The once-humble plate of poultry has been elevated to luxury status, with prices hitting $50 or more.
This for a meat that you probably make at home, often, for tiny fractions of those prices. But is that comparison even relevant?
Your version is surely a pale imitation of what, for example, I enjoyed at Cafe Commerce on the Upper East Side, where its chef and co-owner, Harold Moore, 52, prepares a juicy, flavorful whole roast chicken for two that made me rethink my deathbed meal; by my final bite, I saw its $99 price as a heroic, merciful stand against triple-digit poultry. And $49 for the 50-year-old chef Gregory Gourdet’s deboned half-chicken at Maison Passerelle in the financial district didn’t seem entirely ludicrous, given what an exhilarating North African dish he’d constructed, with its riot of green olives, preserved lemon and harissa.
How does anyone calculate whether any of this makes sense? What’s the value of the professionalism, pampering and people watching inherent to the restaurant experience?
Did Borgo’s chicken give me precisely $51 worth of pleasure? I sampled it with the restaurant’s owner, Andrew Tarlow, 55, who is Elijah’s father, beside me. I insisted that he have some too. Then I tried the dark meat, glossed with a classic reduction, followed by the white meat, with its faintly charred skin, and I realized what a terrible mistake I’d made. I wanted all of this to myself.
Some interesting links leading from the article, on types of chicken and flavor. The Fallow video is interesting (though that wide a range of chicken is not available in the US afaik, see ATK list).
The NYT article preceded the councilman’s “outrage” by a couple of months (so one does wonder about the belated rant, other than to piggyback onto an influencer’s post for publicity).
Curious why there isn’t more “outrage” over the price of cauliflower “steak” or simply-dressed / almost-plain pasta relative to ingredient cost .
Meanwhile, Bon Appetit has also jumped aboard the NYC restaurant chicken cost boat.
The pecking order of capitalism favors the few at the very top. Maybe a costly rotisserie chicken will inspire the powers that be to reevaluate what, and who, they really value.
It’s fine if you like UPF but not sure if I understand why it should be in general worth the price. Or do you think people who are struggling with food costs should mainly rely on UPF (which are quite clearly linked do many diseases, obesity etc)
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