Nashville hot chicken a five-alarm success
Dish’s popularity grows without breaking a sweat
NASHVILLE, TENN.— It’s a devilish tale wrapped around a piece of hot chicken and man, is it spicy.
More than 70 years ago, Thornton Prince returned to his Nashville home after enjoying the nightlife he loved. His girlfriend was smokin’ mad. He was a handsome man with an eye for the ladies. This time, she was going to fix him, but good.
He awoke in the morning to the tantalizing smell of the fried chicken he so often craved. He sat down in the kitchen, dug into it and stopped. Silence. She waited for him to explode, because she’d loaded the bird with as many hot spices as she could muster.
Instead, he loved it. Scarfed it down. Demanded more. Then he started telling his family and friends about this amazing hot chicken that he couldn’t stop eating. He decided to make a business of it, attracting folks on late Saturday nights to enjoy what had become a passion.
That’s how Nashville hot chicken was born, legend has it. Now it’s a cock-of-the-walk success story, making tracks into restaurants high and low across North America. PG Cluckson College St. is just one of the Toronto eateries offering a take on it.
“My great-uncle Thornton was very debonair, have mercy,” says André Prince Jeffries, smiling sweetly while sitting on a white wood bench that resembles a high-backed church pew inside Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. This is, after all, pretty much a shrine for hot chicken lovers.
“How hot you want it?” asks a sign above the cash register — plain, mild, medium, X Hot or XXX Hot, the final choice pretty much a dare.
Jerry Seinfeld had it medium when he came to the restaurant with friends, she says, and he warily referred to the hotter stuff as suicide chicken.
Jeffries is a warm-hearted woman with a catchy laugh who runs the business with an eye to maintaining
“The secret of hot chicken is the people. They eat it. They love it. They keep spreading the word.”
ANDRÉ PRINCE JEFFRIES PRINCE’S HOT CHICKEN SHACK
her great-uncle’s legend (Prince’s marketing materials hail the humble beginnings) while keeping the ingredients, preparation and cooking practices a secret.
“We don’t allow people in the kitchen,” she says, nixing my request to see how it’s done with a firm but friendly shake of her head. “Have mercy, no.” It’s marinated and it’s deep fried, not necessarily in that order, and beyond that, the conversation about how it’s made gets shut like a hatch on a hen house.
The hot chicken is traditionally served with pickles on top of a slab of white bread. When they bring me a serving of mild — that’s how Jeffries likes to eat it — it goes back to the kitchen to be ratcheted up a hot notch. It returns a little more orange, a little darker.
“I’m just going to stand up for a moment,” I say, after taking a bite.
“OK, as long as you don’t topple over,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say, the heat hitting me in a delicious wave that somehow slaps my brain into a momentary lull. I almost topple over. It’s that good.
It’s an aphrodisiac, a cure for the hiccups, a surefire way to prompt an overdue birth — “The babies come out wanting something spicy,” Jeffries says. These are just a few of the hot bird’s folkloric properties she tallies as people line up to order more — among the choices, the all-white quarter breast with wing attached, $6 (U.S.).
The small restaurant is in a strip mall that’s out of the way for most people, requiring a drive, but there is a second, newer Prince’s location in the city’s south. Both are beacons for people who want to undergo what has become a Nashville rite of passage.
While Prince’s is first in the royal lineage of hot chicken proprietors in Nashville, there are a handful of places that stand out, including Hattie B’s Hot Chicken (Shut the Cluck Up is its most incendiary offering), Bolton’s Spicy Chicken and Fish and Pepper-fire Hot Chicken.
I sat with Pepper fire founder and owner Isaac Beard outside his restaurant as the temperature rose past 33 C, sweat beading, so I could hear beyond the clamber inside. Yep, it was crazy hot, but people still couldn’t get enough. On a busy month, Pepper fire goes through 8,900 pounds of chicken.
Beard is fiercely proud of his hot chicken and the word he kept coming back to in describing his version was “authentic.” He admitted to becoming a bit obsessed by it, for 10 years trying recipes and spices and tasting what others were providing until he arrived at a blend that he believes is the best.
When I tried a mild chicken tender, there was a tasty, lingering heat from the spices. It was different than Prince’s. Both have their own smouldering charms.
What makes hot chicken unique is that it’s made to order, so it’s got to be fresh, he explained. There are various methods to bring in the heat (oil-based, spice in flour, dry rub and more), but all-natural spices are the signature. “You won’t find any chemical in authentic hot chicken.”
The Nashville dish ignited a national conversation when KFC offered its version early in 2016, local resident Matt Fox, of Fox in a Box Marketing & PR, told me. “Everyone started jumping on it.” The popular Music City Hot Chicken Festival is held in July, so if you can stand the heat inside and out, that may be the best time to visit.
During my time in the city, I heard talk of the Carolina Reaper pepper, the Ghost pepper, the Cayenne pepper and others being at the heart of the guarded ingredients of Nashville hot chicken. But for me, Jeffries best wrapped up the mystery with a simple observation.
“The secret of hot chicken is the people. They eat it. They love it. They keep spreading the word. It’s not a boring chicken, have mercy. It’s really something to eat and talk about.” Mike Fisher was hosted by Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation, which didn’t review or approve this story.