It's a poultry offering, but reviewer Kim Knight is not crying completely fowl.
Book. Book, book, book. BOOOOK. It's the annual Canvas books issue. Of course I had chicken.
Boy & Bird opened in 2014 but, for whatever reason, I missed the (gravy) boat. It was one of those places I meant to visit, but then Auckland got barbecue, then it got Korean and then there was chicken on every corner. The novelty had worn off and I was contractually obliged to move on and eat jackfruit tacos and cheese made from cashew nuts.
Hurray, then, for this book-themed issue. Eating and reading are natural bedfellows. I hope that right now, for example, you're devouring these words under a high thread-count cotton sheet with a side of scrambled free-range eggs.
Where to review? I thought about taking a book to dinner and feeding my soul. I researched "restaurants that used to be libraries" (for the record, I rate Galbraith's for a pub lunch). I wondered if consuming sophisticated bar snacks while working my way through the canon of cocktails named for American authors who hated women would fit the theme. I went down a reading-and-eating rabbit hole and started thinking about the books that had stuck. It was Ronald Hugh Morrieson who made me scared of the provinces. That opening line that starts like this: "The same week our fowls were stolen ..."