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Good Taste: How well do you know roast chicken?

Roast chicken redux You think you know roast chicken. But chef Olivier de St. Martin, who grew up in Picardy eating roast chickens twice a week, begs to differ. Too many flabby supermarket birds, he says, are pumped with hormones and brine. "They're

Chickens roasting on a spit, over a pan of potatoes, with the fire in the background, at Petit-Rôti. (STEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer )
Chickens roasting on a spit, over a pan of potatoes, with the fire in the background, at Petit-Rôti. (STEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer )Read more
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You think you know roast chicken.

But chef Olivier de St. Martin, who grew up in Picardy eating roast chickens twice a week, begs to differ. Too many flabby supermarket birds, he says, are pumped with hormones and brine.

"They're not healthy."

The free-range Amish lovelies turning on the flaming spits at Petit-Rôti, the rotisserie he just opened near Jefferson Hospital next to his Zinc Bistro à Vins, are his reply, gorgeously bronzed thanks to that special French touch.

As in butter. Lots of it. Infused with garlic, shallots, and sea salt, this butter gets slathered on the night before so it can permeate the flesh, crisp the skin, and hold the juice during a hot, relatively quick roast.

Almost better are the potatoes roasting in pans below, soaking in all that dripping fat and bird essence. There are still kinks.

We would have loved an extra side of jus, and the soup du jour was inedibly oversalted. But Center City's roast-chicken standard, at least, has just been raised.

- Craig LaBan

Whole chicken dinner with vegetables and potatoes, $19 (3.5-pound bird), $15.90 (2.5 pound bird), Petit-Rôti, 248 S. 11th St., 267-457-5447.

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