Skip to main content

Shaun Doty’s Chick-a-Biddy

If you were forced to describe Shaun Doty, the first word you would be scrambling for is passionate. The Atlanta based chef, restaurateur and food philosopher exudes an undeniable and infectious love for his cooking, ingredients and customers. And he lives by a code that is simple and easy to understand: “I like affordable, quality dining.”

Doty’s varied and ambitious career has led him through culinary stints in Dallas, Charleston (South Carolina), France, Belgium, Colorado, and South Hampton (Long Island). Since the early 2000’s, though, he has called Atlanta home. First at the European influenced MidCity Cuisine, then at Table 1280, before opening his first restaurant, Shauns, a casual neighborhood bistro near historic Inman Park. After Shauns, Doty opened YEAH! BURGER in 2010, followed by Bantam & Biddy—the beloved (and affordable) rotisserie chicken restaurant—in the fall of 2012.

This month, Chick-A-Biddy, Doty’s latest restaurant and the sister restaurant of Batnam & Biddy, opened to the public. Doty’s most recent endeavor holds true to his policy of creating affordable, quality dining. However, where Bantam & Biddy taps into traditional Southern cooking, Chick-A-Biddy pushes the envelope a littler further.

“This [Chick-A-Biddy] is more artistic and creatively driven,” says Doty. “The menu is simple; it’s more contemporary. In addition to gluten-free fried chicken, we have a lot of salads with unique ingredients and have incorporated plenty of local vendors into the items and dishes that we serve. It’s table service that’s informal. It’s a non-pretentious environment.”

What Doty is aiming to achieve with Chick-A-Biddy is a restaurant that serves “chef driven” products (basically high quality dishes), but at a price point that is affordable for someone who is just embarking on their own culinary education. That’s why you will find Warm Kale Salad ($10) butting up against Wood Grilled Fish Tacos ($10), a Blackened Chicken Burger ($10), a Black Bean Quinoa Burger ($10), and gluten-free fried Chicken ($12 for a quarter, $15 for a half) that comes either hot or mild.

Though the menu’s offerings are mainly gluten-free, Chick-A-Biddy is not a “health food” restaurant. “I don’t even advocate a low-fat diet,” Mr. Doty explains. “The problem in our society is highly processed foods and foods that contain high-fructose corn syrup. We want to make unprocessed, fresh, forward-looking food that anyone can stop in and buy.” Doty’s own son cannot eat gluten, so the desire to remove that ingredient from his menu stems from a place of personal passion, not just professional.

Even though Doty has traveled and cooked all over the world, opened a variety of restaurants, and can wax poetic on the philosophies and importance of using local ingredients (“I won’t use any lettuce that is pre-washed”), in the end, his message remains undeniably fundamental.

“Now that I am a little older, all I want to do is apply all the things I’ve learned and accumulated into something that I think is important. And what I think is important is that people should be able to get a quality meal at an affordable price.

Matt Domino
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Matt Domino is a writer living in Brooklyn. His fiction has appeared in Slice and The Montreal Review, while his non-fiction…
Forget wine — Beer and cheese is an unbeatable combination
Put the corkscrew away and crack open a cold one
Beer and cheese

When one hears the term cheese pairings, wine is the beverage that most often comes to mind, we'd wager. Because, of course, it is. The pairing of wine and cheese is as classic a coupling as peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, or chocolate and strawberries. They're meant to be together. But that certainly doesn't mean that wine is the only adult beverage that can dance an alluring tango alongside everyone's favorite dairy product. Beer, as humble as its reputation can be, is also a beautiful balance to cheese's immense offering of flavors. While some may think of beer as not being as multi-dimensional and varied in its palate-pleasing capabilities as wine, this is not the case - especially now that we live in a world with so many exquisite craft beers, stouts, and lagers.
Of course, another classic accompaniment to cheese is bread or crackers. Why might that be, one might ask. Is it because we're simply in need of a starchy vessel to usher the cheese into our mouths? The answer is actually a bit deeper than that. Starches like bread and crackers are made from the same yeasty ingredients as beer, so their pairing makes perfect culinary sense.
This isn't to say, though, that one can simply pick up a hunk of cheddar and crack open a Budweiser and expect culinary artistry. The science is a bit more nuanced than that, so we're here to help you find the best pairings for your favorite beers and cheeses.

How to pair beer and cheese

Read more
Mijenta has a new cristalino tequila — here’s why bourbon fans will love it
Mijenta has a cristalino tequila perfect for bourbon drinkers
Mijenta Cristalino

If you’re new to tequila, you might not know all the terms. Even if you’re just a beginner, you probably know all about blanco, reposado, añejo, and maybe even joven. But chances are, you’re not familiar with Cristalino tequila. This reasonably contemporary style is simply añejo tequila that’s been charcoal filtered to remove its natural caramel color and various impurities.

The style is more than just a little popular. It’s actually the fastest growing style of tequila according to Nielsen data. The newest brand to get in on the Cristalino trend is Mijenta.

Read more
You may not dislike IPAs as much as you think — you’ve just tried the wrong type
There's much more to the IPA than bitter hop bombs
Beer

The IPA has been described as the cilantro of the beer world. It’s assumed by some novice drinkers that you either love it or hate it. On one hand, it’s one of the most popular beer styles in the American craft world. It’s loved by many drinkers for its liberal use of hops and fresh, crushable flavor profile.

But haters of the style dislike it because they have an assumption that all IPA beers are aggressively hopped and uncomfortably bitter. While there are IPAs that fit that criterion (and fans of that style can’t get enough of them), there are also a handful of other types of IPAs to fit any palate.
The IPA stigma

Read more