Sharp-eyed menu readers might have recently noticed a new pedigreed poultry around town. The Sasso chicken, as it’s called, has quickly become a signature dish at both Lowlife, where chef Alex Leonard grills it over binchotan charcoal and shellacs it with an Asian glaze, and Le Turtle, whose chef Greg Proechel brines, hangs, and whole-roasts the bird to a supreme crispness before parading it through the dining room on a pile of smoldering hay. What do these restaurants have in common besides the Sasso? Both chefs worked at Blanca under Carlo Mirarchi, who first introduced them to this particular strain of poultry, now also found at Claudette, Tessa, Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, Atrium Dumbo, and, not coincidentally, Concord Hill, whose opening sous-chef had worked for another Mirarchi adherent, Max Sussman. What exactly is this mystery fowl? A bit of digging around poultry-distribution channels reveals that Sasso is not a breed or a farm but an acronym for Sélection Avicole de la Sarthe et du Sud Ouest, a major player in France’s chicken-breeding business that supplies the genetics for birds reared everywhere from Manila to the United Kingdom.
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