At the Table

How Maneet Chauhan Does Hot Chicken

By: Hannah Lee Leidy

The Perfect Bite

After her first star turn on Chopped in 2011, Maneet Chauhan was inundated by offers from potential partners to open a restaurant in big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and…Nashville? “I was like, ‘Where the beep is Nashville?’” the Indian-born chef is fond of saying. “But I came here and just fell in love.” One of the deal-sealers: That most spicy of the city’s institutions. “Hot chicken had a big influence on me moving here. It’s the epitome of the perfect bite: the texture, the flavor, the juiciness,” she says. “It just blew my mind.” So naturally she came up with an Indian spin on the chicken that lured her South for the menu at her first Music City restaurant, Chauhan Ale & Masala House. Crispy, spicy chicken nuggets tossed in ghost pepper sauce, hot chicken pakoras are a mashup of Chicken 65—a snack from the South of India where she went to cooking school—and the Nashville classic. Five years and four restaurants later, Chauhan still makes the dish for her family, only now she cuts up a whole chicken to fry instead of nuggets— proof that she’s more Nashvillian than ever.

Maneet Chauhan’s Hot Chicken

Date Published: 01.16.20
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About The Author

Hannah Lee Leidy

Hannah Lee Leidy is a food writer and editor based in the Carolinas. She is currently the digital content editor for Our State magazine, a position she came into following her time at The Local Palate. Her contributions have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Culture, and Eater. She’s spent time working in restaurants in both front and back of house positions, doing everything from burning gateaux to expediting to shaking a Manhattan (don’t worry, this only happened once). An avid curd nerd, her favorite beat is reporting on boutique cheese makers; she’ll sniff out every creamery near and far whenever traveling. When not parenting a Bernese mountain pup named Ava, you’ll find her running or working on her lamination technique.

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  • Harwyn Lim
    October 18, 2022 at 4:24 pm

    Love her taste of food

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