Crispy Chicken, Mozzarella Cheese, Thai Basil, Red Sauce

Our inspiration here is obvious: chicken parm. We've got the classic elements: crispy chicken, mozzarella cheese, basil, and a red sauce; but a closer look reveals a few key differences. First, our chicken is breaded in panko; we found that that this helps with the crispiness of the cutlet. Second, and most importantly, our sauce is not your classic red sauce - it's actually not Italian-American at all.

We had been tinkering with a dish called "Manchurian Chicken" for a few months - a staple on Chinese restaurant menus in India that we had found through eating and research. The sauce is spicy (hello, cumin and garlic), sweet from tomatoes, and loaded with peppers (both the hot and bell varieties). We found the sauce to be deliciously reminiscent of a spicy tomato sauce - the perfect complement, it turned out, to the chicken parm idea we'd been simultaneously toying with. And so, this sandwich was born.