I see this column as an essay on cultural polarisation: artisanal butter can only take you so far into wisdom. I cower in Covent Garden, mourning Tory romanticism, and stare, cold-eyed in St James’s, at oligarchic mezze. Sometimes I eat by mistake. I couldn’t get into the fashionable noodle place in Soho, whose Instagram-made queue stretched to Cambridge Circus on Saturday night. It reminded me of the crowds at royal weddings: both camp for dreams. So, I went to Wingmans instead.
Wingmans – it lost the apostrophe, it’s a decadent age – calls itself ‘London’s best wings’. They are chicken wings, not angel wings, and this is Pottersville, not Bedford Falls. (Some people think Pottersville is more fun and that may be, but not here. This is not a wonderful life.) The name invokes watching your friend seduce a woman by smearing chicken on her. They have branches in Kilburn and Soho, and they sell sauces to take home.
They offer rubber gloves before you eat, as if you were a murderer: or the chicken is
The Soho branch is double-fronted, and black like fear. The view is fine. It is of Old Compton Street and tourists who, as ever, stare at the sky and wait to be surprised. Soho invites the finger of God: that’s its job. Is it chicken-smeared?
Inside are yellowish walls, an open kitchen and tables decorated with kitchen roll. I have not seen this before. Nor have I seen a restaurant where they offer rubber gloves before you eat, as if you were a murderer: or the chicken is. The gloves appear bunched on a chipped black plate, and at first I do not know what they are. Canapés? It’s possible. I suspect the inspiration for Wingmans is Salt Bae’s Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Knightsbridge, where they feed you steak off a sword for reasons only a psychiatrist can know. You won’t like the phrasing, but this is toxic masculinity with flesh. Isn’t it always? The loo signs say ‘cave’ in neon and point downwards. There is a vast rosette on the wall, which may be a prize from Deliveroo.
You order by photographing a QR code by the kitchen roll. At this, I might rant on behalf of old people who do not like QR codes, but to be fair, I do not think they would like Wingmans either. They have dodged a wing.
The wings arrive in buckets, of course: Szech-One (‘dry fried and seasoned with Szechuan peppercorn salt, ginger, spring onion, red chilli and lime’) and Sweet and Smoky BBQ (‘topped with spring onion, white sesame and crispy onion’). I believe the ingredients, but all I can taste is salt and chilli (I had the Szech-One). I have never eaten so much salt, and I worked at McDonald’s. I wonder why they use so much salt. I also wonder where the rest of the chicken goes. Some of it is inside a vast ‘Thai fry’ chicken burger with over-fried onions, ranch dressing and sticky, golden ‘American cheese’. It is secured with a wooden stake, for added menace. This is food as violence, and we cannot finish it. It tastes mostly of pickled onion Monster Munch, but with sticky, needless death.
In all, Wingmans feels less like a restaurant than a nightclub for the morbidly obese and tragic. I love a dystopia, but not this one. Wingmans cured me, to an extent, of my rage at the gentrification of Soho. Gentrification – I forgive you! I think of Karl Kraus, of course. Whether it knows it or not – it doesn’t – Wingmans is another experimental station on the way to the end of the world. They are piling up in the streets with the chicken ghosts. Happy 2025, pale apes! Even in Wingmans, we are luckier than we deserve, and here’s the proof.
Wingmans, 29-31 Old Compton St, W1D 5JS; tel: 020 7734 7297.
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