Which came first, the fried chicken or the Champagne?
The answer doesn’t matter. What’s important is that they belong in the same sentence, and on the same table.
It may seem incongruous to those who equate Champagne with frothy social events or haute cuisine, but wine lovers have long known the uncanny rapport of ethereal Champagne and crisp fried chicken.
Why not? Champagne is great with all sorts of foods, and it particularly excels with fried dishes. Try it with tempura, fried whitebait or potato chips. But something about the crackle of the crust, the snap of the bubbles and the salt, spice and rich chew of the chicken makes for an extraordinary combination. Some might want to get technical, explaining how the acidity of the wine cuts through the fattiness of the chicken, but I’m more concerned with the magic.
A new restaurant in the Flatiron district, Coqodaq, is capitalizing on this affinity. It offers superb Korean-style fried chicken and one of the greatest Champagne lists I’ve seen, with 100 bottles of sparkling wine, mostly Champagne, at $100 and under (nowadays pretty reasonable for restaurant Champagne), along with many more, including highly coveted bottles, that soar above that mark.
This magnetism between haute and humble is nothing new to the fashion and art worlds. Pairing pearls with, say, a biker jacket and jeans, might once have been transgressive. Same with the art of Takashi Murakami, who blends traditional Japanese techniques with elements of popular culture. Now, they are time-honored combinations, even if, like fried chicken and Champagne, they appear to break the rules.
That wine has rules of any sort is both unnecessary and intimidating. Many people can’t enjoy wine for fear of breaking a taboo or committing a faux pas. Others miss out on many of the pleasures of wine by never crossing the boundaries set by those so-called rules. Most of these rules aren’t even rules, but tired customs, conventional wisdom that functioned first as a general guideline but then became rigid, snobbish and exclusionary.
Did anybody ever decree that Champagne must go only with “highbrow” cuisine? For that matter, what isn’t highbrow about great fried chicken, or excellent pizza, or barbecue, if we are talking in terms of quality rather than pretension? Pizza and barbecue can also be wonderful matches with Champagne, as well as with Barolo, to mention another wine typically reserved for special occasions.
I believe in matching wine to the occasion. If I were sitting at home with a bucket of fried chicken in front of the TV, I might not open a bottle of Champagne or any other expensive wine. I might have a few glasses of good cava, or maybe some riesling or Beaujolais because, after all, any good, fresh wine will go well with fried chicken. I might save the Champagne for a more festive gathering with friends.
Coqodaq is not the first restaurant to pair fried chicken and Champagne, though it’s maybe the most ambitious. Bubbles and Birds was a bar in downtown Manhattan with that same laser focus, while Bubbledogs in London paired Champagne with hot dogs.
Nor is it the only place to play the high-low game. Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, Brooklyn, used to have an excellent wine list with plenty of bubbles before the pandemic. The restaurant is building it back up again. I once drank Barbaresco with Angelo and Gaia Gaja, the great Barbaresco producers, with pizza at La Pizza Fresca near Union Square, before it closed. More recently, I stopped in at La Barbecue in Austin, Texas, and noticed a small but very good display of Champagne there. As I was on my own, I drank beer with the superb brisket and enjoyed it thoroughly.
These sorts of unexpected juxtapositions are wonderful opportunities that occur all too rarely. They are also only the beginning of the delicious discoveries to be made by flouting convention. At one recent meal, I ordered a glass of white wine with a salad and then a glass of Chianti Classico with a pasta with pork ragù. I love Chianti with a cooked tomato sauce, but I still had half a glass of the white, a Contra’ Soarda vespaiolo from the Veneto, so I tried it with the ragù. It was so good, I finished the white and left most of the red.
Did I know I would like the combination? I had no idea. It was a lucky discovery that will endure with me.
People often open expensive and exalted wines for their symbolic value, amplifying whatever meaning a particular occasion holds. That’s perfectly understandable, but the joy of the wine itself disappears sometimes under the weight of what it represents. With fried chicken, a wine like Champagne has an opportunity to be no more than a delicious wine. The informality of the food makes the wine easier to enjoy for what it is, rather than for what it represents.
Plenty of discoveries await. I can attest that chili con carne with beans is wonderful with Cornas. Riesling is delicious with pizza. It’s probably time to try even more outlandish combinations.
Back in June 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the United States in an effort to cement its relationship with England should war with Germany come. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited them to his estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., where they attended a picnic. The main course was hot dogs. The king apparently ate two and, according to the headline in The Times, drank beer with them.
A perfect combination. Champagne would have sent the wrong message about democracy. In that case, the connotations were inescapable. But I bet it would have been great with hot dogs.
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