(classical music)
- (All) Chickenwatch!
- Good morning.
- It's another episode of chickenwatch.
- Oh, sun in the eye.
- And we're ready to go eat some fried chicken.
Today on chickenwatch, we are having Indian fried chicken.
- Ooo, we're very excited, I don't know what to expect.
- I don't know what to expect either.
It's a place called Badmaash in downtown L.A.
Turns out downtown L.A. is a great chicken spot.
- Chicken hub.
It's either your face goes bright red or bright white.
- Oh, this looks awful.
- God, damn it.
- It's like the ugliest. - We look like tomatoes.
- How does (mumbles) do it?
Here we are, it's Chickenwatch.
We're in downtown L.A. and our guest today is Swasti.
Tell us about yourself, Swasti, in ten seconds.
- Ten seconds.
I produce food videos and it's fun and I like fitness
and I like food.
That's why I'm here.
- That was pretty good for ten seconds.
- Three seconds under time, let's keep going.
- Chickenwatch.
- I was like, Dad, don't judge a book by it's cover.
(laughs)
It wasn't funny.
- Oh, hi there. Welcome to
- Chickenwatch.
- Right this way.
- Oh, hi there welcome to
- Badmaash.
- So here we do some traditional Indian food,
some not so traditional Indian food.
We have fun with Indian flavors and we invented
the fried butter chicken sammich.
- What is butter chicken?
- It's basically butter, makhan and cream, a bunch
of spices and it tastes amazing.
- So usually we go, what's the history of this fried chicken
but history's right in this building.
- We had to do a burger pop up and we had
to come with the heat.
Everyone was making some beef burgers, some this burger,
some that burger and we're like,
let's just make a fried chicken sandwich.
We took a big piece of fried chicken,
dunked it in some butter chicken sauce,
threw it on some grocery store buns.
- And hey, maybe some lettuce would be nice.
- Oh shit, and then we ate it and it was delicious.
- Were you disqualified from the burger competition?
- No, we won.
- Oh wow, wow.
- We won.
Chickenwatch.
I spat on myself a little bit.
♪ Do you see ♪
♪ All the chicken how we eatin' ♪
♪ All the time fast wings finger lickin' ♪
♪ Don't know how to stop ♪
♪ In my chickenwatch ♪
♪ All I do ♪
♪ Gonna find another chicken spot ♪
Learning how to cook the chicken, take one.
(clap)
Nakul, how do we do this?
- Starts with chicken thighs, dark meat, nice and fatty.
It's been marinated for 48 hours in ginger, garlic, serrano.
- Ooo.
- Chickenwatch.
- And then, we just drop it in flour.
Shake it off.
Just give it a little shaky, shaky
and now egg wash.
- I don't think we ever talk enough
about how the process of fried chicken is to dip chicken
in a chicken product.
- And then a seasoned flour.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah there it is.
- Press it.
- She's got two hands, that's called the double dragon.
- Where does Nakul come from, Nakul?
- Nakul is actually a mythological Hindu prince
from the Marhabhart.
- Whoa wait, so is that your birth name?
- Yeah.
- Nakul is a cool name, sounds like a nickname.
- I still haven't found my sonic.
Shake it off a little bit and you want to swoosh it
back and forth, back and forth.
- (Chris) Whoa, I've never seen that.
- (Nakul) And now gently let go.
- Wow. - Wow.
- So beautiful.
- (Nakul) We pull it out, we let it cool and
then we drop it in again.
- Oh, it's like it's nice and quiet.
It's like it's whispering to you it's like it's just going,
shh. - Shh.
- It's a little bit of a bedtime story I'd say.
(lullaby)
- So Mogambo is a super villain
in the movie Mr. India.
Our favorite Indian movie of all time.
He wears this crazy like Michael Jackson outfit.
- Hail Mogambo.
- And he's got this pool of lava that he opens up.
He like demands his people to jump in the pool of lava
to show their alliance to Mogambo.
And so us dropping the chicken into this red saucy thing
is kind of like us dropping the chicken into the lava.
- (Chris) Saucy. - Oh, god. Chickenwatch.
- And then he'll say Mogambo khush hua.
We've got some lettuce here
and that's just gonna sit right on top.
- Yum. - Oh, yeah.
- That's a chicken watch.
- Some sweet cucumber pickles on top.
Close it, drop a flag in it.
- (man) Can I get a flag here?
- Fried butter chicken sandwich,
- Yum.
Budmaash khush hua.
- That was awesome.
Chickenwatch.
- Chickenwatch.
- (man) Oh, you're fine.
- (Keith) Chickenwatch. - (Chris) Chickenwatch.
- Alright, let's try it.
- Oh, wow.
- Oh, that's very good.
- Mm.
- Wow, there's so many flavors.
- Untraditional flavors.
- Uh-huh.
- I like the soft to crunch.
- It's like ASMR but not audio.
ASMR for your mouth.
- What's the spices that are in it?
- Paprika, cayenne pepper, Indian rock salt
so black salt, little bit of kosher salt, pepper.
- Yeah, it's a little enhanced
than the regular butter chicken sauce.
- Enhanced?
- Yeah.
- This is really good but it doesn't taste
like a traditional fried chicken sandwich.
It's kind of hard to wrap my head around.
I would give it, I'd give it a thumbs up.
- (Keith) Would you?
- Yeah.
- (Swasti) The pickles honestly add to this for me
cause it's like a sweetness.
- Mh-mmm.
- To the salt and spice.
Here's my question.
- Yes?
- Just, I mean for the Indian vegetarians out there,
do you all make like a paneer version of that?
- Well here's my answer,
no.
(laughs)
- Okay, screw that then.
- The whole essence of a fried chicken sammich,
is the fried chicken.
- It's true.
- So I'm sorry you do not get paneer, not this time.
But if you want our butter chicken sub paneer,
we can do that.
- Nice.
- That's what's confusing it me is it tastes
like Indian food and it tastes like fried chicken.
It's weird cause it's kind of rich but I was not
like too full from that at all.
I could eat 16 more.
How many sandwiches do you think you sell a week?
- So I think it'd be even more popular if it was on the menu
but this is a secret.
- What do you mean, it's a secret and
it's still super popular?
- (Arjun) Yes.
- We're making a video about it,
so someone else is gonna know.
I hope you're okay with that.
- Chickenwatch tell 'em.
- Chickenwatch.
- I'm already upset because I'm halfway through
which means it's almost over.
Oh, god.
That's the worst part of a fried chicken dinner
is when you run out of fried chicken.
- And you know it's almost over.
- It's almost over.
- It's like being in the last chapter of a book
when everything's coming together and it's nice,
but at the same time you know it's almost over.
- (Keith) Oh, it's a really good book.
- It's a really good book.
- And you wish it wasn't over
because you had such a good time.
- It's a little bit of a tragedy.
- Chickenwatch. - Chickenwatch.
- Where are all the books?
- Oh, chickenwatch.
- That sounds like a scary movie.
- I totally understand that people would know about this
even though it's a secret menu item because
this is the kind of secret menu item
that you go tell people about.
- This is your New York Times Best Seller list.
- Yes, call Oprah.
This is one for the books.
- Ha.
- Chickenwatch.
- So we have a fried chicken plate on our menu
served with a serrano cream.
- Wait so there's a second fried chicken here
we haven't even talked about?
- Yeah, we haven't talked about it.
- Bonus tasting.
- Let's try the chicken.
- It's the same exact chicken.
We just fry it and dust it with a little bit of spice.
- It's delicious, I love it.
- Wow, a lot of flavor.
- Steam test. - Steam test.
Wow, I can see that steam.
You guys see the steam?
- Steam test. - (Keith) Nice.
- This is one of the most dynamic chickens we've had
in our search for the world's best chicken.
I think.
- Can I have more?
How much more can I have?
I want more.
I'll buy more.
- To be this is interesting because Indian people
don't have fried chicken.
It's always like butter chicken, biryani chicken,
chicken tikka masala.
♪ Tikki-Tikki-Tikki masala ♪
- But this just like changed it up.
- I feel like this on top of some basami rice
can be really good too.
- Basmati rice?
- Basmati, fuck I knew it. - Nope, bastomi rice.
- Butstomi. - Butstomi.
- Buttoms. - Buttomi.
- Butt munch.
- Buttomis. - Mario Buttomi.
- Bustomi, what is it?
- Basmati. - Busmati.
- Chickenwatch.
- This is not just a silly show,
we're here for a greater purpose.
- Yeah.
- We're trying to find the best fried chicken
in the world.
Do you think that your fried chicken sandwich?
- Well I guess this is the season finale right here.
(laughs)
- You're the only confident chef's we've ever met.
- (Chris) Do you think this could become a trend?
- I think so.
I think this could be a thing.
It's a really good thing, so it should be a thing.
- It's really good.
It's really good and I'm mad that I don't have anymore.
- This is really well done from every angle.
Like the spices are really good,
the frying itself is really good,
the sauce and additions are really good.
- This might get a season wide wow factor.
- Yeah, this is.
- Top wow.
- This is one of the top wow's of the year.
- Yeah.
I think this is an immediate contender
of when people come to visit me,
they have to come here and have some fried chicken.
- (Chris) Wow.
- Badmaash khush hua.
♪ Do you see ♪
♪ All the chicken how we eat it ♪
♪ All the time ♪
♪ Thighs, wings, finger lickin' ♪
- It's also like the chef's are brothers
which is kind of fun.
♪ What we doing here today and tomorrow ♪
♪ We meetin' with chicken brothers ♪
♪ Call 'em pollos hermanos ♪
♪ Comin' at you ♪
♪ Oh yes, we breakin' good ♪
♪ No we breakin' bad ♪
♪ In this neighborhood. ♪
- We're kind of like brothers,
you're kind of like our sister.
- Kind of, yes, yes. - Yeah.
Like a sister we just met today.
(laughs)
- Can you try to pick it up with your fingernail
and put it in your mouth?
- Can you just try?
You got to really go for it.
- I'm trying, it's not happening.
Oh, here we go.
There it is.
- (Keith) Funny.
- (Chris) Yeah, nails work as forks.
- Nailed it.
- Chickenwatch.