This is episode five of Robb Report’s series Culinary Masters, where we go behind the scenes with some of America’s best chefs to see how their iconic dishes are made. Watch the previous episodes here.
It was always Marc Forgione’s plan to have a restaurant that cooked the menu over live fire—it just took nearly two decades longer than he had anticipated.
Back when he opened his eponymous Manhattan spot, he planned on having a hearth, but the funding fell short to make it happen. That didn’t keep Restaurant Marc Forgione from becoming beloved and for the chef to turn chicken cooked under a brick into an iconic dish. It’s so popular that he had people wanting to order it when he took over Peasant—despite it not being on the menu. But with Peasant, a restaurant he took over when the original owner retired, he finally got his chance to cook live fire and he so he wanted to do chicken a different way at this storied NoLIta restaurant, making use of a flame-kissed rotisserie to prepare a bird he serves with a romesco sauce he also cooks in a separate wood-fired oven.
In the newest episode of Culinary Masters Forgione shows us how he creates the dish step by step, channeling his Italian roots for the rustic fare he serves at Peasant.
And now he prepares to reopen Restaurant Marc Forgione as Forgione in Tribeca where you can go to get that classic chicken under a brick as well as his chili lobster and his Texas toast as well as his unique takes on new American cuisine.
