Chili crisp adds texture, spice, and umami to restaurant menu items

Spicy, crunchy, savory, and a hit in grocery store aisles, chili crisp has become increasingly popular in restaurants as customers warm to its complex and tingling flavors.

“It’s such a good, fun, universal condiment,” said Shane Schaibly, corporate chef of First Watch, a breakfast, brunch, and lunch chain of around 425 units based in Tampa, Fla. “It lends itself perfectly to eggs, it looks really cool, and the flavor comes through.”

This fall First Watch drizzled it on its Honey Bacon Brussels Hash, made of Brussels sprouts roasted with bacon and honey in a potato hash topped with cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, roasted onions, herbed goat cheese, lemon-dressed arugula and two eggs.

“We tested that a year ago in Tampa and it went really, really well,” Schaibly said, adding that it can stand up to big flavors like those in Brussels sprouts. “I was concerned it would be polarizing, but it seems that chili crisp is having its moment and is in the mainstream enough that everyone knows what it is and isn’t afraid of it, which is awesome.”

Chili crisp is a variation of la jiao, a Mandarin Chinese term simply meaning “spicy oil,” which is made by heating chiles in oil until they become crispy and infuse the oil with their flavor and spiciness. Chili crisp often has crisped up garlic and onion as well, plus Sichuan peppercorns and umami-boosting ingredients such as mushroom powder.

Schaibly said it has long been a secret weapon of kitchen staff for family meals, just as Valentina hot sauce and Tajín were before they made it into dining rooms.

“What used to be best-kept kitchen secrets now can make it to the mainstream, which is cool,” he said.

Chili crisp does indeed seem to be having a moment. It was mentioned on menus 77.8% more times in the year ending in June of 2024 compared to a year earlier, according to Technomic’s Ignite Menu data.

By comparison, mentions of the more mainstream hot honey are up by just 10.5%.

And its use isn’t always mentioned. Fast-casual bowl chain Honeygrow, a chain of around 50 restaurants based in Philadelphia, offers it as an optional free condiment in any of its stir-fry dishes. It was also included in a limited-time offer of garlic butter chicken.

“It exploded,” founder and CEO Justin Rosenberg said. “It did really well.”

Honeygrow also has a Sriracha-tahini stir-fry sauce that is performing well, and adding chili crisp gives it a flavor similar to Sichuan dan dan noodles.

“It’s really good,” he said, adding that he likes to refrigerate it and eat it like a Chinese cold sesame noodle dish.

The garlic butter chicken is back on the menu and is now one of Honeygrow’s top-selling stir-fry dishes, including at a new location in Ohio.

“I would argue that the chili crisp adds excitement to the dish,” Rosenberg said.

Honeygrow is on its third version of chili crisp. It previously imported varieties of it, but found it to be inconsistent, so Rosenberg turned to a domestic brand, Mr. Bing, founded by entrepreneur Brian Goldberg who has since partnered with Thai American celebrity chef Jet Tila.

That same brand is used by casual-dining chain Twin Peaks, a Dallas-based chain of around 100 units that recently introduced chili crisp as a sauce for its wings. 

“There’s so much of it in retail,” Twin Peaks’ director of culinary and menu innovation, Alex Sadowsky, said. “I just went to H.E.B. here, cleaned out one of their aisles [of chili crisp] and we just started tasting through them, and the one that we really ended up falling in love with, that happened to be trying to partner up with a national chain, was Mr. Bing.”

Mr. Bing is also the chili crisp of choice at Moe’s Southwest Grill. The fast-casual burrito chain rolled out Chili Crisp Chicken as an LTO at its more than 600 locations. It’s Moe’s signature Adobo Chicken in a marinade with chili crisp, the chain’s own spice blend, and fresh jalapeño peppers for additional spice, “and a little bit of freshness as well,” said Moe’s executive chef Matt McKinney.

He said he came across chili crisp last hear at an innovation show thrown by distributor Dot Foods, where Jet Tila was speaking.

“I said we have to figure out a way to get this into Moe’s,” McKinney said, noting that it’s similar to the increasingly popular Mexican condiment salsa macha. “The depth of flavor is fantastic.”

And people are buying it. It was tested in the New York City area before being launched nationally, and McKinney said it’s on track to perform around as well as a recent birria LTO that was one of its most successful LTOs to date.

Rich Friedrich, corporate chef of PJW Restaurant Group, a company based in the Philadelphia suburbs that operates 24-unit P.J. Whelihan’s, three-unit The Pour House, and several single-unit concepts, makes his own chili crisp, which he enhances with honey and soy sauce, and uses sesame oil instead of vegetable oil. It’s on the permanent menu at The Pour House dressing Crispy Asian Potstickers, which are pan-fried pork dumplings with sesame ginger sauce, pickled cabbage, furikake, nori, and chili crisp.

“It’s a great universal condiment that we’re going to find more applications for,” he said, adding that it’s great in traditional applications such as on rice dishes and with fish, but also in cross-cultural mashups, such as with hummus.

“That’s one we’re looking at possibly in the future,” he said. “It’s one of my new favorite condiments.”

It’s also a sauce at P.J. Whelihan’s, which is known for its wings.

“Spicy sells for us when it comes to wings,” Friedrich said.

Whelihan’s LTO Firecracker Wings are in a chili crisp sauce enhanced with red pepper flakes, paprika, sugar, salt, serrano peppers, and shallots.

“It’s done extremely well for us. It’s probably going to go on our core menu at some point,” Friedrich said, adding that he’s thinking of putting it on the menu at the company’s pizzeria, Treno, replacing hot honey atop pizza.

“It goes great with red sauce and cheese,” he said.

Chili crisp also made onto the menu at Dave & Buster’s as part of that 160-unit “eatertainment” chain’s wholesale menu revamp in the spring. It dresses its blistered green beans that also have ponzu sauce and roasted peanuts, and the Kickin’ Chicken Potstickers with scallions, cilantro, and ponzu sauce. It’s being tested on Chili Crisp Wings that are available at select locations.

In an email, Dave & Buster’s vice president of food & beverage, David Spirito, explained the chain’s process.

"As we began our menu transformation, we considered trends in the food and beverage space and saw a growing preference for new flavors and interesting ingredients. The successful testing and positive guest feedback to our Kickin’ Chicken Potstickers paved the way for additional innovation and the introduction of Chili Crisp Wings,” he said.

Fast-casual hot dog concept Dog Haus used chili crisp for its June Hawaiian themed LTOs: the Ohana Chicken Sando, for which a fried chicken tender was dressed in chili crisp, spicy mayonnaise, teriyaki aïoli, and slaw and served on a King’s Hawaiian bun; and Mighty Moa Wings, which were tossed in teriyaki aïoli and topped with spicy mayonnaise, chili crisp, and scallions.

“I love chili crisp,” Dog Haus partner Hagop Giragossian said in an email. “I love chili crisp on pancakes. I love chili crisp on pizza. … It has an incredible amount of umami, texture, and heat. We have wanted to work with it for a very long time, but the supply has always been challenging. Due to the increase in popularity, we are now able to get it everywhere, making it something we can finally use in every location nationwide.”

He added that the June LTOs were “incredibly popular,” and that chili crisp would be on the permanent menu “very soon.” 

Chili crisp is also available at 60-unit Pret a Manger, where it dresses its Buffalo Chicken Melt along with Buffalo sauce, Wisconsin cheddar cheese, pickled red onions, and ranch dressing.

Pret’s vice president of food and coffee, Mark Thomas, said in an email that the chili crisp is made in-house and “provides an excellent pop of spice, savoriness, and crunch.”

“When we create or source a new ingredient for Pret’s pantry, we always aim to identify at least two ways to utilize it, in an effort to reduce single-use ingredients. This helps support our sustainability efforts by minimizing our shop waste at the end of each day,” he added.

The chain has been using chili crisp since the spring in items such as a vegetable-cottage cheese pot, and a miso-glazed eggplant bowl.

Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@informa.com