The hardest part about placing a to-go order from Central Michel Richard is actually spitting out the words over the phone: "Yes, I'd like a bucket of fried chicken, please." It's sort of like calling the White House and asking to speak to the groundskeeper.

Just as mind-boggling: Richard, the local French chef-restaurateur better known for his haute eye candy, says KFC was the inspiration behind his bucketful of fried chicken, one of many items on Central's new to-go lunch menu. (In addition to ordering by phone, you can place a walk-in order and wait 15 minutes in the lounge.) It seems that back in the mid-1970s, when Richard was working in Manhattan, he and a friend made a road trip to Boston and detoured to one of the Colonel's outlets.

"I fell in love with the texture of the fried chicken: crisp, crisp, crunch, crunch," Richard recalls, laughing. "That texture, I never saw that in France before."

If Richard's fried chicken proves anything, it's that "context" is not some lofty term exclusive to conceptual artists. Inside the warm golden cocoon of Central, the chef's signature chicken is just another part of the refined gustatory experience, a chef-driven take on the people's fast food. Outside those downtown walls, however, Richard's dish is transformed into God's takeout, immediately reordering the hierarchy of to-go fried chicken options into Central and everybody else. Granted, deities will have an easier time coughing up $29.95 for three breasts, three bone-in thighs, six "nuggets," a container of mashed potatoes and creamy Dijon dipping sauce.

This chicken is no hothouse flower. The bird parts travel well. We at The Post Food section didn't dig into our bucket until an hour after the scheduled pickup time. While cooler than normal, the chicken remained crisp and moist, its flavors still concentrated inside Richard's unique binder. Like most chefs, Richard at first tried to bind day-old bread crumbs (he prefers the term "bread lumps") to his chicken by using egg. It didn't work. That's when he developed his "chicken mayonnaise," an integral part of the fried chicken recipe found in the chef's "Happy in the Kitchen" cookbook (Artisan, 2006).

"Chicken mayonnaise is [processed] raw chicken with a little bit of chicken stock and a little bit of milk," he said.

First poached, then cooled and coated in the "mayonnaise," the skinless free-range bird is next dipped into day-old bread crumbs and briefly fried in vegetable oil. The Colonel would have surely changed his secret recipe had he lived long enough to taste this fried chicken, though he might have bought the farm earlier had he sampled Richard's decadent mashed potatoes, which contain enough butter to cause a dietitian to faint on the spot.

The only failing is in the packaging. Richard's bucket comes with Central's logo affixed to it, a sort of sloppy DIY job. That could change. "Somebody [told] me yesterday, I should have my face on that bucket," the chef says. Wearing a white suit and black string tie, we hope.

-Tim Carman (Good to Go, March 9, 2011)

2010 Fall Dining Guide

By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, October 17, 2010

Opening chef Cedric Maupillier was replaced by Arthur Cavaliere this past winter, and the result is a more American accent on the menu. The new guy, a Philly native, has designed a cheesesteak worthy of a Michel Richard establishment: It's a raft of crisp bread hovering over (sous-vide) beef and pickled onions, completed with a bouquet of fat steak fries and a sauce boat of house-made "Cheez Whiz." Regulars can still find many of the dishes that have kept this glam bistro busy since its launch three years ago. They include a ceviche of jewel-like fluke, corn, chayote and sweet potatoes in an electric emulsion, fetchingly staged on shaved ice; a teepee of brined, crumbed and garlicky frog legs, impressively plump; fabulous fried chicken; steak tartare of distinction; and some of the most beautiful salads you've ever seen. Some plates -- cubes of pork belly served with barbecue sauce, diver scallops set on creamed corn -- taste ordinary in comparison. And some servers are better than others. At a recent dinner, my waiter forgot a side dish and poured wine too fast. ("Want another bottle?" he asked -- ahead of our appetizers showing up.) Desserts, however, remain divine. The snow-white napoleon rises from its pool of vanilla custard sauce like a Swiss mountain, and the elegant chocolate bar suggests a Kit Kat by way of heaven rather than Hershey's.