Native bring back much-loved pigeon kebab for first birthday

The Covent Garden restaurant is celebrating by plating up one of its most popular dishes
Posh bird: the pigeon kebab at Native, with a host of colourful condiments

The urban pigeon is much maligned in London but its plump, woodland cousin is considered a delicacy, and a coup (coo?) for any restaurant’s menu. Typically it’s treated like a delicacy, as a fancy — occasionally overwrought — dish that’s served up only on special occasions. Game is a fancy game.

But Native in Covent Garden is showing it needn’t be: to mark its first birthday the game restaurant is serving up a pigeon kebab. If it sounds a bit like something you’d get from an unlicensed van in a dodgy quarter of Dalston, that’s part of the playful charm. It’s a high brow-low brow mix: game, styled up without pretension.

The dish is consistent with Native’s vibe: the restaurant takes traditional game — pigeon, pheasant, venison — and applies many of the (more inventive) flavours and preparation techniques seen in street food. Typical condiments include elderflower vinegar, chestnut cream and pumpkin ketchup — a mix of country pub and urban market — and everything is styled and colourful (it’s food for Instagram, obviously). The lunch and dinner menus are changeable and move with the seasons.

But back to the kebab: this one is in fact a much-loved signature that is being brought back by popular demand, and after it returns next month it will become a permanent fixture on the menu.

Last time it was served rare on an open pitta with beetroot hummus, pickled cabbage and harissa. Critics salivated over the pinkness of the meat, while the tart pickled cabbage sets off the slight sweetness of the hummus, and the harissa layers it with spice.

Take it on with both hands — all the better to get the full thwack of flavours. Best still, unlike a kebab from a suspect van, you certainly won’t wake up sweating with shame (and a hangover) after eating one.

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