A popular pop-up street food business serving up Nashville hot chicken is set to open a permanent restaurant by the early summer. Fowl and Fury, which began trading as a pop-up in the street food spot Sticky Fingers in the middle of last year, has turned into a roaring success in the capital, renowned for dishing up Cardiff's hottest chicken tenders. You can read about what happened when we took on the challenge of eating them here.
Its owners, husband and wife duo Jamie and Natalia Rees, got the keys for the new premises - the former site of Cafe Portugal on Wyeverne Road in Cathays - back in February and have been busy revamping the place ready for customers later this year.
With the new venue just a stone's throw away from their current pop-up on Richmond Road, Jamie explained that it was a "conscious" choice of location - somewhere still accessible to the community that had kept them afloat so far. "We think if we were to stay around that same sort of area, that we would have the same customers essentially come into our place - to our permanent site - that are already coming to us now," he said. You can read all our Cardiff stories here.
Last October, trained chef Jamie, 32, from Swansea, explained to WalesOnline the history behind the new business. He met his now-wife Natalia, 27, who is from Poland, nine years ago and they discovered their love for hot chicken when Jamie, who was working as a chef at the time, brought home a cookbook with a spicy chicken recipe.
It became a dish Jamie would cook "every now and then" for the two of them - until a pivotal trip to Canada, where they experienced their first ever "spice high" and "absolutely fell in love with hot chicken there and then". From there they travelled to LA on the hunt for more spots, and they dreamt of setting up their very own hot chicken business.
Lockdown gave Jamie the opportunity to perfect his own hot chicken recipe. The two of them started making fried chicken in their apartment - and even their garden - and shared their creations on Instagram. The owner of Sticky Fingers took a chance on their burgeoning business, turning their dream into a reality.
"It felt amazing because for years me and Natalia had been speaking about something like this, about eventually running our own place - for someone to give us the opportunity like that was huge for us," said Jamie.
They successfully traded in Sticky Fingers until October, before they embarked on another big adventure: marriage, followed by a month-long honeymoon travelling across Mexico and the lower United States on what Jamie describes as a "fried chicken research mission" - tasting native Nashville hot chicken for the very first time.
"We wanted to make sure that in order to do our food proud that we went to Nashville, and we could kind of have a barometer of where our food was in comparison to the original recipes," he said, and adds, laughing, that he and Natalia "concluded that we were definitely 100% hot enough".
They set up shop again ("Season two", according to Jamie) in Sticky Fingers at the start of February - but it won't be long until they leave the shared venue for their very own, something which Jamie says the two of them are "incredibly excited" for.
But amidst the excitement, it's been a hard slog for the two of them, as they can only spend one day a week - their day off from their full-time stint at Sticky Fingers - setting up the new restaurant.
"The only time that we can do renovations at the actual restaurant is on a Monday," said Jamie. "So we knew that these renovations were going to take some time, and we're a young couple, we're a very young business - we don't have tonnes of money behind us. So a lot of the stuff we're doing is very old school punk, it's very DIY."
As for what customers can expect when the new spot opens, Jamie said the menu will feature the classic dishes - such as the Chicken Sando, tenders, loaded fries and loaded mac and cheese - and will have a new addition of milkshakes. "So I think a lot of people that struggle with our spicier levels, the milkshake would definitely help with that," he laughed.
Expressing his gratitude for the opportunity, he continued: "We're just really thankful for everyone that has supported us so far. If no-one bought our food, we would have no money to open this." To sign up for our CardiffOnline newsletter, click here.
