Midtown Lunch

The “Boulangerie” attached to Brasserie Cognac, a 3 week old, mid-scale French restaurant from the owners of Serafina, is now open- and as promised, they are selling rotisserie chicken to go, at lunchtime. *Sigh* rotisserie chicken. Is there anything you can’t do? I am no history-ologist, but this is how I imagine rotisserie chicken was invented. A really really really long time ago, somebody took a chicken, and held it over a fire for awhile. And it was good. And all was right with the world.

Then, for some reason, and who knows how or why (but thankfully it happened), another guy said, “What it we take that same chicken, cover it in egg and flour, and drop it into this incredibly hot oil.” And he did. And what came out, was pure magic. Nobody had any reason to eat that other kind of chicken anymore. Why bother? (Nobody cared about being healthy when all this was going on.) This newfangled “fried chicken” was the greatest invention in the history of man. (Yes- better than even the wheel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to get us from our homes, to somewhere where we can buy fried chicken.)

So then, the original guy, who put the chicken over the fire (I’m sure he was still alive, or maybe it was one of his great grand-kids), was like “Nobody is eating my chicken anymore! I’ve got to come up with something better! What if I stacked all the chickens on top of each other, and then, as they cooked over the fire, all the chicken fat from the top chickens will drip down onto the ones below. Then, we’ll turn this whole contraption (with that wheel thing mentioned before), so the grease, and fat will just keep moving from chicken to chicken.” And that is why fried chicken isn’t the only chicken we eat today.  Oh to be alive when these magical things happened in our worlds history!

And now, you can get a slightly overpriced, Midtown version, on Broadway btw. 55+56th.  Read more »