heavy and with a deeply satisfying, mouth-coating feel.
A mouth overlaid with duck fat needs stripping back and resetting, and a plate of grilled sardines, confit tomatoes & pickled blackberries did just that. Whilst it certainly looked psychedelic (I briefly wondered if that stuff I’d picked up down at Camden Locks was kicking in a little too quickly), all pinks and purples from the pickled blackberries and confit tomatoes pooling on the plate in pretty patterns, it was, perhaps, a little too sharp. The oily fillet balanced out the sharper notes, but only just. Perhaps this one was a little too piquant, in retrospect.
The feeling doesn’t last long, as an earthy, grassy number follows in the form of nduja stuffed courgette (£11). The courgette itself was squat and bulbous, hollowed out to receive its nduja filling, its centre no doubt used in the silky courgette puree it was sitting on. Would you like your insides to be pureed to make a bed you then lie in? Hmmm, definitely kicking in…
…Showered with rounds of pickled shallot, perilla and shisho leaf in a gravity-defying pile, you could imagine putting your foot through this one in the park come autumn, catching the stuffed courgette in your mouth as it fell back down to earth, the foliage floating to the floor gracefully.
There’s also a stuffed whole poussin that’s masterfully composed. Under flickering candlelight, it comes out looking as vaguely hallucinatory as the restaurant’s artwork, the work of the talented Theophilus Tetteh (the art, not the poussin). Jimi Hendrix – with parakeet perched on shoulder – looked down with an expression approaching envy as we tore at the bird (the poussin, not the parakeet), its intoxicating stuffing of rice, ginger, confit garlic and all those intermingling meat juices somehow even better than the caramelised skin and tender flesh. It’s dotted with more confit garlic – take the back of your fork and squish it into the sauce, of course. Another winner of a dish, and suspicion grows that these guys know exactly what they’re doing.
They know what they’re doing when designing a dining room, too. Tables are arranged not in rows, but width to length across the floor, allowing for real intimacy in a tight space and no knocking of elbows with neighbouring diners. It’s a simple but smart touch in a restaurant full of them.
The only interruption, then, to an evening’s conversation is a beaming waiter bearing down on our table wielding a chamber pot. Out of it, a generous spoon of airy but decadent chocolate mousse is produced, scooped out from the depths of the pot one handed. A sense of theatre belying its homely vessel, sure, and a nice, weird juxtaposition whose message we didn’t quite understand (a dessert that looked especially funny emerging from a toilet bowl…who knows?) – but it tasted damn good plonked on the plate over some feuilletine. Enjoy it with a humble glass of the Mountain Wine, a rugged Moscatel from Malaga, one of the region’s headlining liquors and a lovely foil to that delicious turd.
An obligatory part of any review now is to mention how expensive the wine is these days (no bottles under £30, etc.), but to mention, too, that there are several available by the glass. And so it is here, although there is one white and one red below that obligatory figure – a 2023 Macabeo and a 2022 Monastrell, both organic and both available for £7 a glass, too. The now ubiquitous Chin Chin vinho verde is £31 a bottle, with glasses priced at £9 and half-bottle carafes £16. Or, you could just have a couple of pints…
Whichever way you play it here, the Parakeet will leave you cooing, its bold but refined plates playful and precise, the service outstanding and the vibes immaculate. Sure, you’ll also leave thoroughly seasoned by smoke inside and out, but that’s what you signed up for.
(It’s David Jones, by the way. There are 15’763 of them.)
Check out some of our other favourite restaurants in Camden while we’ve got your ear.