Prince’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Prince’s Hot Chicken
Nashville hot chicken had its humble beginnings nearly a century ago. Now, the specialty chicken style is a national phenomenon.
The Tennessee city has quite a few hot chicken restaurants competing for the highest spot, as each locals and tourists flock to get a taste of the dish. At the identical time, large fast-food corporations similar to KFC, Baja Fresh, Dave’s Hot Chicken and more are increasingly featuring Nashville hot chicken on their menus.
Based on data from Technomic, a food service research and consulting firm, the Nashville hot chicken trend saw a lift on the onset of the pandemic, with a peak at the tip of 2022.
From the primary quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of that very same 12 months, Nashville hot chicken menu mentions saw a virtually 25% increase. It’s a fair larger increase over the past five years: 65.7%.
The Nashville hot chicken origin story
But Nashville hot chicken is not only a spicy recent trend.
The origins of the dish are unofficially traced back to the kitchen of Thornton Prince within the Thirties, in line with his great-great niece, Semone Jeffries, the CEO of Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville.
Read more: Luxury hotels move into Nashville as demand for rooms surges
As the story goes, Prince’s scorned lover desired to teach him a lesson after a suspicious night out — and that lesson manifested in what the restaurant likes to call a “devilish” amount of spices and flavor atop a gently fried chicken.
That recipe was soon perfected and transformed right into a Nashville classic, becoming central to local Black residents’ lives, Jeffries said. The chicken is roofed in a mix of spices, topped with pickles and served with fries atop a toasted slice of bread.
Owner Andre Prince of Prince’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Prince’s Hot Chicken
Though town has modified so much since Thornton Prince’s first hot chicken, Prince’s has remained one in all town’s classic treasures.
“What makes our hot chicken probably the most interesting is due to care we put into it. We don’t do things haphazardly. We cook almost to order, and we do not often use warmers,” Jeffries, whose mother currently owns the restaurant, told CNBC. “All the pieces is intentional.”
After Prince’s success took off, other local chefs in town began starting their very own hot chicken restaurants and food trucks because the dish became one in all town’s trademarks.
Based on food trends expert Kara Nielsen, the Nashville hot chicken trend is a “controversial topic” due to how it has been appropriated from its origins as a Black-owned local business. Though it began going mainstream about eight years ago, Nielsen said, Nashville boasted Prince’s Hot Chicken for many years before the broader culture picked it up.
“In the previous couple of years, a whole lot of foods that perhaps come from certain communities have been appropriated by mass popular culture, without proper recognition, after which other people leverage it and generate income, and the individuals who began it do not get enough credit,” Nielsen said. “So I feel this can be an interesting story of appropriation from Black culture, which is why it gets very delicate.”
‘You’ve to do it for the culture’
Nielsen credits the explosion in hot chicken’s popularity to a confluence of millennials in search of something larger and bolder with their fried chicken and restaurants’ have to create buzz coming out of the financial crisis and recession over a decade ago.
Now, Nielsen said, Nashville hot chicken is just a part of the “alternative set.” She doesn’t see it going out of fashion while it still has its novelty, but she’s sure another recent flavor will overtake its popularity soon.
“People just type of keep moving along,” Nielsen said. “So if it is not a part of your heritage, or it is not something you ate every 12 months for Thanksgiving, it doesn’t resonate with you in the identical way as it’d for any individual who’s from Nashville who grew up eating it.”
400 Degrees Hot Chicken
Photo: Aqui Hines
Certainly one of those hot chicken enthusiasts is lifelong Nashville resident Aqui Hines, the owner and chef at 400 Degrees, a hot chicken restaurant in town. Hines, who began her restaurant in 2006, said she grew up eating hot chicken at Prince’s every week and developed a deep love for the dish.
“It makes me completely satisfied, it brings me joy. It’s for the culture — growing up, that is all that we had,” she said. “I fell in love with hot chicken. I fell in love with the way it made me feel. I desired to share that have with everyone.”
Hines describes her relationship with hot chicken as “complete euphoria,” something that drives her to share the Nashville dish with as many individuals as she will.
Lately, she said, she’s noticed a whole lot of people across the country begin to associate hot chicken with town of Nashville. As she travels to other cities, Hines said she’s torn on whether she’s a fan of the recognition that her favorite food has experienced.
She said she likes to travel and all the time desires to have the ability to grab some hot chicken, even when she’s not in Tennessee. But she also said she’s been dissatisfied by among the hot chicken she’s tried elsewhere, like that at a Florida restaurant that she said was mild at best.
“When you’re going to represent it, represent it well,” Hines said. “People capitalize off of it because you possibly can generate income, but it surely must be legitimate. Seventy percent of hot chicken shouldn’t be authentic — you have to do it for the culture.”
Hot chicken unbound
Eric White, owner and chef of Red’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Red’s Hot Chicken
Red’s Hot Chicken owner and chef Eric White began with a humble food truck seven years ago, and he opened his brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2020. He said his success is as a result of his recipe’s flavor profiles that fastidiously balance flavor and spice in a healthy middle ground.
White said he likes that the word is getting out about Nashville hot chicken, especially because it brings more tourists to his restaurant, but he’s focused on trying to keep up the guts of the dish because it spreads.
“We actually began the identical 12 months as Dave’s Hot Chicken, and in fact, they’re the most important name now,” he said. “It’s getting the word out, and I’m getting a whole lot of calls from people across the country. I’m actually currently working with folks from India, Canada and Germany about starting some hot chicken-type deals there.”
While White said he has yet to try Dave’s Hot Chicken, he’s had nearly every fried chicken in Nashville and has a sense he won’t like what he gets from the fast food restaurant, which does not have any locations in Tennessee. Dave’s Hot Chicken didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Dave’s Hot Chicken in Manhattan. Nov. 27, 2023.
Mike Calia | CNBC
At Prince’s, the unofficial original hot chicken spot, Jeffries said there are mixed feelings in regards to the hot chicken trend. While she said it has been inspiring to see the dish make it outside her city, she’s torn about retaining the authenticity of it.
“There’s a whole lot of feelings we now have, they usually can run from ‘Oh, boy’ to ‘Okay,'” Jeffries said. “But I feel ultimately, there’s enough people on this planet that this will be shared, though they do their very own version.”
Jeffries said the new chicken at restaurants outside Nashville is a completely different version of the dish and that the authentic recipe can only be found at Prince’s or other local restaurants.
“It is a humbling experience to think this one little piece of chicken has now made it internationally,” Jeffries said. “I ponder sometimes what Thornton would really think at once to see his chicken move all over the world — what would he say to us as we prepare for the following generation? But on the core of it, it’s still the very same hot chicken he served.”
TUNE IN: The “Cities of Success” special featuring Nashville will air on CNBC on Dec. 6 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
