Crispy Gai chef/owner Cyle Reynolds is featured in a Washington Post article about fine dining chefs making the leap to fried chicken.
It’s easy to forget, but chefs are consumers, too. Cyle Reynolds recalls frequently going out to eat Thai-style fried chicken after his shift at Canvas, a fine-dining restaurant in Bangkok that he helped open in 2016. In Maine a few years later, when his plan to sign a restaurant lease fell through — on March 30, 2020, no less — Reynolds turned to happier memories of fried chicken. He now runs a Thai-style fried chicken restaurant called Crispy Gai in downtown Portland, Maine, with two business partners.