How the Butter Chicken Calzone Became a Best-Seller at Superkhana International
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When Bombay Breakdown pop-up alums Yoshi Yamada and Zeeshan Shah were working on the opening menu of their now seven-year-old modern Indian restaurant, Superkhana International, butter chicken didn’t enter the conversation. At first, that is.
Bread and rice certainly did, specifically “pizza-esque Indian breads” baked in a stone floor deck oven, recalls Yamada. The idea didn’t coalesce until Lula Cafe chef Jason Hammel, a partner in the restaurant, casually suggested a mashup that incited laughter and then light bulbs. “We were throwing out ideas and literally out of the blue, Jason, who has very Italian roots, said, ‘what about something like a buttered chicken calzone?’ He just spat it out,” says Yamada. Shah, who learned to cook from his Indian grandmother, didn’t grow up eating butter chicken or going out to Indian restaurants, but the wheels started turning for him and Yamada.
“Butter chicken is one of those quintessential Indian restaurant dishes,” says Yamada. “It has a long, interesting, history, and touches on a lot of the complexity of the migration of food and colonialism in India, and all sorts of complex elements of the cuisine and culture,” he says. It is also, as he explains, “one of those profound, comforting dishes,” made all the better with bread. Shah agreed: “It made sense to eat them together.”
The mashup sounded too good to not try, but the chefs had a steep learning curve, since neither had made butter chicken from scratch. They started with the bread, working on a traditional naan with milk, yogurt, and eggs that gets a 48-hour ferment (they use the same recipe for their pizzas). Next up was the masala. “It’s an essential part of the recipe, ” says Yamada. “There are a lot of different masalas for different dishes that are a cornerstone for building the flavor from the bottom up ”
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The mashup sounded too good to not try, but the chefs had a steep learning curve, since neither had made butter chicken from scratch. They started with the bread, working on a traditional naan with milk, yogurt, and eggs that gets a 48 hour ferment (they use the same recipe for their pizzas). Next up was the masala. “It’s an essential part of the recipe, ” says Yamada. “There are a lot of different masalas for different dishes that are a cornerstone for building the flavor from the bottom up ”
The blend, which is in the creamy, tomatoey gravy and the yogurt-based marinade includes cumin, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, black cardamon, Kashmiri chile powder, green cardamom, toasted clove, cinnamon, mustard oil, and kasuri methi or dried fenugreek leaves, which “some people call Indian oregano,” says Yamada. (Their appropriately named “Butter Chicken Masala” blend is now bottled and sold at nearby Epic Spices.)
The chicken is boneless, skinless thighs (they’re working on sourcing a halal version) that are dry-brined for a day, marinated for another, and braised in the marinade the next. Those thighs are cooled, picked, and stuffed into the dough with mozzarella and Indian amul cheeses. “The richness of the butter chicken calzone lends itself to melty cheeses really nicely,” says Shah. “The dish is often finished with fresh cream at restaurants, so it’s not too far off from that. And once the amul melts it’s like a sauce in and of itself.”
The calzones are stuffed, folded into a classic half moon shape, and baked at 650 ℉ for 6-8 minutes. “It gets beautifully tanned all over, so there’s a little bit of crunch, and a lot of beautiful puffs,” says Yamada. The calzones are then finished with ghee and Maldon sea salt when they emerge from the oven.
When it came to size, Shah calls the first iteration “monstrously large,” clocking in around 14 inches. This was intentional: the duo wanted a sharable calzone that would make a splashy impact on the table. “It worked because in the first few months there were people taking the ‘butter chicken calzone challenge.’ They would show up and be like, ‘I’m gonna eat this whole thing’ and post videos,” laughs Shah. “We realized if you finished one you’re not eating anything else.” When Covid hit, they cut the calzone’s dimensions down by half to make it takeout-friendly. “It’s like a little pocket warmer now,” says Yamada. “That more modest calzone took hold and found itself.” It’s since shrunk further into mini versions available on the happy hour menu.
More Indian restaurant dish-inspired calzones have since come out of the Superkhana kitchen, including palak paneer, aloo gobi, and beef keema and paneer, but “none have struck the same chord,” says Yamada. On average, the restaurant sells about 40 butter chicken calzones a night. “It brings all the worlds we’re a part of and wanted to put onto a table together,” says Shah. “The dough work Yoshi did in the past and the Indian-ness of what we’re trying to do now makes sense.” What started out as something of a lark turned out to be a menu mainstay. “You never know what people are going to respond to or connect with and we hoped people would love it,” says Yamada. “We’re really happy they did.”
Liz Grossman has been a Chicago-based writer, editor and storyteller for 25 years. She’s the former editor-in-chief of Plate magazine and co-founder of the nonprofit storytelling series, Between Bites. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Chicago, Robb Report, Flavor & the Menu, and more. Follow her @elizabites_Chi, and follow @Resy while you’re at it.
