These Chefs From Michelin-Starred Restaurants Are Now Making Fried Chicken. Here’s Why.

Tori Latham
·2 min read
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Over the past few years, many people have made pandemic pivots. For some fine-dining chefs, that’s meant a foray into the world of fried chicken.

A number of chefs have recently left their high-flying jobs at Michelin-starred restaurants to pick up a more casual style of cooking, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Among their ranks are those who have worked at spots like Eleven Madison Park, Caviar Russe, and Bangkok’s Canvas.

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“Fine dining has to be thought-provoking, it has to be aesthetically beautiful, it has so many requirements,” said Cyle Reynolds, who opened Crispy Gai in Portland, Maine, after cooking at Canvas. At his newer restaurant, “we do what we do with very high standards; we just do it with a lot less pretension.”

Reynolds is serving up Thai-style fried chicken inspired by his time in Bangkok. Here, the poultry is brined in a marinade of fish sauce and cilantro, fried twice, then served with sweet fried shallots. It’s not the multi-course tasting menu he was cooking at Canvas, but Reynolds is proud to be at the helm of a restaurant where people are actually happy to work.

This focus on fried chicken isn’t a new trend, of course: Big-name chefs like Thomas Keller, at Napa’s Ad Hoc, and David Chang, with Fuku, have worked to perfect the classic comfort food. But the recent experimentations proved a way for chefs to keep going during the pandemic, when many restaurants had to shut down or close temporarily. A fried-chicken joint, meanwhile, is one of the best places to grab a bite to go.

Eric Huang, who left his job at EMP in early 2020, initially planned to open his own fine-dining restaurant. Instead, thanks to the culinary landscape at the time, he ended up launching Pecking House, a ghost kitchen serving up Chinese-inspired fried chicken (the restaurant now has a Brooklyn storefront). His Michelin-starred pedigree is still evident in Pecking House’s premium whole, air-chilled chickens from D’Artagnan, which are basted with Tianjin chile oil and served with five-spice seasoning. That provenance doesn’t come cheap: A three-piece chicken meal, which comes with two sides, goes for $27.

Fried chicken is “a perfect food for your omnivorous human,” Huang told the Post. “It just hits every dopamine center in your brain.”

Consider his version, and that of these other fine-dining chefs, Popeyes’ elevated cousin.

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