Owner and head chef Kevin Thornton said the restaurant, which has been closed since the end of last year, would also no longer be offering its guinea fowl dish because of the recent outbreak of the H5N1 virus in the UK. "We are always extremely careful about things like that and given the current situation, there is simply no point in putting chicken on the menu, " he told the Sunday Tribune. "For one thing, it would be a waste because no one will order it. For another, there may be a risk involved, and there's no way we'd allow that."

During the bird flu scare last April, the Sunday Tribune reported that several top restaurants had taken chicken off their menu, causing outrage amongst poultry farmers. Ross Lewis of Chapter One said he had not recently noticed any change in chicken orders in the restaurant.

"Our criteria is about quality. Bird flu doesn't play a big part, to be honest, " he said.

L'Ecrivain removed chicken from its menu last year and according to proprietor, Derry Clarke, it doesn't sell well most of the time. "We have chicken from France on at the moment and there's no difference in sales, but chicken generally isn't very popular, " he said.