[title]
In 2017, Pervaiz Shallwani hosted a friendly hot dog cookout competition in his backyard. Drawing on his Pakistani roots and his love of a good Chicago dog, Shallwani’s (winning) combination was stacked with bhel puri, a type of chaat with puffed rice, tamarind-cherry chutney and a mint-cilantro green sauce. The name? Ring My Bhel. Five years later, while working as a law enforcement editor at CNN, he was still thinking about it.
Shallwani had long juggled both of his passions, journalism and food, over his 30-year professional stretch, at times, simultaneously. As a result, his resume ping-ponged from covering the restaurant beat at Time Out New York and hosting Feed Me, an Emmy-award-winning TV show produced by Newsday, to breaking news stories about crime and policing at The Daily Beast and the Wall Street Journal. But while at CNN, he finally came up with a business name for the Desi hot dog he had created all those years ago: Chaat Dog. Post parting ways with CNN, Shallwani decided to go full steam ahead into the hot dog business.
“You know what I'm not doing at 45 years old?" he thought at the time. "Taking another full-time job doing something I don't want."
Shallwani began freelancing as a writer by day and R&D-ing his hot dogs by night, testing them on friends in Chicago and New York. In 2022, Chaat Dog made its debut at Brooklyn's Endless Life Brewing, popping up with Vienna beef dogs nestled in ghee-slicked hot dog buns, stacked with tangy, sweet and sour chaat, chutneys and sev and boondi, a mixture of fried chickpeas, for crunch. The combo combined Shallwani's Pakistani and Chicago roots.
“If you can imagine a hot dog on every street corner in America, there's a chaat stand on every street corner in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal [and] Sri Lanka,” says Shallwani. “You're taking two iconic foods in their respective cultures and mashing them together.”
A stint on the local brewery circuit—with pop-ups at Strong Rope Brewery, Wild East Brewing Co. and TALEA Beer Co—led to running the kitchen at Park Slope’s Beer Street South in 2025. Now, this Desi dog is making things permanent in Dumbo.
This Saturday, June 6, Chaat Dog officially opens inside Time Out Market New York, Dumbo. Shallwani will bring all of the hits to the Market, including his classic halal dog with your choice of chaat to choose from: potato, corn and poblano and a fruit option that rotates (currently, it's mango). The butter chicken smash features butter chicken sausages smashed into a patty and topped with special sauce, lettuce, cheese and pickled onions. There's also a Desi shrimp roll with roasted garlic achaar mayo, pickled shallots, fried onions and cilantro, a carry-over from their pop-up with Passerine.
The menu's Walking Chaat—a nod to his hometown of Chicago—is a play on the Frito pie with corn and poblano chaat, a mix of green and red chutneys, sev and boondi, and fried onions, as well as Chaat-Chos—aka chaat nachos with hot dog slices and corn and poblano chaat. And now with a fryer at his disposal, Shallwani is teasing poutine and pakora corn dogs in the near future.
Chaat Dog is just the start of Shallwani's overall dream. He recently launched a Substack, Stinky Lunch Kids Strike Back, where he examines American food through the lens of immigrant food. Events are also part of the gig, as Shallwani kicked off the launch with a 15-week hot dog chef series, in collaboration with Food Network TV host and chef Monti Carlo. With visions of more stalls and an eventual brick-and-mortar location, Shallwani has found his purpose in sharing his heritage, using the mighty hot dog as a vehicle.
“I went to culinary school and graduated in 2007. And for 15 years, I've been searching for ‘What is my contribution?’ And my contribution is a mash-up of my American-Pakistani identities.”