Upmarket chicken shacks are taking London by storm, with posh single-dish poultry parlours proliferating across the city. The latest to graduate from market stall to permanent site is Butchies, a buttermilk-fried chicken sandwich concept that opens in Camden this month (September 21) after two successful years of Saturdays at Hackney’s Broadway Market.

A day earlier, Chick’n’Sours, opens a Covent Garden branch a year after making its  Dalston debut, selling herb-fed free-range chicken with an oriental twist with sour cocktails and craft beers – an “excellent combo”, according to the Harden’s Survey, and one that is heartily approved by the great French chef Pierre Koffmann.

Chicken Shop started the ball rolling four years ago, and now has nine branches around London doing one thing well — “succulent free-range chicken cooked on a spit” (Harden’s Survey). Bird followed two years later in Shoreditch; it now has four London sites and is looking further afield.