Last month, I attended the International Chicken Gastronomy Festival in Twickenham. There was some questioning as to why I would want to spend my weekend gorging on fried chicken. None more so than from my significant other, a vegetarian. Part of the reason for this life choice (so she tells me) is that she once owned three pet chickens, Little Ginge, Gonzo and Mabel, who met their natural end in the food chain: being eaten by a fox.

Despite becoming a cheap option on the high street, chicken is also the trendiest

Despite becoming a cheap option on the high street, chicken is also the trendiest

ROOST, as the event is known, is devoted to celebrating the humble chicken in all its fried, saucy and increasingly elaborate forms – ‘bird cookery without borders’. Traders included Bernard Hardison, the ‘Baptizer of Fried Chicken’, who is famous for submerging large batches of chicken into a custom deep fryer, and FOWL, a London-based chicken eatery owned by the founders behind the notable restaurant Fallow. Gone are the days of fried chicken being the preserve of greasy takeaways; it has now entered the realm of the modern ‘foodie’ and influencer, arguably the most notable being Eating with Tod, who uploads TikToks of himself grotesquely dipping wings into gargantuan buckets of condiment.

This change hasn’t been sudden. Chicken has taken over. The Financial Times has noted that there had been a 50 per cent increase in global chicken production in 2006 to 2023, from 48.3bn to 76.2bn. Chicken........

© The Spectator