Match of the week

Roast chicken and champagne

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on October 2 2023 at 12:28

There are so many good things to drink with chicken you might wonder why champagne needs to be among them, particularly if you regard it as a wine you drink with canapés rather than with a meal

But I was reminded this week at Bob Bob Ricard’s new offshoot Bébé Bob just how good it can be.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it BBR is a fabulously bling Soho restaurant which serves caviar, beef Wellington and other old school dishes with extravagant wines such as champagne*

Bébé majors on rotisserie chicken and chips though you can still precede it with caviar if you want.

We drank Bollinger which was obviously wildly indulgent but actually if you were fine tuning the experience you might want to go for an all-chardonnay blanc de blancs which would suit the wonderfully buttery chicken gravy better. But almost certainly be more expensive.

Why does it work? Because chicken skin is one of those foods that are rich in umami and so is champagne, particularly vintage champagne which would also be a good call if you can run to it. Waitrose does a good one under its own label on which you can currently get 25% off if you buy any 6 bottles which makes it £26.99 rather than £35.99. (Used to be cheaper but they seem to have upgraded it to the no 1 range and bumped up the price.)

Or you could drink cava which would have much the same effect.

*although, to be fair, their margins are reasonable.

I ate at Bébé Bob as a guest of the restaurant

Photograph © Miredi at fotolia.com

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