The Tab Comes Home To Roost(ers)

In the life of a UoB student, few places maintain the same importance as Rooster House.

And when it comes to fried chicken, Roosters is undoubtedly the Cathedral, and its faithful followers continue to return year on year, infatuated by its work.

I decided I needed to understand what the life of the Rooster House clergymen involved and how different life behind that holy counter must seem.

I needed to undertake a Rooster’s internship.

In all honesty, I didn’t even think I’d succeed. My editor had already dampened my hopes at our weekly meeting, saying that it was a suicide mission. Despite my doubters (myself included) I picked up the phone half expecting to be turned away by some health and safety requirement.

“Cool mate, just no messing around,” came the voice on the other end of the phone.

I was in.

I arrived at half midnight, whilst the children were still tucked up in Fab.

Whilst the night was still young the orders were slow and sporadic. There were lovebirds, and then came the four lads reeling from an unsuccessful Valentine’s day. It dawned upon me that people were here for chicken, not love.

That said, I tried to interview one very brave ex-vegetarian stepping into Roosters for the first time. Half way through our interview, we were interrupted by her companion:

“Can we go home so I can fuck your brains out?”

Needless to say our conversation stopped there.

I used the quiet time to examine how everything was made, especially the chicken which is stored as raw pieces,  then battered and fried on-site.

Nabeel, whose uncle owns the place, pointed out the former Roosters (which is now Tesco) – “We’ve been here for 8 years, Tesco bought our original Rooster House.”

The shop is family run but with a couple of extra guys to help out.  I could see why the bulked manpower was necessary. Even at the height of food frenzy, one or two remained busy preparing the next batch of food.

I asked if the Rooster House crew ever indulged in their own fare. “Sometimes you just get too tired to make anything else…but usually a strip here or there you know what I mean?”

I was offered chicken within minutes.

Four chicken strips and some experimental chilli sauce later, and I was ready to take on the mob.

At 1:14 the change in the mood was signaled by someone storming into Roosters head-first, ignoring the sneaky glass door. Hopefully his head-print has worn off the glass by now.

Following the headbanger, a rare sight was witnessed. Medics began rolling in with discount coupons from this year’s Medball, a sponsor of Rooster House.

I was lucky enough to run into Lucy Archer who organised the event. Tucking into a piece of Rooster’s finest, she declared: “Roosters is awesome!”

This was one of the more coherent statements of the night, compared to what followed…

The next guests were unfortunately less coherent, and perhaps even mentally disturbed.

Will- “what are you eating?”

Guest 1- “nice chicken nice nice”

Will- “what?”

Guests 1 and 2 (in creepy unison)- “NICE CHICKEN NICE NICE”

Another guest that ventured in shortly after, was intrigued to learn that I was in fact from London.

“London must be so much better than Roosters. Snapbacks are good though”

I felt sympathy for the arduous task that one student had set themselves, as they attempted to calculate their order:

“So 2 times 3 and 3 times 2 are..so they should be the same thing? Wait… 3 times 3 and 2 times…what?”

As more students filed in, throughout the shop the word “Roosters. ROOOOSTERS” was whispered in an urgent undertone, as if the students couldn’t quite believe they had made it.

It was a sort of greasy, fried dream where you kept having to say “Roosters” under your breath for fear it wasn’t real and you’d wake up having not made it out at all.

I asked some guests about Roosters in comparison to Chick-inn: “Roosters have got a speed of service that Chick-inn just don’t possess.”

From my observations, the quickest order was one lucky lad who ordered a number 2, who received his meal in 15 seconds flat.

I caught up with an older medic looking around fondly at the sight before him: “I was chucked out of here in my first year actually. I grabbed the sauce and I was…well I was irresponsible with the sauce.”

After a night out, there’s probably a few people lurking around roosters who wouldn’t mind venting some aggression, but Nabeel said they rarely get any trouble.

He pointed to the speed of service and the swiftness in which students stumble in and out of the shop as the factor behind the little prospect of trouble.

The speed of service is down to the  the rhythm that the guys have got going when the orders come in thick and fast.  It may seem simple, but I could barely keep my eyes open at 5am when we closed up. It took me about 10 seconds to pick up one piece of chicken with the tong thingys.

The closest thing to violence was a narrow miss from a popcorn chicken projectile.

Usually if something kicks off Nabeel has to deal with it himself. I wanted to ask if he ever felt like doing that thing in Watchmen, where the anti-villain of the movie grabs a fat fryer and empties it on the prisoner’s face, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas.

 

It’s easy to imagine that a chicken shop may struggle to keep the balance between fast service and friendly service, but  it seems Roosters has it right.

As one happy guy said, in between mouthfuls of chicken, “Rooster house its like family…they understand what you want. If you’ve got a special wish then they grant it for you.”

In the sea of random student faces a few stand out who are already known to the Roosters crew.

After the manic Fab rush we started sweeping and clearing the shop out of its warzone state , sweeping rogue chips into oblivion and draining the dirty oil from the fryers

Even at 4:50 when we finished up there were still customers tottering in. They got their chicken and chips with the same speed and service as their predecessors had 5 hours before.

We left the shop ready for another day. Despite my exhaustion, I knew that the guys I’d been working with, working through yawns and bleary eyes, would be up again in a few hours time.

Yes business is good for Roosters, but nobody could say they don’t work hard for it.