The chicken danceThe chicken dance

Bret Thorn

Chicken holds an interesting place in the hearts of Americans. It’s our most popular meat, having passed beef in the early 1990s, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, but we don’t give it a lot of respect.

Although the USDA says the average American eats nearly 90 pounds of chicken a year, about 40 percent more than beef, the protein can be a tough sell at high-end restaurants.

“Chicken is a necessary menu item from a cost standpoint,” says Dante Boccuzzi, chef-owner of the recently opened Dante restaurant in Cleveland. Because of its low cost, “chicken’s your money-maker. It has to be one of your top sellers.”

The trick is to make chicken dishes approachable without being boring. The ideal dish is something that won’t scare customers away but also something that they won’t make at home, some experts say.

Brooke Vosika, executive chef of the Four Seasons hotel in Boston, says chicken dishes are not where chefs should display their creativity with unusual flavors or unfamiliar preparations.

“Chicken’s one of those things that should appeal to the masses,” he says. “If you start putting tobiko caviar and mango relish on it, you’re going to scare the daylights out of most of the people.”

But he says his customers now understand the difference between commodity chicken and higher-end varieties and are willing to pay for prime stuff.

“It is difficult not to have chicken on the menu,” says Bernard Guillas, executive chef of The Marine Room in La Jolla, Calif. “But in fine dining you have to dress it up, otherwise it can be very banal.”

Currently on Boccuzzi’s menu is a caramelized organic chicken with soy-lime vinaigrette, a crisp spring roll and ginger-carrot purée, which he sells for $19. He leaves the breast and thigh connected, with the skin on, but removes the bones, except for the wing bone. He brines the chicken for about 12 hours and then starts cooking it skin-side down in a hot cast-iron pan with no oil. Without flipping it, he finishes it in the oven.

“By the time the chicken’s cooked, the skin is crisp and the fat is rendered,” he says.

The drumstick is seared and then braised sous-vide for “at least a day.” Boccuzzi then pulls that meat and makes it into a spring roll with Napa cabbage, ginger, carrot, shiitake, soy and yuzu.

Boccuzzi, who was executive chef at Aureole in New York before leaving to open his own restaurant, says chicken dishes that are too fancy don’t fulfill their mission on the menu. He says one such “dud” was braised lotus root, with the holes in the root stuffed with a ginger-and-garlic flavored chicken mousse. Then it was breaded, fried crisp and served with the breast and thigh as well as wasabi leaves, mushrooms and black- and white-sesame vinaigrettes.

“I ended up eating it myself,” Boccuzzi admits. “The staff would get a lot of chicken for the family meal.”

This past summer at Aujourd’hui at the Four Seasons in Boston, Vosika got $72 for his whole roasted chicken for two, which he serves with baby vegetables, lardoons and a foie gras sauce. Vosika says he gets that price because the high-end chicken he uses is organic and because “it’s got incredible flavor to it.”

He trusses the chicken so it cooks evenly and roasts it whole with cognac, Madeira and truffles. Now he serves, for about $24, a chicken that he marinates for a day in buttermilk with thyme, rosemary and bay leaf. Without rinsing the chicken, he roasts it and then deglazes the pot with chicken stock and buttermilk that he reduces into a light sauce. He serves half a chicken, which he bones once it’s ordered, with cipollini onions, roasted root vegetables and the buttermilk sauce on top.

At the Marine Room, Guillas makes his chicken exotic not just by using a natural chicken, but by top-ping it with suneli, a spice mixture he came upon in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. It’s three parts parsley mixed with one part of dried dill and seasoned with dried mint, ground coriander, marigold powder and sea salt. He blends that with toasted walnuts in a food processor into a course meal. In Georgia it’s typically used, without walnuts, for lamb dishes.

Like Boccuzzi, Guillas starts his chicken breast skin-side down in a cast-iron pan. Then he finishes it in a 250-degree oven for about 20 minutes. He confits the leg, just as he would duck. He serves the chicken with rice seasoned with rice vinegar and hazelnut oil, kumquat preserves, vermouth sauce, and string beans.

Chicken also can be used to introduce guests to more exotic flavor combinations.

At Azza, a formerly French-Moroccan restaurant that recently moved in a more authentic direction, executive chef Steven Ferdinand does what many chefs of Moroccan food do in the United States and uses chicken instead of pigeon in the traditional b’steeya, a savory pie generously dusted with cinnamon and sugar, for $14.

He also uses chicken for a more savory briouat for $9. For it, he braises chicken slowly with a variety of dry spices along with onions and cilantro, allowing the mixture to thicken. Then he shreds the chicken and mixes in toasted almonds ground in a food processor with cinnamon and sugar. He wraps that in phyllo triangular pies, flash fries them and tops them with raisin, saffron and yogurt.

At Herons at the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary, N.C., Phil Evans says his chicken preparation is interchangeable with more posh poultry. In fact, he recently removed from his dinner menu a $31 roasted poulet rouge de fermier—or “farmer’s red chicken”—with roasted fingerling potatoes, Brussels sprouts and henof-the-woods mushrooms to replace it with a $34 duck dish.

“I didn’t want to have two poultries and have them compete with each other,” he says. “We have not heard any complaints yet.”

In fact, he says the duck sells better than the chicken dish had sold.

Evans’ preparation is straightforward, but he says it stands out because of the high-end local heritage chicken he uses. He’s still serving the chicken at lunch. He rubs thyme under the skin of the breast and cooks it with olive oil, squeezing lemon over it periodically, and serves that over Caesar salad for $14 and Cobb salad for $15.