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MenuMasters: Fried chicken ramen and Sichuan pepper wingsMenuMasters: Fried chicken ramen and Sichuan pepper wings

Plus Buffalo-style beef tartare, French onion agnolotti, frybread tacos and a Margarita with a candy cane

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

December 9, 2021

6 Slides
Wingstop Orange Szechuan sauce

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If you’re wondering how many menu items can be made with fried chicken, keep wondering. New uses continue to be found for the delicacy, which is found in many cuisines across the world, including Japan, where it’s often dusted in a light flour coating before being fried. That technique, called karaage, is now being used at Jinya Ramen Bar, where the chicken is plopped into the ramen broth itself.

Buffalo wings are also an item that’s growing in popularity. Originating decades ago in Buffalo, N.Y., as fried chicken wings tossed in a spicy and vinegary sauce served with blue cheese dressing and celery, now both the wings and the sauce have taken on lives of their own. The flavor combination is being used in a beef tartare at the new Parlour Room in New York City. Wings, of course, are virtually ubiquitous now and are the key menu item of several chains, including Wingstop. That chain’s latest innovation is a new sauce made with Sichuan peppercorns.

Margaritas are trendy, too, of course, and Chili’s Grill & Bar is celebrating the holidays with the Merry Berry ’Rita, garnished with a festive candy cane.

At Church and Union in Nashville, chef Adam Hodgson is finding a new use for French onion soup by gelatinizing it and stuffing it in agnolotti, and in Denver, at Kachina Cantina, guests have a choice of having their taco on corn or flour tortillas or, in a nod to local Native American culture, frybread.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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