Thanks to the prevalence of poultry-centric fast-food chains like Popeyes, Chester’s and Raising Cane’s, it’s fairly difficult not to associate spicy fried chicken with drive-thru windows, plastic utensils and paper napkins. But, as Eleven Madison Park alum Eric Huang has proven with his pop-up-turned-brick-and-mortar piquant poultry palace Pecking House in Brooklyn, fine-dining expertise certainly can find a place in the kitchens of hot chicken joints. And, about 2,200 miles east on I-80 W from Huang’s rooster restaurant is another testament to that fact.
Born in a Malaysian refugee camp in 1979 to Vietnamese parents who immigrated to the Bay Area when he was seven months old, three-time James Beard-nominated chef Viet Pham graduated from the California Culinary Academy in 2002 and interned at Michelin-starred Fifth Floor Restaurant (now closed) in San Francisco while attending school. A California caterer for a spell, Pham relocated to Utah in 2008 and opened a restaurant called Forage in Salt Lake City that put the 44-year-old on the map. He was named Food & Wine’s Best New Chef in 2011.
That distinction led to appearances on the Food Network — where Pham has beaten Bobby Flay twice on Iron Chef America — and a run on the network’s Next Star program in 2013. Pham was eliminated halfway through, and he was forced to stay in Los Angeles while the show finished taping. That confinement led to Pham eventually flying the fine-dining coop.
“I got a chance to explore and eat at a bunch of different places,” Pham tells InsideHook. “I ended up going to a friend’s restaurant in Orange County. He was trying to bring Memphis hot chicken to LA and had a recipe from a place called Uncle Lou’s that he wanted me to try. Until that point, I’d had good fried chicken, bad fried chicken — you name it — and loved them all, but it wasn’t something I was expecting to be inspired by. I sat down with this plate of chicken and took a bite and it blew my mind. From then on, I knew I was going to open a fried chicken restaurant that I could scale. Fast forward, and now I’m a fine dining chef who turned into a fry cook.”
Pham opened Pretty Bird Hot Chicken in 2018, and the restaurant serves up spicy Nashville-style birds in sandwich, tender and nugget form at heat levels that range from mild to hot behind. Pham’s chicken is meant to be less greasy and lighter than what a typical fast-food spot offers. The chicken is pressure fried and brushed with oil before Pretty Bird’s blend of hot peppers and spices is applied.
Marcus Samuelsson’s Fried Chicken Recipe Is an NFT We’d Actually Like to Own
Stella Artois is partnering with the James Beard Foundation to auction off Samuelsson’s Fried Yardbird NFT“I cut my teeth in fine dining and learned a lot about flavors, textures and how to balance all those things out,” Pham says. “At Pretty Bird, we put an incredible amount of thought into how we process, dredge and fry our chicken. At the end of the day, anyone can make something spicy by going online and buying the hottest peppers. We really try to understand how different peppers and spices react to each other and how the heat arrives on your palate. A Carolina Reaper will just numb it, so we use a combination of habanero and ghost chili peppers. Ghost peppers tend to burn from the back to the front, so you can taste all the flavors and then have the heat come up.”
Complemented by a bright buttermilk-based sauce made with hand-squeezed lemon juice and a combination of spices, Pretty Bird’s chicken is the result of plenty of experimentation and trial and error combined with Pham’s fine-dining expertise.
“One of the reasons I left fine dining is I got tired of the type of chef I was becoming,” Pham says. “I hated and was embarrassed to drop off a dish, build a narrative around it and tell people why it was good. There’s nothing more pretentious than telling someone why they should eat a certain dish. With fried chicken, it’s universally loved. Every culture has a version of fried chicken. There’s no narrative built around it or behind it. I’ve spent the greater part of my career chasing stars, awards and accolades, but there’s a lot of political stuff behind it, and I’m kind of over it. I’m happy doing simple food and I’m happy being able to serve it to a wide range of people versus limiting it to a group of people because we’re charging 150 bucks per plate. It would be great to be recognized and get a Michelin star, but who knows? Maybe one day.”
More Like This
Join America's Fastest Growing Spirits Newsletter THE SPILL. Unlock all the reviews, recipes and revelry — and get 15% off award-winning La Tierra de Acre Mezcal.
