There’s chicken trouble at the Hotel de Crillon.
“A chicken is usually just a chicken, except here,” chef Christopher Hache says amid the glow of Baccarat crystal chandeliers reflecting off the polished marble walls and floors of the hotel’s Les Ambassadeurs restaurant.
“Most chefs demand chickens from Bresse,” the 28-year-old Hache adds. “I’m the only one who does Landes chickens. They’re more fragrant.” This isn’t the first time diners at the Michelin two-star restaurant have faced a problem with poultry. In 1918, as World War I raged across Europe, France ran out of chickens. So the Daughters of the American Revolution launched a fundraising campaign to “rechicken” the country.
According to a DAR newsletter from that era, a dime put an egg in an incubator; a quarter “places a chick on a French farm.” The Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing says the chicken industry is today a $1.2 billion French affair. The sole artifact of America’s rechickening effort is the lapel pin offered in return for a contribution. It depicts a drawing of a white-headed cockerel that looks suspiciously like a Landes chicken encircled with the inscription: “I Have a Chicken in France.” Today, there are some 189 million chickens in France and not all of them taste good.
In a country where jokes about the $2.2 million pedigree-chicken business are frowned upon and Les Ambassadeurs built its gastronomic reputation cooking the blue-footed Bresse chicken inside a bag to seal its aroma, Hache’s decision to dish up Landes birds has caused a kitchen kerfuffle perhaps not seen at the Crillon since 1589. That was the year King Henri IV wrote a letter to the Duke of Crillon, ordering him to commit suicide. A portion of the note is chiseled into the restaurant’s outer stone wall.
“Hang yourself brave Crillon,” the king commanded. “We fought at Arques and you were not there.” Hache suspects the duke was out to lunch, and likely eating a Landes broiler. Their more elegant cousins from the Rhone-Alpes — who, as the regional aphorism goes, “are not slaughtered, they are self-sacrificed” — didn’t reach the royal skillets until 1591.
Landes chickens were refugees, pecking their unprivileged way across the border from Spain in the 8th century. Nowadays France annually sacrifices about 1.2 million Bresse chickens.
Near fateful site
Some 4 million Landes chickens meet a similar though less fussy fate. A few dozen feet away from Hache’s stove on the Place de la Concorde, where he each week roasts 40 Landes chickens with crunchy potatoes, Marie-Antoinette in 1793 was beheaded for allegedly telling the peasants to eat brioche.
Hache says the Crillon’s finicky foodies were at first aghast that a two-star Michelin restaurant would no longer offer a Bresse broiler on such hallowed ground.
“The difference between the two chickens is simplicity,” says Hache, who was earlier this year appointed the hotel’s head chef and immediately set about changing rules. “I don’t like fancy. I want big portions that taste eccentric and explode in the mouth. Otherwise, I fear Michelin-star cooking becomes too industrial.” Under Hache’s direction, the Crillon’s new menu is a hearty and radical departure from previously Michelin- starred French fare. The French fish favorite rouget barbet, or pan-fried red mullet, arrives whole, fluffy and stuffed with large ripe capers. It’s a rare presentation. Most chefs filet their mullets before cooking.
“It must not be prepared that way,” is Hache’s ruling. “You can’t taste the perfume of the fish without the head and pigmentation of the skin.” As for that other French staple, mushrooms, Hache’s heaping helping of fat morels stuffed with Iberian ham floating on a pond of light hazelnut sauce bursts open on the tongue. The 72 euro blue-lobster main course flavored with basil on a bed of gnocchetti seasoned with melisse, an herb that resembles mint and tastes like sweet lemon, is a crustacean sensation.
“My favorite dish is pigeon,” Hache says of his roasted Pigeon de Vendee with fingernail-sized glazed onions and ravioli plumped up with the bird’s thighs and served in a bouillon. “All game birds are difficult to cook well. The trick is carving them correctly.” The tubby pigeon is a two-star deal at $77. Hache says the upscale Crillon’s prosperous clientele is no longer willing to spend a fortune on small portions of fashionable food and bottles of big-ticket wine.
“Even the wealthy want a bargain,” says Hache. A three-course meal at Le Crillon including dessert costs about $160 plus wine. Sound pricey? Remember what an impoverished Ernest Hemingway counseled in his novel “A Moveable Feast.” “When I had money,” Hemingway wrote, “I went to the Crillon.”
