Bobby Flay's Favorite Chicken Dish Is An Italian American Specialty

Bobby Flay is an award-winning television personality and chef, and he shares the same loves as many of us — cats and Italian food. In his travels over the years, Bobby Flay found his favorite panini sandwich in Rome at La Vita è un Mozzico, and these kinds of food adventures are what inspired him to finally open Amalfi. The doors to his first Italian restaurant opened in 2021 in Las Vegas, which is a major shift from his famous Southwestern grilling. While Italy has stolen his heart, this celebrity chef's favorite chicken dish is an Italian-American classic (and it's not chicken marsala).

Chicken piccata is a crispy fried cutlet dish with capers and a lemon sauce, blending Mediterranean flavors with American flair. In an Instagram post, Flay shared a photo of chicken piccata with a caption saying, "If you have a repertoire of 5 dishes in your kitchen arsenal, this should be one of them." He noted what he loved most about chicken piccata: the fact that it's a "crispy chicken cutlet covered in a lemony, capery (new word) sauce."

This isn't the only chicken cutlet dish to earn special recognition from the chef. Flay's Amalfi restaurant serves chicken parmesan as the only poultry entree on the upscale dinner service menu. It's made with crushed tomato sauce, arugula oil, and buffalo mozzarella. While you might not be able to order Flay's chicken piccata at his restaurant (as of now), you can easily recreate it at home by learning a couple of his tricks.

Chicken piccata was first made by Italian-American immigrants sometime in the early 20th century. It's not a traditional dish from Italy, but it does honor the homeland's culinary techniques and flavor. Chicken piccata is similar to scaloppine di vitello al limone, a veal cutlet dish in a lemon sauce from North Italy's Lombardy region. Bobby Flay described chicken piccata in his Instagram post as "another version of #milanese technique," likely referencing this connection.

Bobby Flay's chicken piccata recipe stands out for its use of Japanese panko breadcrumbs tossed in Italian seasoning. Rather than just breading the chicken in flour, he flips the chicken in the order of flour, egg, then breadcrumbs. This is an excellent way of ensuring that the chicken is fully immersed in seasoning and bready flavor, developing a thick and crunchy crust. The extra-crunchy crust is definitely a deviation from Italian technique, but it truly suits chicken as a protein.

Flay keeps chicken piccata a one-pan show by cooking the chicken in a way that leaves plenty of juice to cook the capers and develop the sauce. The sauce balances acidic lemon juice and white wine with butter and leftover chicken fat. This tartness, combined with a slightly viscous sauce, helps balance the savory flavor and rough texture of the fried chicken. Should you try to beat Bobby Flay's recipe at home, we found the ideal wine, beer, and cocktail to serve with chicken piccata.