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ROYALTY IN YOUR LIVING ROOM
The annual festive-fest that is Birmingham Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker has élancer-ed around the cancellation of live shows by taking matters online. A slightly shortened 90-minute adaptation, which for the first time includes director Carlos Acosta's influence, will be beamed to your living room (not just yours, everybody's) at 7.30pm tomorrow (December 18), meaning you can dance along this year or, literally, crack nuts throughout. It's just £15 per household with the show streamed through your browser, Apple TV, Chromecast, Amazon and other weird and wonderful worldwide webby ways. After tomorrow's live stream you can watch on demand from Saturday (December 19, at 7.30pm) until midnight on Christmas Eve. Hey, it's not Christmas until you've been through the kingdom of sweets. Book
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Venue: Hot Chix, dark kitchen; Twitter
Choice: Hot Honey & Garlic Sour Cream Sando (£7.50) Chooser: Chef
My Death Row meal is fried chicken. I go absolutely gangbusters for the stuff, so much so that the restaurant I visited most this year was, by miles, Bonehead. I go alone, I go with friends, I go with enemies, I'd go with you if only you'd ask. The sole reason fried chicken didn't kill me in 2020 is because, if I'm honest, I don't think it travels that well. I've had it delivered and I've not been besotted. Which brings me on to chicky-chicky-fry-fry newcomer Hot Chix from established Two Cats chef Niki Astley. Niki essentially bought decent fried chicken to Brum when it appeared on JQ drinks nirvana The Church's soul food menu, many moons ago. He's since been to the States about a trillion times and fallen head over meals in love with the Nashville version of the dish, which he's now launched by delivery from a "dark kitchen". Dark kitchens, for the uninitiated, aren't pitch black kitchens — although there's an idea for 2021 — and they aren't kitchens set aside for wild sex games (that's 2022). They're simply kitchens that don't have a dine-in restaurant option. Kitchens that deliver only. Hot Chixx is delivery only, Uber Eats only and it's off its head excellent. Niki coats his chicken Nashville style but fries it more the Japanese karaage way and, and I don't want to go into the technicalities because I don't understand them, that results in some of the crispiest fried chicken you'll find. There's a satisfying as hell 'snap' as the coating cracks around your canines. A drier exterior (though succulent inside) that can survive a 10 minute door-to-door journey. I met Niki (fully clothed and with a torch) in his dark kitchen to try his stuff, but then I paid the following day to have it delivered. I'm right, for once, it travels well. The hot honey burger is Niki's favourite and fill your boots with it, but I'm all about the thigh nuggets and the less sweet, drier, spicier burger and wing option. Is it better than Bonehead? No, it's different. Both are brilliant. My physician is crestfallen by this news. Menu
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