The bird is back: Why chickens are ruling the roost in Sydney's restaurants

• 10 of the tastiest chooks in Sydney
• Our best chicken recipes

Chicken. Once it was the most boring dish on an otherwise interesting menu, but in the past few years the humble bird has risen through the roost, with Sydney's best chefs frying, roasting or poaching often free-range or heritage breeds. It seems every month we get a new restaurant or takeaway joint that serves only chicken and we celebrate it by lining up around the corner. Sydney feels like chicken tonight, and tomorrow, and the night after that – and the restaurant scene is more than happy to accommodate.

Sydney wasn't always like this. Acme head chef Mitch Orr reflects on the dark years before he and the now LA-based chef Thomas Lim started cooking at Duke Bistro in 2010. "Before Duke there was no fried chicken on restaurant menus," Orr says. "You could always rely on a place like Arisun for that Korean fried chicken hit, but no one had put it on a one-hat menu yet."

The groundbreaking Duke Bistro is remembered for dishes such as kingfish gin-and-tonic and radishes in dashi butter, but while they were open, it was all about the wings. Brined, glazed, twice fried and served with coleslaw milk. "We basically put it on so we could always have fried chicken to eat," Orr says. "The added bonus of it being easy to prep, fun, tasty and good to take to the club after service all added to its appeal."

Orr was often seen in nightclubs after work, wielding a foil package of leftover wings, handing them out to overjoyed punters who would quickly be hooked for life.

Duke Bistro closed in 2013, along with the rest of the Flinders Hotel, but its fine-dining fried chicken legacy lived on. Chefs Dan Hong and Jowett Yu added a whole fried spatchcock to the menu at Ms. G's in Potts Point, while in Newtown, American chef Gregory Llewellyn and his Australian wife (and restaurant manager) Naomi Hart opened Hartsyard in 2012, their first Australian restaurant together. With southern-style fried chicken that took three days to prepare, Hartsyard quickly became Sydney's new fried chicken stronghold.

"Fried chicken is the holy grail of fried foods," Llewellyn says. "It's the crunchy crust, the salt, the grease, eating with your hands, bone-sucking goodness."

Hartsyard was the first place to do southern fried chicken properly in Sydney, with Llewellyn influenced by the fried chicken he'd grown up with, along with the variations he'd cooked in restaurants all over the US. "Southern fried chicken is like mole in Mexico: everyone has their own version. To buttermilk or not to buttermilk, to brine or not to brine, deep fry versus pan fry. I love a bit of black pepper in the coating, it has to be buttermilked and it's gotta be crispy as hell," says Llewellyn, who rates Bojangles chicken, a chain started in North Carolina. "They have the greatest biscuits on earth. If only they had the Colonel's coleslaw."

KFC ignited some Sydney chefs' love of the fried bird. Ten years ago it was the only fried chicken chef Morgan McGlone was eating. But a stint cooking at Husk in Nashville under renowned southern chef Sean Brock made McGlone realise just how good fried chicken could be. "Fried chicken is one of the cornerstone options in southern cuisine. It's as important as barbecue and collard greens," he says. "Every southern table I've eaten at will always have some form of fried chicken."

McGlone brought Nashville-style "hot" fried chicken, which incorporates a mix of cayenne and spices in its crisp batter, to Australia when he opened Belles Hot Chicken in Melbourne in 2014. The instant-hit popped up at Barangaroo last year but has since become a permanent fixture. McGlone has also taken over as head chef at Harpoon Harry in Surry Hills, where he's showing his knowledge of southern cuisine goes beyond his love of fried chicken.

Sydney has always had a strong Korean fried chicken scene, with Chinatown's Arisun still as good a place to eat a hot battered bird as it was when it opened almost a decade ago (more recent arrivals NaruOne and the Sparrow's Mill are pretty great, too). But Korean fried chicken has never been as refined as at Moon Park in Redfern. Here, chefs Eun Hee Ann and Ben Sears put a modern spin on Korean classics, including shrimp-brined chicken, fried and bursting with flavour.

Sears tries to explain the attraction of Korean-style fried bird: "I can tell you it's good because there's so much going on ... salty, sweet, spicy if you want, savoury. All the 's' words. It's like fried chicken turned up to 11."

Chicken burgers, too, are attracting fans, with newcomers Butter (Surry Hills), Juicy Lucy (Surry Hills) and Thirsty Bird (Potts Point) all offering scoffable options. But few chicken burgers have been Instagrammed more than Pinbone's fried, smoky and spicy number.

"We did the chicken burger because if we did a beef it would have just been white noise," says Pinbone's Mike Eggert, now at 10 William St. "Beef burgers aren't worth doing if you don't have the right set-up. With chicken burgers, I can dictate all the elements without relying on tools."

Eggert also says chicken has "a massive ethical focus attached to it", and, these days, chefs have greater access to free-range, respectfully raised birds.

While another 10 paragraphs about fried chicken would be easy (another fried chicken joint probably just opened up next door to you while you were reading), it's not the only style of chicken that has grown in popularity recently. Many were surprised when the first Merivale venture featuring ex-Momofuku Seiobo head chef Ben Greeno focused on a rotisserie chicken, but since opening last November, it's been packed to the gills with locals, attracted by the smoky fumes of the slowly turning chooks.

Greeno has seen a huge change in diners since his last restaurant. "Early in the week we get a lot of families in here sharing a chicken and a few sides. We try and keep it exciting by changing up the garnish at the moment. We do two garnishes, fries and salad and white bean, pickles, harissa. I think it's a comfort thing."

The standout dish at Bar Brose, the new restaurant and bar opened by the Acme team, which includes Orr, is a take on poulet au vin jaune, a classic French dish that head chef Analiese Gregory first tried in France.

"I was driving through Bresse [home of the legendary poulet de Bresse] during their once-a-year chicken festival, but every single rotisserie chicken had been pre-sold." Eventually she found an inn that sold chicken with vin jaune (wine sauce) and morels (wild mushrooms).

"It was ridiculously comforting, and ever since, it's a dish I've made for friends and family," Gregory says. "When we opened the bar I decided it made more sense to make it with Australian wine as opposed to imported so I tasted as many Australian-made oxidative wines as I could to find the right blend to recreate the original sauce." Diners looking for a healthy option should look elsewhere – Gregory's joyously luxe dish is made complete with foie gras butter and crisp pieces of chicken skin. Mmmm.

Chicken may not be any cooler that it was a few years ago (Orr says, "to me, chicken's been cool since mum discovered KanTong and Chicken Tonight"), but it's no longer the safe, basic option on our menus.