The Cost of Chicken Is Too Damn High
Not much stops me cold in New York City. But glancing at a newly posted menu outside a restaurant in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I did a double take — my jaw genuinely dropped.
I immediately texted the group chat: "How much do you think a rotisserie chicken costs at the cool new spot near me?"
Nobody came close to guessing $77 — the listed price for a whole rotisserie chicken at Gigi's, served with roasted potatoes and a trio of sauces.
The internet, predictably, erupted. When food influencer Mike Chau posted that Gigi's half chicken runs $40, the backlash was swift. Even New York City Council Member Chi Osse — who represents a neighboring district — weighed in, posting a rainbow-gradient, all-caps meme reading "$40 Half Chicken at a Wine Bar? Really?" to more than 8,000 likes.
Rotisserie chicken is the people's protein — a weeknight staple available at grocery stores nationwide and, apparently, at some of the most buzzed-about tables in New York City. So what does a $77 bird say about the widening wealth gap, the gulf between the leisure class and working people, and the affordability crisis that clearly struck a nerve?
The Gigi's bird traces its origins to a small upstate New York farm, where the chickens sell for roughly $13 to $14 apiece. At the restaurant, each one is brined, rested in the refrigerator for about 24 hours, then slow-rotated in a specialty rotisserie oven. Chef Thomas Knodell crafts a jus from the drippings while the bird is still warm. Organic Norwich Farm potatoes round out the plate.
Hugo Hivernat, the French restaurateur behind Gigi's, is unapologetic about his labor practices: all employees receive fair wages, paid time off, and health insurance. He describes himself as an "everyday person, not driving a Porsche around the Hamptons." Even so, he's considering rebranding the $77 offering as a "chicken set" — perhaps hoping a different frame softens the sticker shock.
The controversy hasn't hurt business. Gigi's booked up every April reservation almost immediately after opening, and last weekend, walk-ins lined the sidewalk hoping to snag standing room at the window counters. Inside, the fortunate ones settled in with chicken, $10 rice cooked in drippings, and $19 glasses of orange wine.
"Maybe we gave the wrong perception, but this is a small sit-down restaurant, not a bodega," Hivernat says. "Is it bad that we ended up having a half chicken at $40? Probably, yes — but this is how the inflation and the affordability crisis is coming through. It's not our fault we have to charge these prices."
The price of rotisserie and roast chicken has long captivated New Yorkers. A Reddit thread from last summer invited locals to nominate the city's most expensive half chicken. Among the contenders: the $78 poulet rôti with foie gras jus, pommes Fifi, and salade verte at Chez Fifi, an upscale brasserie tucked inside an Upper East Side townhouse, and the $85 half golden chicken chargrilled and served with baked borlotti beans, wild cress, and salsa verde at King, a corner bistro in SoHo.
At the other end of the spectrum, Badaboom, a French rotisserie spot in Bed-Stuy, prices its chicken with potatoes at $32 for a half and $58 for a whole. In April, the restaurant plans to host a "pay what you think is fair" evening, according to co-owner Henry Glucroft.
"There's been mass-produced, artificially cheap chicken in the market for some time now, and it's creating this divide," Glucroft says. "People expect chicken to be the cheapest protein; we want to serve quality chicken." He's quick to point out the value proposition, though: "Sharing a half chicken for two — $16 each for dinner — is an insane value. It's our top-selling item. The only pushback we've ever had on pricing is from people who never actually ordered the chicken."
Hivernat sees it the same way. Learning that Council Member Osse had yet to visit Gigi's, he reached out to Osse's office to open a conversation about the steep, often prohibitive costs of operating a business in New York City — an issue Hivernat believes played a role in Mayor Zohran Mamdani's victory last year.
Affordable rotisserie chicken is hardly scarce across the city, of course — it simply doesn't come with a curated wine list or a stylish dining room. Pio Pio sells a whole Peruvian rotisserie chicken for $28. The Fly's trendy version runs $34. And Jubilee Market, just blocks from Gigi's, offers a "Five Buck Cluck" widely regarded as the best supermarket rotisserie chicken in the neighborhood. (A reputation well earned, in this reporter's view.)
Whether a $77 rotisserie chicken is worth the price is ultimately a matter of personal judgment — but the sticker shock points to a far deeper crisis gripping the restaurant industry, one long considered unsustainable. And it's a crisis that extends to diners as well. If the cost of eating out puts regular visits to independent, neighborhood restaurants out of reach for most people, does dining out remain a genuine part of daily life — or does it quietly become a luxury reserved for special occasions?
The pecking order of capitalism reliably rewards those at the top. Perhaps an outrageously priced rotisserie chicken is exactly the kind of provocation needed to prompt a harder conversation about what — and who — we actually value.
