The Halal Table: The Family Who Brought Hot Chicken and Boba to Wisconsin

The Halal Table

For years the Hussaini family drove from Milwaukee to Chicagoland for halal hot chicken. Then they asked the obvious question: why does Wisconsin not have this?

The Halal Table is our weekend tour of halal food worth talking about. Good food, good people.

A monthly road trip that became a restaurant

For years, the Hussaini family of Milwaukee had a monthly ritual: pile in the car and drive to Chicagoland for halal Nashville-style hot chicken, smash burgers and boba from a spot called Chi Tea. Somewhere on one of those drives, the obvious question landed.

So brothers Baseer and Haseeb Hussaini made it happen. This summer they opened Chi Tea Hot Chicken and Burgers in Franklin, Wisconsin, the first Wisconsin location of the Chicagoland chain, with a ribbon cutting by Franklin's own mayor. The name is chicken plus tea, and the menu reads like a group chat's dream order: halal-certified fried chicken sandwiches, smash burgers, loaded fries, wings, fried pickles, banana pudding and handcrafted boba.

What to order

Start with the Big Bird, the Nashville hot chicken sandwich Haseeb swears by. As he puts it, the coleslaw one hundred percent makes the sandwich. Then his current obsession: beef loaded fries with a peach boba topped with mango popping pearls that burst on your tongue. The meat is never frozen, everything is made to order, and yes, it is all halal.

A true family operation

Our favorite part is who is behind the counter. Baseer is an industrial engineer by day; Haseeb comes from IT. Younger brother Naseer runs the boba station. Their mother Farheen, a school vice principal, works the fryers when needed. Baseer's wife Jehan designed the space, and her father did the build-out. The brothers spent every weekend for two months training in Chicago kitchens before they would let themselves open. That is the kind of care you can taste.

"We're seeing different ethnicities, we're seeing different ages. It brings all kinds of people out."Baseer Hussaini, to the Wisconsin Muslim Journal

Fair warning: hot chicken this good demands a boba or chai chaser, and we happen to make the official uniform for that lifestyle.