The Halal Spot loads up on flavor
By John Fladd
The Halal Spot in Manchester serves chicken and burgers, but with a twist. As its name suggests, the Halal Spot’s food is all halal; it meets stringent dietary guidelines.
The term “halal” refers to a set of dietary guidelines followed by Muslims, similar in many ways to Jewish kosher rules.
“Halal is the only meat that a Muslim person can eat,” owner Sip Woodod said. “The rules are that the animal must be raised in peace — not antagonized, not abused — in a safe environment and then put to sleep in a peaceful manner. This is a cultural tradition we’ve kept [as a family]. So we’re like, ‘If we’re eating it ourselves, it doesn’t matter where we are. This is the food we want to serve to the community’. And that’s been working for us.”
The menu focuses on a moderate number of items — a range of burgers and chicken sandwiches, with a few twists — chicken and waffles, for instance, and “Nashville Hot” chicken sandwiches. One menu item is the Loaded Fries, a potato-based take on nachos. French fries are topped with extra crispy chicken tenders, nacho cheese and shredded cheese, topped with a house sauce and a sprinkling of spices.
“I don’t think new customers understand how loaded these really are,” Woodod said. “One bowl is enough to fill up a couple of people. It’s just something that grew up in our family’s restaurant kitchen over 11 years, just experimenting.”
Sip, his brother Kareem, and their sister Hannah grew up in restaurants. The Woodods started out in New York City — Queens, specifically — but moved to New Hampshire in 2012, where their father, Rajim, opened USA Chicken and Biscuit in downtown Manchester. As the years passed the family eventually opened three chicken restaurants. The Halal Spot is an opportunity for the second generation of Woodods to establish a food legacy of their own and to demystify halal food for their customers.
“Our goal is to keep a simple menu and create a beautiful brand that gives back to the community,” Woodod said. “We want to create a brand that we can potentially franchise and open in different neighborhoods and give that cultural feel of halal food.”
The concept of The Halal Spot and its name are based on the idea of comfort food and the street carts his family ate from in Queens, Woodod said.
“In New York when you think about halal food most people think of chicken or beef with rice and a white sauce on top. When we would want to eat that food, we wouldn’t say, ‘Let’s go eat halal food.’ We would say, ‘let’s go to The Spot.’ When we came here [to New Hampshire], we just stuck with it. That’s where we got our menu and what inspired the name.”
That same love of Halal food carts has guided the Halal Spot’s menu development.
“We loved rice bowls you would get at the carts,” Woodod said, “and we’re going to continue to make it that way. When we add something to the menu or even when we’re tweaking something, we sit as a family. Everyone eats it, and we decide. … Everything that we’ve added so far has been a majority rule vote, from how the rice was made, to which add-ons were put on, to what sauce we use.”
“Our goal is to grow with the community,” he said. ”Because the more the community grows, the more our business grows. That’s something that our entire family believes in and it’s something that we continue to stand on.”
The Halal Spot
1875 S. Willow St., Manchester, 606-8796
Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
