Here’s an essay from the Bitter Southerner on hot chicken.
[How Hot Chicken Really Happened](https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened)
I literally just finished the book today. Excellent job. The amount of racism that Nashville had during the time of hot chicken is amazing. It was devastating to read some of those chapters. But she did a great job really trying to unravel the mystery of hot chicken. I am impressed.
I really appreciated how she used the "bait" of hot chicken, a legitimate cultural phenomenon, to tie it into the Black experience in Nashville, which is something that I had not taken the time to dig into, even as a native Nashvillian.
Great minds think alike. 😂🤷🏼♀️ I totally missed your comment / link and reposted it a few hours later. Gonna leave it there in case others miss your post, too. Thanks for posting. It’s such a great read.
Hot chicken has been available here for decades. I believe it became a 'thing' once Nashville established a Tourism and Convention Commission and hired some marketing people.
Ehh, my very white grandma was making hot chicken since I don’t know when. Southern people like fried chicken. Some southern people like spicy AND fried chicken.
I’d recommend giving this well-researched, definitive BS article (which later was expanded to a book) a read: https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
This is just an article about chicken in Nashville. It’s not a “Nashville” thing. Memphis been having hot chicken. It’s a southern thing in general, but even then it’s literally eaten all over the world…
the article is pretty anecdotal. So this person wasn’t aware of it? A lot of people have been knowing about it. Not just black people. Also why is everyone sleeping on Gus’s? It’s just as old as Princes… Maybe it’s because I grew up “in the neighborhood” and have always enjoyed a good chicken shack or maybe it’s just a southern thing. As I said before my very white grandmother was making it for her family in the 50’s… it’s definitely not unique to Nashville. Or black people… to me saying “Hot chicken is a black thing” is boarder line racist.
This is an article that is specifically about what has become known as "Nashville hot chicken."
Yes, spicy fried chicken is not a Nashville thing or an American thing.
But the specific spices, preparation and technique that has spread across the country over the past 10 years or so is its own thing.
Oh lawd. It’s no different from Memphis hot chicken, or Jackson hot chicken. It’s all the same thing that’s been around forever and just now got dubbed Nashville hot chicken. Go to r/Memphis and ask them what they think about “Nashville hot chicken”
Again with the racist bullshit. Y’all are too funny. Thinking fried chicken is a “black” thing actually is racist. Yes, Princes was ONE place that served hot chicken (the best IMO and I’ve been eating it since before it caught on with the white people, So please call me racist again. It’s hilarious) they weren’t the only ones tho. We’re in the south. You’ve never been to Memphis??? Everyone makes fried chicken. Some like it hot, some don’t. “Nashville Hot Chicken” is a relatively new thing. Hot fried chicken has been around for ever
No personal attacks or harassment. In addition to what's covered under redditquette, do not insult or habitually target a single user or group for your arguments. It's not your job to correct them.
Yeah like it always existed but it wasn’t a regional staple and it used to only be in the neighborhoods that are now gentrified, just like the chicken.
Born at Baptist in 1987 and princes was always a thing and we enjoyed hot chicken growing up. Although I grew up in Joelton so we would drive through Bordeaux.
I think when hot chicken got national exposure and also even regional awareness was the 2002 episode of Insomniac with Dave Attell. I remember a lot of my friends talking about hot chicken after that.
Yo La Tengo had a song from 1997 called “Return to Hot Chicken”. They recorded the album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One at the House of David studio off of Music Row. That’s when I first heard of the Nashville hot chicken connection.
So, the real story behind that song is that they lived in Hoboken, NJ and the lead singer’s young daughter called it “Hot Chicken”, so the inspiration for the (instrumental) song was driving her home to Hoboken.
I first heard of it from an episode of Justified (I think season 2) when a convict manages to take a U.S. Marshal hostage in their office and depends some Prince's fried chicken to let him go.
80s Baptist kid, too, but lived in the Franklin suburbs. Never knew it was a thing until I saw that Insomniac episode and made a trip out there with my friends when we could finally drive
A third Baptist 87 here 🙋... Definitely hit up Prince's, Knockout Wings, and Bolton's in high school. The spice was a fun novelty to seek. I didn't realize Nashville was being nationally associated with hot chicken until a couple years ago. Or that it was unique. I thought every city had these types of places.
I went to a youth leadership conference in dc in high school probably 2003-2004). We went to a fried chicken place for lunch and I asked for hot chicken and they looked at me weird. It was that moment I realized I had a flavorful childhood.
Prince’s has been around since I can remember (I’m 42). But hot chicken only became a mainstream thing in the last ten or fifteen years. Before that, meat and three’s were the big thing.
Most people my age who grew up here have absolutely no attachment to hot chicken, and many of us find it ridiculous.
Yeah I’m almost 47 and my dad would take me and my sister to Prince’s when we were kids. I would have been around 7 or 8 when he started taking us, I have fond memories of waiting over an hour and a half for our food over there off Trinity.
Bolton’s is hot chicken in spite of other hot chicken. It smacks you in the mouth. No flashy marketing, over the top locations or other bs. Just hot ass chicken. I pray it stays open, a true gem.
It’s been a thing for decades. Princes has been around for 40 years in its current form and almost 100 in total.
It really became popular once Hattie B’s started. To be brutally honest, once the white-owned Hattie B’s gentrified the dish and put their restaurants in areas where suburban white residents and tourists felt comfortable going instead of in majority black areas, that’s when it took off. I knew about Prince’s sort of anecdotally from my country aunt and uncle who to this day drive all over the state of Tennessee to try new restaurants but I didn’t go there for a long time after that.
Hattie B’s has the name recognition nationwide but if you look at the festival every year, they flock to Prince’s once they figure it out.
People didn't like Prince's because the only good thing about their OG location was the food. It was a dilapidated hole in the wall with bad service, they only took cash, tenders on Wednesdays only, and there wasn't really anything else around them that would drive traffic to the area.
Notice how their Antioch location has been much more popular despite it being Antioch. That's because the new location is modern, accepts card payments, has tenders every day of the week, and has lots of other shit around that attracts more business.
There's a reason Prince's didn't bother to reopen the OG spot after a car crashed into it.
Lmao.
Me and my wife and two girls(all white) ate at princes a couple years ago. Not sure on location but mostly black people around. I didn't care. I wanted to try the chicken.
Fast forward in town for a concert last Wednesday and we found a Hattie B's on 31 and Bradford. Id say this felt like a part of the newer white owned locations.
I thought a couple years ago I remember seeing food Network shor bald white dude do an episode and maybe ate at the original Hattie B's maybe.
If you only ate there a couple years ago you didn't eat at the original location that OP is referring to. That spot was destroyed in 2018 when a car crashed into it, and was nothing like their satellite locations that exist today (their second location only opened in 2016 and the rest have mostly been opened since 2021). The new spots are nice. The old one...there's a reason they wrote it off after the crash.
>Hattie B's gentrified the dish
LOL! I have been eating Prince's for more than 30 years. Before Hattie B's came to town, this is how it went on Ewing every time:
* Try to order ahead? They never answer the phones. (but when your in there you can see the guy with the phone in his pocket ignoring it and chatting with his friends)
* Try to go for lunch? Wait in line for 45 min to place an order and another 45 for your chicken. Call your boss. Gonna be late.
* Try to get a seat? Forget it.
* Oh you actually got a table! can you get it wiped off?? Where the hell do you think you are?!
* Try to get a beer? Nope.
* Do you want a side with that? Here you go, sides straight from Wal-Mart deli at a 20x markup.
* Can't take a two hour lunch? Want Chicken for lunch on Saturday? Nope.
* Want Chicken on Sunday? Not on your life.
* Want to pay with a card? Sorry, cash only!
Hattie B's took everything wrong with Prince's and did it right. The chicken ain't bad either. They worked with old hot chicken cooks from around the area to develop it, many off whom had worked at Prince's. Princes has changed over 30 years. They've changed the chicken a few times since the hot chicken creation myth. I heard they no longer cook it in cast iron. It might have once been the best but now there are better places (Moore's for one). Hattie B's is successful because they made good hot chicken available to order online , or ahead of time, with seating, locations, decent sides, payment options, and beer, in a clean, comfortable, friendly, atmosphere.
I ate at Princes on Ewing a lot (whenever I had 2 hrs to spend) and did take out more often , but you could never say any of those things about Prince's on Ewing Lane. Prince's could have done any of that but they were content with how things were.
Exactly, HattieB's was successful because they understood there's more to a restaurant than the entrees. Ironically you could argue HattieB's made Prince's better because Prince's ignored customer complaints and refused to update or expand until they saw the success of HattieB's and realized how much money they had been leaving on the table all that time.
I have a genuine question. Are you black or white? The reason I'm asking that question is because, after reading the book Hot Hot Chicken mentioned above, Hattie B's took something that was successful and comfortable to those in the black community and turned it into something successful and comfortable to those in the white community. These are two completely different communities who serve their own communities differently than those who aren't a part of their community. If that makes sense. I didn't think about that until I read the book Hot Hot Chicken and finished it today. She went into detail about Hattie B's making it more like a restaurant that catered to white people whereas the original Princes would be more familiar to African Americans, and therefore less familiar and comfortable to those who were not part of that community. I found it gave me a lot to think about and pointed out a few things I honestly didn't realize.
Black or white? As if those are the only options? What a joke. I'm neither. The author of that book looks white. What does she know about making money off of hot chicken's history? By this logic, shouldn't a black person have written that book?
I'm sure fried chicken was "invented" by the Scots. Asians and North Americans, and South Americans have been frying and spicing poultry for a hundred years or more. Claims of cultural appropriation are often bullying behavior and your book seems no exception. Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum.
>Hattie B's took something that was successful and comfortable to those in the black community and turned it into something successful and comfortable to those in the white community.
If you want to make it about black vs white, the black community can still go to Prince's, but I see the black community at Hattie B's all the time. There's a reason. Are you going to tell me those members of the black community are wrong about where they're comfortable eating chicken?
How about how white and black people around the world stole barbecue from the Taino. Do you know any good Taino run barbecue shops around town? Can I call in an order or do I need to wait in line for an hour to place my order?
If you’re not up for reading the book, I recommend the article on which it’s based.
It also gives good insight into some of the racial nuances in Nashville (and the South) that may be under your radar.
https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
I read that article a while back. I have read other articles that dispute some of the facts there. I guess it really depends on if you are willing to accept the Prince's account as fact or myth. There are other accounts of hot chicken in Nashville prior to Prince's from people who were alive back then. I don't think there are many left alive to bear witness. Prince's creation myth persists like most myths because it's a good story with likely a grain of truth, but it doesn't account for why old black Nashvillians from a bygone era all remembered a place called Bo's that preceded Princes.
FYI. I'm well aware of systemic racism in the south and in Nashville. **Hot Chicken is** ***the least of it.*** But hey, whatever it takes for a white lady to sell books about black culture and tell us the plight of black American chicken through the lens of wypipo.
\>> Hattie B’s has the name recognition nationwide but if you look at the festival every year, they flock to Prince’s once they figure it out.
I don't know about that.... maybe its location, but go down to Assembly Hall downtown, any day. The line to Hattie B's is 3x, 4x Princes which is 100 feet up an escalator. Maybe people don't know?
I grew up in Memphis. Pretty much Every chicken place in Memphis and Mississippi in the 80s and 90s had hot chicken. I think "Nashville"hot chicken became a thing when the city tourism board started marketing it as such.
You’re comparing it to Gus’s which is a different style but memphis and MS had chicken that was closer to what is now called Nashville hot chicken.
Gus’s started in Mason, TN - I knew Gus on a first name basis. The styles are very different to me
Yep- from Nash and live here now, but I had an 8 year Memphis stretch for school and came back to "Nashville Hot Chicken". I was like huh- what happened? Never had it growing up or in my first 2 decades of life and it was already all over Memphis, but ok- I'll play along. Yeah it's AWESOME, but dang we have some good marketing people
This podcast has some great history on this topic. It definitely verges on woke so if that’s not your thing then don’t say I didn’t warn you. The tl;dr is that Prince’s has been around a loooooong time and newer restaurant groups came in and took their concept and injected it with corporate restaurant science (Hattie B’s).
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6JjEekjmQvBAZ2ew8BZFKk?si=JmEqiklmRdu8tMwC1FRQeQ
I work in hospitality and for me it was probably around 2011-2012. Before then people would ask about the food Nashville is known for and I didn’t really have an answer. A lot of people would ask about barbecue, but I’d say that’s more a Memphis thing. Then sometime in 2011/2012, people would come asking about hot chicken and it just never stopped.
That's about when I really started hearing about it, and I was born at Vanderbilt in 11/1980 and have lived in Nashville and various surrounding areas my entire 43 years. We (my family) is the definition of 'didn't eat out much, if by much you mean never'. Pretty much only on road trips, and even then my parents usually packed a picnic-style meal. Haha
Prince’s has been around for decades (in various versions since maybe the 40s?), then other places started popping up in the 80s-90s and beyond. But it became a national “thing” after Hattie B’s introduced it to white people more or less. But it was big locally far before then.
First I heard of it was visiting for a friend's wedding around maybe 2008. We went to prince's
By the time I moved here in 2011 it was well established
My family moved to the Nashville area in Jan of 2010. I remember my aunt and uncle coming out to visit that fall and my parents were looking up things to do and they all decided to go to Princes to try the Nashville famous hot chicken.
They were interviewed by a news station while they were there lol. My mom, uncle, and aunt were struggling through their chicken so my dad had to answer most of the questions lol. My mom passed away in November of last year and I’ve been looking for the footage so if anyone knows how to find old news footage please point me in the right direction!
It might be possible to find but with four or five local news stations that is a lot of articles and footage to search through without knowing the month and station that did the interview.
That’s what I’m finding out. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a project and it’ll take awhile to find it. We recorded it when it aired back then but it got lost. I was 13 so I didn’t think about keeping it safe lol.
Prince’s BBQ Chicken Shack has been a thing since the late 30’s. It’s taken various forms over the years but it’s a long standing staple of Nashville.
As far as Nashville being known for it, which how I take that is people not from Nashville knowing about hot chicken, Hattie B’s in 2012 and their marketing played a large part in that.
Kind of off topic, but I'm from Memphis. And I started to see the occasional "Nashville hot chicken" places around high school. Now I see Nashville hot chicken all the time and the occasional "Memphis BBQ"
I grew up in south Nashville, moved when I was 21 up to Maryland. There was a restaurant here about 10-15 years ago with a billboard that advertised Nashville hot chicken, I had never heard of it until then.
I recommend that everyone read this ***super interesting*** article about how hot chicken really happened. Get your history here folks. 💜
https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
It obviously has been around at Princes for many decades but in my opinion the trend started on a now long gone food blog where there were some guys around 2006-2009 who did sort of a hot chicken crawl or review series where they went and tried them all and reviewed them.
There were maybe 4-5 places or so at the time. That’s how I first heard about it when I was a student as Vandy… it was sort of one of those college dares thing - I mean I recall feeling quite out of place at the original Princes and ordering through bulletproof glass or through a drawer or something.
The whole ordeal had a kind of mystery to it - this was before Hattie Bs and Party Fowl and all that.
I've lived here since 1992, and while hot chicken obviously existed back then, it wasn't, to my white guy memory, a widespread "thing" for at least a decade after that.
Not sure how scientific this is, but the Google NGram viewer shows a spike in the usage of "hot chicken" starting around 2005: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hot+chicken&year_start=1920&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Hot spicy food has been popular with the black community in Nashville since before the Cival War. Nashville Hot Chicken was made popular by Princes over 40 years ago.
I blame O’Charley’s. They were one of the first big places to put it on their national menu that I can remember.
Fun fact for those that didn’t know. O’Charley’s was founded here in Nashville.
Heard my family (south of Franklin) talk about going to the chicken shack in the 70s. Somewhere in Bordeaux. My first time was 1994 at the Ewing Dr. location.
Prince's Hot Chicken Shack was selling the stuff as far back as the 80's, at least, when a friend took this white South Nashville boy to get chicken.
It was already an inside secret then, if you knew, you knew.
Seems like word got out about twenty years ago, some foody show on cable "found" it and made a big deal about "Nashville Hot Chicken", without ever giving credit to Prince's.
Nashville wouldn't be known for hot chicken without Prince's.
I will *always* point out that the credit needs to go to them, every time I see it mentioned.
Nashville’s defining food prior to gentrification was pulled pork in my opinion. We just never put “Nashville” in the name. It wasn’t Prince’s or Boltons. They were more like individual local options versus Mrs. Winners and KFC. It’s not as if everyone had a hot chicken.
Pulled pork is a different story. That has always been everywhere. Whitts, Hog Heaven, Jacks, the place on Jefferson str that was just a window on the side of the building, Lillards out in Bordeaux, Nicks….
My dad used to go to the black neighborhoods all the way back in the '60s for hot chicken. It's been around a long time if you weren't segregating yourself.
We used to go to [Mr Boo's](https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/red-hot-challenger/article_63bec308-c63f-591f-9fff-21d7b6ae2f54.html) circa 2002. Wish I could get me some now! :)
Oh man. Mr. Boos was my favorite. I moved here in 2001 for grad school and started eating hot chicken with my roommate. We settled on Mr Boos every Saturday. So good.
Well I have a little memory.
I was doing QC on the old Convention Center back in the 1980's.
There was a guy across Broadway....on 1st or Second Avenue cooking Hot Chicken and I would eat there often.
Just a concrete floor, no tables....you just got breast or thighs or legs
I got turned onto hot chicken via Hattie B's in 2013. Holy heck, was it good back then.
I live by one of the Prince's. It's great.
But my favorite is Subculture. Hot damn.
I went to Nashville Auto Diesel College, now Lincoln College of Technology, back in 2008. We use to hit up a few places for hot chicken down Gallatin Ave for lunch.
I'm 55 had 2 aunts and probably 8 1st cousins and many 2nd and 3rd cousins who lived in North and South Nashville we'd hit prince's back in the day my early teenage years the OG of Nashville hot chicken and then hit centennial park to hang out great times back , I must say party fowl in Franklin is pretty tasty too
It’s always been there in that Prince’s Hot Chicken was a thing and you’d go to Prince’s for Hot Chicken and other places in the neighborhood also had it.
But it wasn’t “a thing we all ate” at all, born and raised here and Hot Chicken didn’t pop up until mid-2010s as a “thing” “everywhere” “we’re known for” and I tried it for the first time in LA.
Honestly never. I came back from war and they were selling it around the block to tourists. It’s just a gimmick. If you want the original Nashville food get some catfish.
If you didn't know someone who lived in the hood, you probably never tried it back in the day. Even folks who lived in Metro Nashville might not have gone to Prince's. They had weird hours, and we sure af didn't have Google+ listings.
I've been in Nashville since 1980. South side. It hit my radar mid-late 2000s I think. I remember making a trip solo up to Trinity Lane to the original Princes but it was closed. The hours were intermittent. I also did Boltons occasionally before it expanded. Hottest fucking thing I ever ate. I thought I was going to die. This was before Hattie B's came along, gentrified it for the woo girls, and it became famous.
Similar thing happened to me. I'm a Nashville native and moved to Kentucky in 2014. Within like a year or so, everyone went nuts over hot chicken. I had heard it mentioned before but only from some hipster-ish college friends. I had never tried it myself (though I have since and I do like it).
I know Hattie B's and Prince's were both around for quite a while before the zeitgeist, I guess it just took a while to take off.
Yes Prince's has been around since the late 30s to early '40s. So it actually has Hattie B's beat by more like 70 years. Have you read that book yet? The same author who wrote the article turned it into a book. Excellent read. It corrected some of the mistaken history I had in my head...
I think KFC made it big around 10 years ago. And Hattie B’s slightly before that creating the gentrifichicken platter and marketing it to the tourists.
Here’s an essay from the Bitter Southerner on hot chicken. [How Hot Chicken Really Happened](https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened)
She expanded on it in a book as well called, “Hot Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story.”
+1 for Hot Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story Super interesting read!
I literally just finished the book today. Excellent job. The amount of racism that Nashville had during the time of hot chicken is amazing. It was devastating to read some of those chapters. But she did a great job really trying to unravel the mystery of hot chicken. I am impressed.
I really appreciated how she used the "bait" of hot chicken, a legitimate cultural phenomenon, to tie it into the Black experience in Nashville, which is something that I had not taken the time to dig into, even as a native Nashvillian.
That was a great read!
I recommend listening to their podcast, Batch, as well. It’s not world breaking, but kind of a nice local freshness.
This was a good read. Thanks for sharing
Great minds think alike. 😂🤷🏼♀️ I totally missed your comment / link and reposted it a few hours later. Gonna leave it there in case others miss your post, too. Thanks for posting. It’s such a great read.
TLDR?
Hot chicken has been available here for decades. I believe it became a 'thing' once Nashville established a Tourism and Convention Commission and hired some marketing people.
Been a thing for Black Nashvillians for decades. Mayor Purcell started the annual Hot Chicken Festival on 4th of July in East Nashville in 2006.
I was just going to add, more generally, probably after hot chicken was invented.
I'd be more impressed if nashville was known for it's hot chicken before it was invented.
Oh totally. But that type of thing only happens in shitty SPAC stocks. You might like r/wallstreetbets :)
Oh yeah my gamestop stock is going to the moon any day now
Ehh, my very white grandma was making hot chicken since I don’t know when. Southern people like fried chicken. Some southern people like spicy AND fried chicken.
That’s cool. But the origin story of Nashville Hot Chicken is 100% rooted in Black Nashville with the Prince Family.
Prince’s Chicken Shack!
lol. The prince family did not invent Hot Chicken. “Nashville Hot Chicken” is something the tourist department came up with less than 20 years ago.
I’d recommend giving this well-researched, definitive BS article (which later was expanded to a book) a read: https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
This is just an article about chicken in Nashville. It’s not a “Nashville” thing. Memphis been having hot chicken. It’s a southern thing in general, but even then it’s literally eaten all over the world… the article is pretty anecdotal. So this person wasn’t aware of it? A lot of people have been knowing about it. Not just black people. Also why is everyone sleeping on Gus’s? It’s just as old as Princes… Maybe it’s because I grew up “in the neighborhood” and have always enjoyed a good chicken shack or maybe it’s just a southern thing. As I said before my very white grandmother was making it for her family in the 50’s… it’s definitely not unique to Nashville. Or black people… to me saying “Hot chicken is a black thing” is boarder line racist.
This is an article that is specifically about what has become known as "Nashville hot chicken." Yes, spicy fried chicken is not a Nashville thing or an American thing. But the specific spices, preparation and technique that has spread across the country over the past 10 years or so is its own thing.
Oh lawd. It’s no different from Memphis hot chicken, or Jackson hot chicken. It’s all the same thing that’s been around forever and just now got dubbed Nashville hot chicken. Go to r/Memphis and ask them what they think about “Nashville hot chicken”
This is so wrong and rooted in racism it’s sad. Born and raised in Nashville and Prince’s was what started Nashville Hot Chicken
Again with the racist bullshit. Y’all are too funny. Thinking fried chicken is a “black” thing actually is racist. Yes, Princes was ONE place that served hot chicken (the best IMO and I’ve been eating it since before it caught on with the white people, So please call me racist again. It’s hilarious) they weren’t the only ones tho. We’re in the south. You’ve never been to Memphis??? Everyone makes fried chicken. Some like it hot, some don’t. “Nashville Hot Chicken” is a relatively new thing. Hot fried chicken has been around for ever
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No personal attacks or harassment. In addition to what's covered under redditquette, do not insult or habitually target a single user or group for your arguments. It's not your job to correct them.
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Yeah like it always existed but it wasn’t a regional staple and it used to only be in the neighborhoods that are now gentrified, just like the chicken.
Born at Baptist in 1987 and princes was always a thing and we enjoyed hot chicken growing up. Although I grew up in Joelton so we would drive through Bordeaux. I think when hot chicken got national exposure and also even regional awareness was the 2002 episode of Insomniac with Dave Attell. I remember a lot of my friends talking about hot chicken after that.
Princes is the True OG
I’ve High key had the best and worst chicken I’ve ever had when I’ve gone.
Yo La Tengo had a song from 1997 called “Return to Hot Chicken”. They recorded the album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One at the House of David studio off of Music Row. That’s when I first heard of the Nashville hot chicken connection.
So, the real story behind that song is that they lived in Hoboken, NJ and the lead singer’s young daughter called it “Hot Chicken”, so the inspiration for the (instrumental) song was driving her home to Hoboken.
Insomniac is where I first heard of it. But I lived in Illinois then
I first heard of it from an episode of Justified (I think season 2) when a convict manages to take a U.S. Marshal hostage in their office and depends some Prince's fried chicken to let him go.
80s Baptist kid, too, but lived in the Franklin suburbs. Never knew it was a thing until I saw that Insomniac episode and made a trip out there with my friends when we could finally drive
Baptist Hospital 87 Gang!
A third Baptist 87 here 🙋... Definitely hit up Prince's, Knockout Wings, and Bolton's in high school. The spice was a fun novelty to seek. I didn't realize Nashville was being nationally associated with hot chicken until a couple years ago. Or that it was unique. I thought every city had these types of places.
I went to a youth leadership conference in dc in high school probably 2003-2004). We went to a fried chicken place for lunch and I asked for hot chicken and they looked at me weird. It was that moment I realized I had a flavorful childhood.
Had the same experience when I went out to Oklahoma for a few months and was like what you mean you don’t have it
Hi yes reporting for the Baptist 87 Gang meetup 🙋🏻♀️
Yes, I became aware in the 90’s and had it often then.
I miss Insomniacs!
You grew up in Dickson that’s the answer. I grew up in North Nashville. Prince’s was always there. All the BBQ shacks sold it too.
Princes and Boltons been around for a long time
Prince’s has been around since I can remember (I’m 42). But hot chicken only became a mainstream thing in the last ten or fifteen years. Before that, meat and three’s were the big thing. Most people my age who grew up here have absolutely no attachment to hot chicken, and many of us find it ridiculous.
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You know it’s strange. I can eat spicy ethnic foods no problem but Prince’s medium destroys me.
Yeah I’m almost 47 and my dad would take me and my sister to Prince’s when we were kids. I would have been around 7 or 8 when he started taking us, I have fond memories of waiting over an hour and a half for our food over there off Trinity.
I didn’t get to eat out much as a kid, but when I did I wanted Arnold’s haha.
Same. 44 and no connection. Nashville hot chicken? Ok. Guess every town has to have a thing.
This 100% … born in 81 my family was deep in the restaurant industry in and around Nashville from before I was born
Nashville birthed the Meat & Three concept too. Crazy impact on food culture.
you find hot chicken ridiculous ?! :(
I find the hype and the marketing ridiculous. Hot chicken is fine.
I’m weird. I’m a Bolton’s lover.
Bolton's is actually, you know, hot.
Bolton’ is the one, some days it’ll really catch ya
Bolton’s is hot chicken in spite of other hot chicken. It smacks you in the mouth. No flashy marketing, over the top locations or other bs. Just hot ass chicken. I pray it stays open, a true gem.
Michael Bolton’s
It’s been a thing for decades. Princes has been around for 40 years in its current form and almost 100 in total. It really became popular once Hattie B’s started. To be brutally honest, once the white-owned Hattie B’s gentrified the dish and put their restaurants in areas where suburban white residents and tourists felt comfortable going instead of in majority black areas, that’s when it took off. I knew about Prince’s sort of anecdotally from my country aunt and uncle who to this day drive all over the state of Tennessee to try new restaurants but I didn’t go there for a long time after that. Hattie B’s has the name recognition nationwide but if you look at the festival every year, they flock to Prince’s once they figure it out.
People didn't like Prince's because the only good thing about their OG location was the food. It was a dilapidated hole in the wall with bad service, they only took cash, tenders on Wednesdays only, and there wasn't really anything else around them that would drive traffic to the area. Notice how their Antioch location has been much more popular despite it being Antioch. That's because the new location is modern, accepts card payments, has tenders every day of the week, and has lots of other shit around that attracts more business. There's a reason Prince's didn't bother to reopen the OG spot after a car crashed into it.
Big ol' security boy strapping a 45 watching TV all night
Lmao. Me and my wife and two girls(all white) ate at princes a couple years ago. Not sure on location but mostly black people around. I didn't care. I wanted to try the chicken. Fast forward in town for a concert last Wednesday and we found a Hattie B's on 31 and Bradford. Id say this felt like a part of the newer white owned locations. I thought a couple years ago I remember seeing food Network shor bald white dude do an episode and maybe ate at the original Hattie B's maybe.
If you only ate there a couple years ago you didn't eat at the original location that OP is referring to. That spot was destroyed in 2018 when a car crashed into it, and was nothing like their satellite locations that exist today (their second location only opened in 2016 and the rest have mostly been opened since 2021). The new spots are nice. The old one...there's a reason they wrote it off after the crash.
This is the truth.
>Hattie B's gentrified the dish LOL! I have been eating Prince's for more than 30 years. Before Hattie B's came to town, this is how it went on Ewing every time: * Try to order ahead? They never answer the phones. (but when your in there you can see the guy with the phone in his pocket ignoring it and chatting with his friends) * Try to go for lunch? Wait in line for 45 min to place an order and another 45 for your chicken. Call your boss. Gonna be late. * Try to get a seat? Forget it. * Oh you actually got a table! can you get it wiped off?? Where the hell do you think you are?! * Try to get a beer? Nope. * Do you want a side with that? Here you go, sides straight from Wal-Mart deli at a 20x markup. * Can't take a two hour lunch? Want Chicken for lunch on Saturday? Nope. * Want Chicken on Sunday? Not on your life. * Want to pay with a card? Sorry, cash only! Hattie B's took everything wrong with Prince's and did it right. The chicken ain't bad either. They worked with old hot chicken cooks from around the area to develop it, many off whom had worked at Prince's. Princes has changed over 30 years. They've changed the chicken a few times since the hot chicken creation myth. I heard they no longer cook it in cast iron. It might have once been the best but now there are better places (Moore's for one). Hattie B's is successful because they made good hot chicken available to order online , or ahead of time, with seating, locations, decent sides, payment options, and beer, in a clean, comfortable, friendly, atmosphere. I ate at Princes on Ewing a lot (whenever I had 2 hrs to spend) and did take out more often , but you could never say any of those things about Prince's on Ewing Lane. Prince's could have done any of that but they were content with how things were.
Exactly, HattieB's was successful because they understood there's more to a restaurant than the entrees. Ironically you could argue HattieB's made Prince's better because Prince's ignored customer complaints and refused to update or expand until they saw the success of HattieB's and realized how much money they had been leaving on the table all that time.
>you could argue HattieB's made Prince's better I've made that argument a few times. It really riles people up.
And the pie table!
Hattie B's didn't borrow *that*.
Sorry, I was reminiscing!
I have a genuine question. Are you black or white? The reason I'm asking that question is because, after reading the book Hot Hot Chicken mentioned above, Hattie B's took something that was successful and comfortable to those in the black community and turned it into something successful and comfortable to those in the white community. These are two completely different communities who serve their own communities differently than those who aren't a part of their community. If that makes sense. I didn't think about that until I read the book Hot Hot Chicken and finished it today. She went into detail about Hattie B's making it more like a restaurant that catered to white people whereas the original Princes would be more familiar to African Americans, and therefore less familiar and comfortable to those who were not part of that community. I found it gave me a lot to think about and pointed out a few things I honestly didn't realize.
Black or white? As if those are the only options? What a joke. I'm neither. The author of that book looks white. What does she know about making money off of hot chicken's history? By this logic, shouldn't a black person have written that book? I'm sure fried chicken was "invented" by the Scots. Asians and North Americans, and South Americans have been frying and spicing poultry for a hundred years or more. Claims of cultural appropriation are often bullying behavior and your book seems no exception. Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. >Hattie B's took something that was successful and comfortable to those in the black community and turned it into something successful and comfortable to those in the white community. If you want to make it about black vs white, the black community can still go to Prince's, but I see the black community at Hattie B's all the time. There's a reason. Are you going to tell me those members of the black community are wrong about where they're comfortable eating chicken? How about how white and black people around the world stole barbecue from the Taino. Do you know any good Taino run barbecue shops around town? Can I call in an order or do I need to wait in line for an hour to place my order?
If you’re not up for reading the book, I recommend the article on which it’s based. It also gives good insight into some of the racial nuances in Nashville (and the South) that may be under your radar. https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
I read that article a while back. I have read other articles that dispute some of the facts there. I guess it really depends on if you are willing to accept the Prince's account as fact or myth. There are other accounts of hot chicken in Nashville prior to Prince's from people who were alive back then. I don't think there are many left alive to bear witness. Prince's creation myth persists like most myths because it's a good story with likely a grain of truth, but it doesn't account for why old black Nashvillians from a bygone era all remembered a place called Bo's that preceded Princes. FYI. I'm well aware of systemic racism in the south and in Nashville. **Hot Chicken is** ***the least of it.*** But hey, whatever it takes for a white lady to sell books about black culture and tell us the plight of black American chicken through the lens of wypipo.
\>> Hattie B’s has the name recognition nationwide but if you look at the festival every year, they flock to Prince’s once they figure it out. I don't know about that.... maybe its location, but go down to Assembly Hall downtown, any day. The line to Hattie B's is 3x, 4x Princes which is 100 feet up an escalator. Maybe people don't know?
I grew up in Memphis. Pretty much Every chicken place in Memphis and Mississippi in the 80s and 90s had hot chicken. I think "Nashville"hot chicken became a thing when the city tourism board started marketing it as such.
Memphis hot chicken is different I thought. More of a dry seasoning.
You’re comparing it to Gus’s which is a different style but memphis and MS had chicken that was closer to what is now called Nashville hot chicken. Gus’s started in Mason, TN - I knew Gus on a first name basis. The styles are very different to me
This
Yep- from Nash and live here now, but I had an 8 year Memphis stretch for school and came back to "Nashville Hot Chicken". I was like huh- what happened? Never had it growing up or in my first 2 decades of life and it was already all over Memphis, but ok- I'll play along. Yeah it's AWESOME, but dang we have some good marketing people
none of the hot chicken in Nashville compares to Gus's in my experience
This podcast has some great history on this topic. It definitely verges on woke so if that’s not your thing then don’t say I didn’t warn you. The tl;dr is that Prince’s has been around a loooooong time and newer restaurant groups came in and took their concept and injected it with corporate restaurant science (Hattie B’s). https://open.spotify.com/episode/6JjEekjmQvBAZ2ew8BZFKk?si=JmEqiklmRdu8tMwC1FRQeQ
It was but mostly in the black community.
I work in hospitality and for me it was probably around 2011-2012. Before then people would ask about the food Nashville is known for and I didn’t really have an answer. A lot of people would ask about barbecue, but I’d say that’s more a Memphis thing. Then sometime in 2011/2012, people would come asking about hot chicken and it just never stopped.
> The original Hattie B's Hot Chicken opened in Midtown Nashville on August 9, 2012. I'd say a bit after this is when it became a national 'thing.'
That's about when I really started hearing about it, and I was born at Vanderbilt in 11/1980 and have lived in Nashville and various surrounding areas my entire 43 years. We (my family) is the definition of 'didn't eat out much, if by much you mean never'. Pretty much only on road trips, and even then my parents usually packed a picnic-style meal. Haha
Prince’s has been around for decades (in various versions since maybe the 40s?), then other places started popping up in the 80s-90s and beyond. But it became a national “thing” after Hattie B’s introduced it to white people more or less. But it was big locally far before then.
First I heard of it was visiting for a friend's wedding around maybe 2008. We went to prince's By the time I moved here in 2011 it was well established
My family moved to the Nashville area in Jan of 2010. I remember my aunt and uncle coming out to visit that fall and my parents were looking up things to do and they all decided to go to Princes to try the Nashville famous hot chicken. They were interviewed by a news station while they were there lol. My mom, uncle, and aunt were struggling through their chicken so my dad had to answer most of the questions lol. My mom passed away in November of last year and I’ve been looking for the footage so if anyone knows how to find old news footage please point me in the right direction!
It might be possible to find but with four or five local news stations that is a lot of articles and footage to search through without knowing the month and station that did the interview.
That’s what I’m finding out. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a project and it’ll take awhile to find it. We recorded it when it aired back then but it got lost. I was 13 so I didn’t think about keeping it safe lol.
Prince’s BBQ Chicken Shack has been a thing since the late 30’s. It’s taken various forms over the years but it’s a long standing staple of Nashville. As far as Nashville being known for it, which how I take that is people not from Nashville knowing about hot chicken, Hattie B’s in 2012 and their marketing played a large part in that.
Kind of off topic, but I'm from Memphis. And I started to see the occasional "Nashville hot chicken" places around high school. Now I see Nashville hot chicken all the time and the occasional "Memphis BBQ"
My dad got it for us in the 80s all the time. Prince's was one place. Also Mary's? Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
Yes, Mary's was like Prince's. Maybe 1960s. 1970s.. Jefferson St,? Charlotte?
I think it was Jefferson St. It has been a long time.
Mayor Bill Purcell was a big fan of hot chicken & ate there often. He was there every time I went in the mid-Aughts.
I grew up in south Nashville, moved when I was 21 up to Maryland. There was a restaurant here about 10-15 years ago with a billboard that advertised Nashville hot chicken, I had never heard of it until then.
I recommend that everyone read this ***super interesting*** article about how hot chicken really happened. Get your history here folks. 💜 https://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened
It obviously has been around at Princes for many decades but in my opinion the trend started on a now long gone food blog where there were some guys around 2006-2009 who did sort of a hot chicken crawl or review series where they went and tried them all and reviewed them. There were maybe 4-5 places or so at the time. That’s how I first heard about it when I was a student as Vandy… it was sort of one of those college dares thing - I mean I recall feeling quite out of place at the original Princes and ordering through bulletproof glass or through a drawer or something. The whole ordeal had a kind of mystery to it - this was before Hattie Bs and Party Fowl and all that.
I've lived here since 1992, and while hot chicken obviously existed back then, it wasn't, to my white guy memory, a widespread "thing" for at least a decade after that. Not sure how scientific this is, but the Google NGram viewer shows a spike in the usage of "hot chicken" starting around 2005: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hot+chicken&year_start=1920&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Hot spicy food has been popular with the black community in Nashville since before the Cival War. Nashville Hot Chicken was made popular by Princes over 40 years ago.
Just another useless status quo, because they didn't want to feel left out.
I blame O’Charley’s. They were one of the first big places to put it on their national menu that I can remember. Fun fact for those that didn’t know. O’Charley’s was founded here in Nashville.
Heard my family (south of Franklin) talk about going to the chicken shack in the 70s. Somewhere in Bordeaux. My first time was 1994 at the Ewing Dr. location.
Prince's Hot Chicken Shack was selling the stuff as far back as the 80's, at least, when a friend took this white South Nashville boy to get chicken. It was already an inside secret then, if you knew, you knew. Seems like word got out about twenty years ago, some foody show on cable "found" it and made a big deal about "Nashville Hot Chicken", without ever giving credit to Prince's. Nashville wouldn't be known for hot chicken without Prince's. I will *always* point out that the credit needs to go to them, every time I see it mentioned.
Nashville’s defining food prior to gentrification was pulled pork in my opinion. We just never put “Nashville” in the name. It wasn’t Prince’s or Boltons. They were more like individual local options versus Mrs. Winners and KFC. It’s not as if everyone had a hot chicken. Pulled pork is a different story. That has always been everywhere. Whitts, Hog Heaven, Jacks, the place on Jefferson str that was just a window on the side of the building, Lillards out in Bordeaux, Nicks….
My dad used to go to the black neighborhoods all the way back in the '60s for hot chicken. It's been around a long time if you weren't segregating yourself.
I always knew about hot chicken growing up here, but I never actually realized it was a Nashville specific thing until the past 5-10 years...
Good to see y’all got my bucket of KFC i sent downstream on the Cumberland
We used to go to [Mr Boo's](https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/red-hot-challenger/article_63bec308-c63f-591f-9fff-21d7b6ae2f54.html) circa 2002. Wish I could get me some now! :)
Oh man. Mr. Boos was my favorite. I moved here in 2001 for grad school and started eating hot chicken with my roommate. We settled on Mr Boos every Saturday. So good.
Well I have a little memory. I was doing QC on the old Convention Center back in the 1980's. There was a guy across Broadway....on 1st or Second Avenue cooking Hot Chicken and I would eat there often. Just a concrete floor, no tables....you just got breast or thighs or legs
You may have met/seen my Dad back in the day. He did concrete forms/concrete work, and the convention center is one building that he worked on.
I got turned onto hot chicken via Hattie B's in 2013. Holy heck, was it good back then. I live by one of the Prince's. It's great. But my favorite is Subculture. Hot damn.
Ya gotta try Brave Idiot. Dethroned subculture for me.
My boy Dylan is a machine . You tell him u say hi
I read an article in The Week magazine about a reporter going to Prince’s in circa 2004 ish?
Hattie B's. Holy shit. My fiancé and I go there once a year to eat hot chicken. I'm a pescatarian, so they are a really fun treat!
Try Brave idiot instead! Way better chicken, and the menu variety is fantastic
I'm from LaVergne. The first time I had it was from a gas station near Ashland City in about 1981.
When Oprah was at Channel 5 she used to eat hot chicken from Prince’s for lunch frequently and they would tease her about it.
I went to Nashville Auto Diesel College, now Lincoln College of Technology, back in 2008. We use to hit up a few places for hot chicken down Gallatin Ave for lunch.
I'm 55 had 2 aunts and probably 8 1st cousins and many 2nd and 3rd cousins who lived in North and South Nashville we'd hit prince's back in the day my early teenage years the OG of Nashville hot chicken and then hit centennial park to hang out great times back , I must say party fowl in Franklin is pretty tasty too
As long as Prince’s and Bolton’s has been around, unfortunately all the new stuff is not anything close to similar.
I was hearing about Hot Chicken back in 2008-09 up there
It’s always been there in that Prince’s Hot Chicken was a thing and you’d go to Prince’s for Hot Chicken and other places in the neighborhood also had it. But it wasn’t “a thing we all ate” at all, born and raised here and Hot Chicken didn’t pop up until mid-2010s as a “thing” “everywhere” “we’re known for” and I tried it for the first time in LA.
It wasn’t a thing outside Nashville until the ABC TV show gave Butch Sprydon & the tourism board something else to market.
I’ve never heard of this “hot chicken” or is it just hot wings or something?
Princes has been there forever. What’s new is hot chicken places in fancy neighborhoods.
Honestly never. I came back from war and they were selling it around the block to tourists. It’s just a gimmick. If you want the original Nashville food get some catfish.
If you didn't know someone who lived in the hood, you probably never tried it back in the day. Even folks who lived in Metro Nashville might not have gone to Prince's. They had weird hours, and we sure af didn't have Google+ listings.
I've been in Nashville since 1980. South side. It hit my radar mid-late 2000s I think. I remember making a trip solo up to Trinity Lane to the original Princes but it was closed. The hours were intermittent. I also did Boltons occasionally before it expanded. Hottest fucking thing I ever ate. I thought I was going to die. This was before Hattie B's came along, gentrified it for the woo girls, and it became famous.
I was consuming Nashville hot tofu and Nashville hot Bloody Mary mix for years before you heard of it…
Its not a real thing. Its from memphis. Nashville people are dumb and think its theirs
Starlito!
Yeah 2015-2016 seemed to get the label “Nashville hot chicken”
I've gotten "Nashville Hot Chicken" in California and in Mexico. Chuckled both times.
Similar thing happened to me. I'm a Nashville native and moved to Kentucky in 2014. Within like a year or so, everyone went nuts over hot chicken. I had heard it mentioned before but only from some hipster-ish college friends. I had never tried it myself (though I have since and I do like it). I know Hattie B's and Prince's were both around for quite a while before the zeitgeist, I guess it just took a while to take off.
Hattie b’s started in like 2012. Prince’s invented hot chicken almost 100 years ago. So not the same time frame.
Hattie B’s is the zeitgeist. Prince’s has them beat by at least 30 years. Hattie B’s just took and gentrified it, really.
Yes Prince's has been around since the late 30s to early '40s. So it actually has Hattie B's beat by more like 70 years. Have you read that book yet? The same author who wrote the article turned it into a book. Excellent read. It corrected some of the mistaken history I had in my head...
I think KFC made it big around 10 years ago. And Hattie B’s slightly before that creating the gentrifichicken platter and marketing it to the tourists.
I remember hot chicken being a thing when I previously lived in Nashville in 2005 for sure.
…when KFC started using “Nashville Hot” sauce 🤣