Travel
Almost a century ago, fried chicken was given a spicy twist in Tennessee’s state capital, and today you’ll find it in a host of forms all over the city.
ByTom Burson
Published July 8, 2023
• 7 min read
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“Oh, bless your heart,” says the hostess at Bolton’s Spicy Chicken and Fish. I’ve just ordered fried chicken legs — hot — with fries and slaw. Her response is a commonly heard Southern expression that sounds saintly but can also seem faintly disparaging. I step out of the family-owned joint — a shabby shack with a sun-faded fish mural — and park myself at a picnic table.
“What level d’ya get?” a woman shouts from the next table. “Hot,” I respond. “Oh, bless your heart, that’s what he’s shouting about,” she says, gesturing to her friend, who’s pacing and cursing.
The spicy, cayenne-soaked style of Southern fried poultry known as ‘hot chicken’ is to Nashville what cheesesteak is to Philadelphia. The meat is buttermilk-marinated, rubbed in a special spice blend and deep-fried until crisp. It’s served on white bread with a pickle that stands no chance of offsetting the cayenne, habanero and ghost peppers.
Opened in 1997, Bolton’s is a city institution. My chicken arrives blackened from the spice rub, and is too hot to touch, but I throw caution to the wind. As I take a bite, the habanero hits my nostrils. It’s incredibly spicy, but there’s a tune to this symphony of chillies. There’s sweetness before the habanero heat hits. The taste is surprisingly botanical, as the spices dance from inside my mouth to my lips, and although I’m sweating, I can’t stop eating.
How did a dish so challengingly hot become so iconic? Like so many emblematic Southern foods, fried chicken can trace its origins back to African slaves, who fried and braised poultry in spices. Hot chicken first emerged in the 1930s, when a man named James Thornton Prince began serving it at his BBQ Chicken Shack, just down the street from Tennessee A&I, a historically Black university (now called Tennessee State).
After a few years, the BBQ Chicken Shack moved close to the Ryman Auditorium, where it gained a cult following among the city’s country music stars during the post-war heyday of the Grand Ole Opry. In the following decades, Prince relocated his shack several times around the city, eventually changing its name to Prince’s Hot Chicken in 1980, when André Prince Jeffries, his great-niece, took over.
In the past decade, Prince’s has inspired a new wave of joints across the city and beyond, such as Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, on Lower Broadway, which has an average wait time of 90 minutes all day long. In the kitchen, line cook Leiby is manning the ‘dip station’ — cauldrons loaded with fryer oil and spice rubs. His job is to stir the vats continuously and glaze each order to the requisite spice level, from ‘Southern’ (no heat) to ‘Shut the Cluck Up!!!’, a demonic concoction full of ghost chillies.
“Any respectable baseline should start at ‘Medium’,” says Brian Morris, the restaurant’s chef and culinary director. I order a nugget platter that covers the spectrum, and have to agree — ‘Medium’ is the level at which the spice really makes itself known. ‘Hot!’ is the most flavourful, however, thanks to the light habanero. ‘Damn Hot!!’ and ‘Shut the Cluck Up!!!’ are more novelty than pleasure.
These days, you’ll find hot chicken all over the city, enhancing everything from pizzas to salads — there’s even the Music City Hot Chicken Festival every July. At the restaurant Party Fowl, I dine on hot chicken with bourbon-glazed beignets, while at Dino’s I have a hot chicken sandwich with a $6 beer-and-shot special. For some, the dish has lost touch with its roots. “I enjoy eating it. I get it — but we’re losing a grasp on it,” says local chef Adam Terhune. “I’m not sure people identify it with the city but just as a flavouring now.”
At his restaurant Commons Club, Adam serves two subtle homages — a devilled egg with hot chicken seasoning and crispy chicken skin; and a spicy airline chicken breast (a cut that includes a wing joint) with kale cooked down in bacon fat, shallots and apple cider vinegar. The chicken is flavoured with garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne and brown sugar. Both dishes are delicious; the skin is crunchy, the meat almost drips with moisture and the spice is mellow. Adam wasn’t interested in replicating hot chicken, he tells me. “For that, I send people to Prince’s or Bolton’s. They’re still family-owned — I like supporting that.”
I end my tour at Prince’s Hot Chicken, located in the Assembly Food Hall. As I queue, I wonder if the dish has indeed drifted too far from its roots. But when I collect my hot chicken tenders with coleslaw, it ceases to matter. I’m slapped in the face by an aggressive habanero that engulfs my being, but, like an addict, I can’t stop eating — inhaling the soggy, chilli-soaked bread. And I’m reminded of what Brian Morris said to me. “We’re just trying to create ravenous, hot-chicken-lovers.” Well, they’ve created one more.
How to do it
British Airways flies from Heathrow to Nashville. Dream Nashville has room-only doubles from $304 (£244).
Published in the Jul/Aug 2023 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK)
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