If you’re walking anywhere in London and spot Elijah Quartey aka Chicken Connoisseur, he’ll be grateful if you resist the urge to make a fuss. Don’t shout “Chicken Guy!” Or ask them to record a birthday greeting for a friend on their mobile phone. If you have any comments or questions, please keep them to a minimum.
“People who pay attention to me, I don’t really like it. ‘I’ve come to understand that anonymity is a privilege. It’s a privilege I’ve lost.'”
This is from Quashie’s YouTube show,Penguest Munch,” went viral and turned an angelic-looking young man from north London into a national celebrity with 870,000 subscribers and, simply put, a BBC 4 spin-off series. A review of a takeaway restaurant that sells cheap fried chicken to school kids, late-night partygoers, and anyone immune to calorie spikes.
Shops aren’t that cheap these days. This review The recent occupational hazard of his gigs is as troubling as overly enthusiastic fans: inflation. His price has nearly doubled since he started the show, with a huge leap at the start of the pandemic. French fries, four chicken wings, a chicken burger, and a soda, the go-to combination for any review, used to cost about £2.50 (about $3). That same meal now makes him five pounds or he six pounds, sometimes more.
“The prices are crazy,” he said months ago, ending his review Chicken Cottage Shop in Ladbroke Grove, West London. “Four wings and chips, four pounds. Reckless. But these are the times we live in.”
According to market intelligence agency Mintel, the shop made $2.3 billion in revenue last year, but professional critics have long ignored them. Seven years ago, Mr. Quartey in a shirt and tie fried his wings with wit and detail, using supernatural strides, five-pound words, and local dialects (e.g., “penguest” means best). The situation changed when evaluated with the attention of Usually reserved for the set menu. Making videos for YouTube viewers now earns his living.
Today, Mr. Quashie’s positive reviews drive many newcomers to the store, delight owners, and infuriate locals.
When I rated Food Hut Pizza & Chicken on Barbican, I found that the sign out front had bureaucratic tape over the prices, so I had to go inside to see the price of each item. I was. (This removed a few decimal places from his rating system. Five is perfect.) He now pleads with the “boss man,” meaning the owner or the cashier, to resist, We often end positive reviews. The urge to profit.
“Bossman, please do it for the locals,” he raved about Hayes’ Dory Chicken wings, before saying, “Keep the prices down.”
UK inflation rising
One recent afternoon, he sat down for an interview at one of the few tables in Tottenham’s Chicken Valley, not far from where he lives, and explained why he had never reviewed the place.
“If you do it here, the water will overflow and the price will go up,” he said, sprinkling salt and pepper on the fries. “Then we need to protect our hometown.”
The son of immigrants from Ghana, Mr. Quasi is funny, self-deprecating, and speaks extensively on most topics except age. (“I don’t want to say”) This is obvious. He looks much younger than his age.
“I say it’s for a school project,” he explained.
Quashie has never discussed pricing with the chicken manager. He only knows what he sees on the menu or hears on the news. On Wednesday, the National Bureau of Statistics here announced that inflation had risen to his 40-year high of 10.1%.
Food prices accounted for a large part of the increase. But it’s one thing to read grim statistics from the government, including poultry prices rising more than 16%. It’s something else to feel pinched every time you squeeze into a box of perfectly flaky fried chicken wings.Inflation is both painful and delicious for Quashie.
When foot traffic slowed during the string of coronavirus lockdowns that began in March 2020 and ended just over two years later, nearly all stores raised prices to make up for the shortfall, Mr. Quasi said. A nervous customer who kept going seemed to be gouged out to make up for everyone else.
His intuition tells him that all this talk about the cost of living is just an excuse for the owner to make more money.
“If there’s a headline or two about recession and inflation in general, local bossmen will take the opportunity to say ‘yeah, inflation,'” he said. “Last week he was 4 pounds. Now he’s 5.20 pounds. It’s not my fault. I think a lot of that.”
Quashie got the idea for ‘The Pengest Munch’ when he and some friends were wandering around East London neighborhoods trying to figure out where to eat. When searching the internet, he didn’t have a single review of a nearby chicken restaurant. Upscale Italian He had hundreds of reviews on joints and all other cuisines.
“Then I was watching ‘Master Chef’ on TV and noticed that a lot of people were watching the show, but they were reviewing the kinds of food that most people wouldn’t eat,” he said. He didn’t stop because he had no culinary training. He has seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can” directed by Steven Spielberg. This is about real-life crooks posing as prosecutors, airline pilots, doctors, and more. Lesson learned: You don’t need credentials if you know how to fake them.
“On my days off, I started reading dictionaries and thesauri,” he said. “
The first few episodes racked up around 600 views. This surprised his Quashie, who had no experience with this platform. Then, in December 2016, a friend posted Episode 6 on his Reddit forum with an appealing title. “Kids in suits and trainers go round London and review chicken shops.” A day later, the video had 300,000 views, and a few days later it surpassed 1 million.
One fan wrote in the comments section, “People need a knighthood to serve the masses.
Viewers started watching older episodes and discovered that the Eden’s Cottage wing in Finsbury Park was a perfect score.
“The way a person breads chicken wings before frying them knows his business,” Quashie respectfully told viewers.
Eden’s quickly got so busy that the Daily Mail published an article about the influx of new customers and the backlash it caused.
Mr. Quashie has become the public face of the ubiquitous restaurant category, making him almost invisible.
“He showed that this massive part of London’s food culture should be taken as seriously as anything else,” said James Hansen of food website Eater London. I got
Mr. Quasi is occasionally recognized by store employees and gets a little annoyed when he likes perks such as bonus wings. He prefers anonymity so he can have the same experience with every customer.
A few weeks ago, Kavethan Pathmakanthan, who worked behind the counter, feigned ignorance when the QFC in Neasden, north-west London, received a visit from a ‘penguest’.
“Because I’m an introvert,” he said over the phone.
The owner’s son, Pathmakanthan, watched the episode days later and braced himself for the wilting reviews. That’s because a friend of Mr. Quashie’s started with a story about how he once got a rash from eating at the QFC. Joke or not, Mr. Quasi didn’t flinch. He gave the store generally favorable reviews.
“This is an amazing 3.7,” he said in the video. “We have work to do, but at the moment we’re pretty calm.”
“I am relieved,” said Mr. Pasmacantham.
There are 3,727 poultry shops in the UK, more than half of which are independently operated, according to retail consultancy Local Data Company. These stores tend to nod to their American roots. Restaurant names include Miami Fried Chicken, Dallas Chicken, and his dozen or so variations of his KFC.
The proliferation of these stores has worried diet experts and politicians alike. In 2017, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that he would be barred from opening fast food restaurants within 400 meters of his school.
Quashie chose shops based on recommendations from friends and added the mandates he imposed on himself to spread himself geographically. He conducts reviews in all of his 32 boroughs in the city. Watching an episode of “The Pengest Munch” also serves as a sedentary way to see far-flung parts of London.
Every review begins with what he calls a “krep check.” This is a quick display of what sneakers he’s wearing. (His collection now stands at about 370 pairs.) Then he heads to the store “to see what the food says.”
Quashie’s palette lives on the nuances of crumbs, spices, textures, how the bread is toasted, and how the seasonings are applied. He once found a chocolate flavor in chicken wings that he liked. He regularly denounces small, dry, or flavorless offerings as “dead.” Compliments start with ‘calm’, move up to ‘blessed’ and ‘verified’, and peak at ‘piff’ and ‘pen’.
The store offers surprises, many of which are unpleasant. He found fried feathers on the wings and traces of blue paper towels on the French fries.
And now, with these high prices, it’s not a surprise but a consistent headache these days. We aggregated orders that are a combination of .
“It used to cost £2.50,” he said. “Now he’s 4.69 pounds, and I don’t think it’s going to come back.”