Chen Chen‘s path to opening his second Toronto location in Wellington Market at The Well began with an unlikely combination: professional poker, festival food service, and an authentic Nashville upbringing that would eventually reshape Toronto’s hot chicken landscape.

“I moved to the United States when I was two years old, moved to Nashville when I was five,” Chen Chen, Founder of Chen Chen’s Nashville Hot Chicken explains. “Basically grew up in the South, basically my whole childhood, early adulthood, went to University of Tennessee.”

After pursuing poker professionally in California, Chen Chen’s first kitchen experience came through a friend’s food business at Bonnaroo, the largest camping music festival in America. “That’s kind of where I learned my first kitchen management experience. I had no kitchen experience at the time,” he recalls. “Bonnaroo was the ultimate test because our booth was open 24 hours a day for three days and literally didn’t sleep.”

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