The 40-cover restaurant, which is aptly opening on Beak Street, will serve popular items including its fried chicken bao with Szechuan mayonnaise, pickled daikon and Korean hot sauce; a honey ginger buffalo burger; and vodka and sesame battered wings as well as new additions, including a pickled daikon salad with beansprouts; drumsticks with XO chicken gravy and Szechuan salt; and cheesy corn.
The drinks offer will include wines by the glass and a number of batch cocktails, including a Szechaun Negroni (Gin, Campari, sweet vermouth, Szechaun mist), a Magic Carpet Ride (vodka, jasmine tea, shiso, soda), and It’s Not Me, It’s Yuzu (yuzu sake, fizz and mint).
Coqfighter was founded by Australian born friends Troy Sawyer, Deacon Rose and Tristan Clough in 2014 after moving to London from Melbourne. It began as a residency in Hackney, followed by a number of other kitchen takeovers in the capital before opening in Boxpark.
The brand currently has sites in Boxpark’s Shoreditch and Croydon and until recently in The Prince in West Brompton, but Soho will be its first full service restaurant.
“Soho has something really special about it - there’s nowhere quite like it,” says Rose. “We knew early doors that we had to open a restaurant in the area. It was our dream, and to be able to do it within a few years of starting out in pop ups, has been an amazingly spicy ride for us.”
Coqfighter is one of a number of fledgling chicken operators jostling for space in the fried chicken sector. Carl Clarke and David Wolanski will open a second site for their CHIK’N brand later this month, also in Soho, and chicken brand Chiktopia will launch at intu Lakeside in July. Riot Chicken, meanwhile, is due to open soon in Clapham.
Thunderbird Fried Chicken, which has backing from private equity group TriSpan, is also looking to roll out across the capital.