Nashville’s Hot Chicken Sandwich

I first learned about Nashville Hot chicken from a 2010 post on Chicago foodie site LTHForum by the user PIGMON. PIGMON was a fellow named Rob, who I had gotten to know along with his long-term partner Kristina at various LTH events since Mindy and I moved to Chicago in 2006–picnics, holiday parties, cocktail hours, random dinners, etc, and we always enjoyed spending time with both of them. We practically had to wrestle our infant son Ian back from Kristina at 2007’s annual LTH picnic.

I say PIGMON was Rob but I mean was and is, I suppose, though I have not seen either Rob or Kristina in some years. I heard from a mutual friend recently that they’re doing well. Regardless, in a thread about recommendations for inexpensive eats in Nashville, Tennessee, a different user mentioned that they’d considered stopping at a place called Bolton’s but “did not feel comfortable in [the] area” of East Nashville just off of I-24 where that cinderblock shack stood, in the parking lot of what was, at the time, a pizza restaurant.

Rob and Kristina, on the other hand, are the kind of people who’ll stop just about anywhere if there’s a good meal in it. Rob told of a trip to Nashville he’d taken the previous year when Bolton’s had been a standout discovery for them. He relayed a bit of the business’s history and its lineage from the “original” Nashville Hot chicken before getting to the food:

Both the spicy catfish and chicken were exceptionally good in a primordial sorta way. The shockingly fresh catfish had a crisp, brightly spiced crust with a squirk of hot sauce and mustard atop… the turbo-charged spiced oil crust elevates the experience to the ideal late night stoner grub.

PIGMON on LTHForum, April 10th, 2010

It was a year later before I tried Nashville Hot Chicken myself, at the tail end of a road trip in which I drove a moving van containing my sister Bridget’s belongings across the country from Phoenix to Nashville. That first day in Nashville, we got to work unloading the truck and that evening, we went to Bolton’s where I ordered a half chicken, all dark meat, with sides. I picked up a 6-pack of Yuengling beer at the gas station just down the block from Bolton’s and we brought the food back to Bridget’s new apartment to eat.

I went through that entire 6-pack of Yuengling just trying to eat one thigh/leg quarter of Bolton’s hot chicken. What makes Nashville Hot Chicken hot is this: after the chicken is fried, the cook adds a special seasoning blend based on paprika, sugar, and a lot of powdered chili pepper. There are 2 methods that can be used to add the spice–the dry method and the wet method. With the dry method that Bolton’s uses, the spice mix is simply shaken liberally onto the chicken while it is still fresh out of the oil, so that it adheres and binds itself to the chicken via the thin glistening layer of oil still clinging to the breading. The wet method involves mixing the spice blend in bowl with some of the still-hot oil taken directly from the fryer and then tossing the chicken in the hot seasoned oil. By using an oil-based slather they are able to preserve the crispness of the chicken’s breading, and with either method, they are able to preserve the heat of the chili powder and keep it from burning off in the fryer by adding the spice after the chicken is already cooked. It is really a brilliant method of adding entirely too much flavor and capsaicin heat to some fried chicken without destroying its texture.

At the time I first ate at Bolton’s, in 2011, Nashville Hot Chicken had not yet reached its current level of national saturation, where it seems every town of middling size boasts at least one hot chicken joint, or a local spot that offers a Nashville Hot rendition in addition to its own fried chicken stylings. But it was already on its way. According to Rachel L. Martin, writing for the Bitter Southerner–who also wrote a more full-length history of Hot Chicken and the black communities of Nashville that produced it in 2021’s Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story–the hot chicken craze began in 2007, when outgoing Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell launched the first annual Music City Hot Chicken Festival.

Hot chicken itself began much earlier than that, in the 1930s according to the legends told about Thornton Prince, that are recounted on printed plaques at the various Prince’s Hot Chicken locations around Nashville–or at least at the Assembly Food Hall location that I visited recently. It’s a good story.

The story starts in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Thornton Prince was a tall, good-looking man, a ladies’ man, a partier and serial philanderer, who would frequently find his way back home after a night out on the town later than the ladies in his life cared for. Sadly, history does not record the name of the woman who decided to teach him a lesson, but one morning Thornton awoke to the delicious smell of frying chicken, rather than the anger and recrimination and tears that usually followed one of these late nights. Unbeknownst to him, his lover had spiked the breading of the chicken she served him that morning with a mixture of potent spicy chili powders, but the prank had an unexpected outcome–Thornton loved it, and between him and his brothers, they opened a late night restaurant selling this spicy fried chicken and called it the BBQ Chicken Shack.

It is a good story… but possibly apocryphal. As Martin notes, “a few folks say that before there was Prince’s BBQ Chicken Shack, there was a place called Bo’s. But who wants to mess with a good story?”

Eventually, after a few moves, the BBQ Chicken Shack landed at a location near Nashville’s famous Ryman Theater, home of the Grand Ole Opry until 1974, and gained fans among the country music stars who performed there. In the late 70s, a longtime cook named Bolton Polk opened his own hot chicken shack called Columbo’s. He sold his recipe to his nephew Bolton Matthews, who opened Bolton’s in 1997 with his wife Dollye, who added hot fried fish to the menu. I can attest that Bolton’s fried catfish is among the greatest things one can eat in this life, as good today as it was 10 years ago when I named it my favorite sandwich of 2014.

I’ve been to Nashville several times since that initial visit, and it seems like every time I visit the town, the hot chicken landscape is different. New places have opened, old places have closed, and a “Best Hot Chicken of Nashville” list published only a few months prior will already be out of date. The exceptions are: Prince’s, the original; Bolton’s, known as the hottest of the hot chicken joints; and Hattie B’s, which opened in 2012 in Midtown Nashville, in a spot where it can serve both the honkytonk-goers of Music Row and the students of nearby Vanderbilt University. Prince’s and Hattie B’s both boast multiple locations and each of them often has hot chicken fans lined up out the doors.

And the craze has truly gone nationwide. Chain Dave’s Hot Chicken, which started in 2017 “in a parking lot in East Hollywood, with a couple of folding tables and a portable fryer under the night sky” according to their marketing materials, but now has around 180 locations spread across the US. Chicago’s Nashville Hot chicken craze probably started with The Budlong, which opened in 2016, but many other shops, both existing and new, followed suit. I miss being able to order a chicken biscuit sandwich called The Stevie from The Roost‘s tiny carryout-only spot just outside my train station downtown, Nashville Hot, loaded with bacon and cheddar and a fried egg, and carry it to my office for the occasional hangover breakfast–their take on “Nashville Hot” was more of a mild-to-medium, barely enough to make my lips tingle, but it scratched an itch.

Of course these days every place has Nashville Hot chicken. Even KFC has Nashville Hot chicken, or did before discontinuing it. It wasn’t very good. But truth be told, very few of these Nashville Hot chicken purveyors outside of Nashville do the original justice. Of those I’ve tried in the Chicago area, Fry the Coop, originally opened in 2017, comes the closest. Their “Hot” is legitimately hot, pushing the boundaries of my spice tolerance, and there are 2 even hotter levels than that–“Crazy” and “Insanity,” neither of which I’m interested in trying.

I recently revisited their Oak Lawn location and this time tried the Medium, in a Nashville-style chicken sandwich with pickle and coleslaw in a toasted hamburger bun. The chicken is delicious and well-fried, moist and ungreasy despite the bath in hot oil. But the Medium ranked about where The Roost’s Nashville Hot had, just hot enough to register that there was some capsaicin present, but not enough to start the sweat or the endorphins flowing.

It’s a good sandwich, but… if I was going to write about Nashville Hot Chicken, I’d need to return to Nashville.

Nashville

My sister Bridget still lives in Nashville along with her boyfriend Brian, giving us not only an excuse to make the trip, but a place to stay while we’re there, so on a recent Friday, Mindy and I drove down to Nashville, a trip of about 7 hours. We arrived late enough that we just spend the remainder of that Friday evening unwinding from the drive in Bridget’s living room with a drink or two, petting her dog Bibi and her cats, once they got used to us being there. I am an early riser–not by nature, but by force of habit, having trained myself to get up early for work over the course of decades–so when I found myself sitting alone at the kitchen table the next morning, I decided to go out and find myself some hot chicken for breakfast. I did a quick search, and found a Hot Chicken Biscuit sandwich available at a busy East Nashville brunch spot called Sky Blue Cafe.

It was a cold, blustery morning and every table at the cafe was full, but they took my to-go order and I brought the biscuit back to Bridget’s kitchen table. Their take on Nashville Hot was a solid Medium in terms of heat level, and it was served in a good, soft biscuit with the requisite 2 pickle chips and a drizzle of honey. I could take or leave the home fries that were served on the side but this Nashville Hot was as good as most any Nashville Hot chicken I’d had outside of Nashville.

Eventually, everyone awoke. Bridget and Brian had a family function to attend, so Mindy and I found ourselves on our own for the morning and afternoon. Though Mindy and I had visited Nashville together previously, she had never come with me to Bolton’s, preferring less palate-abusing fare. This time, she came along. Since my first visit in 2011, Bolton’s had graduated from the cinderblock shack in the parking lot to the main building, and had more of an interior dining area as a result.

Bolton’s does not serve a hot chicken sandwich. They serve quarter chickens, thigh/leg or breast/wing. They also serve wings, tenders, or “Chicken on a stick,” which Mindy ordered. Their spice levels range from Non-Spicy through Lite Mild, Mild, Medium, Hot, and Extra Hot. Mindy got her chicken-on-a-stick Lite Mild. I ordered a thigh/leg quarter Hot, which had been my standard order at Bolton’s since I first went there 13 years ago.

I have to ask this of anybody in Nashville who might read this: is it possible that Bolton’s has gotten hotter over the years? I remember Bolton’s chicken as being painfully hot, requiring plenty of liquids and multiple breaks to get through it, but I could always eat it. This time, it was borderline inedible, unsafe to breathe near much less consume. I ate it–most of it. Some of it the surface breading mysteriously fell off so that I could consume the clean meat underneath. Now it’s possible that my tolerance for spice has decreased in the past 13 years. But I wonder if Bolton’s has stepped things up to maintain their reputation as the hottest chicken in town. However, the fried catfish continued to be among the best things I’ve ever eaten, and I will return to Bolton’s again and again for that alone, even if I have to start ordering my chicken Medium instead of Hot.

That evening, we were going out to a bar called Wilhagan’s to meet up with some of Bridget’s friends, throw darts, have a few (many) drinks, and possibly eat–but I was too picky to eat there. The menu looked fine. But I was in Nashville to eat Hot Chicken and dammit I wanted to eat Hot Chicken. We had plans to visit Hattie B’s and Prince’s the next day, so I looked at a relatively current list of the best hot chicken in Nashville and chose Helen’s, located on the lower level of a strip mall in a neighborhood that Google Maps is telling me has the unlikely name Fang.

Helen’s range of spice levels runs from Plain through Mild, Hot, and Hella–I ordered the chicken sandwich Hot. Their Hot chicken was good, the sandwich simple, just a piece of boneless chicken, coated in the spiced oil, with 2 pickle chips in a hamburger bun. The chicken was not as spicy as Bolton’s but it had more heat to it than most of what I’ve had outside of Nashville, enough to get the endorphins flowing without pushing me past my limits. I asked for a piece of their fried catfish as well, Mild, and was amazed to discover it was damn near as good as Bolton’s, a crisp shell barely containing moist, bursting fish flesh, mildly spiced and delicious. You can get your catfish Nashville Hot but I don’t recommend it–fish is a delicate meat and while a small dose of the spice enhances the experience, too much will overwhelm the fish.

On my first day of this trip to Nashville, I ate hot chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I still hadn’t hit 2 of the 3 main spots that I wanted to get to. But we went out to Wilhagan’s, and met Bridget’s friends, who were a delight, and lost pretty badly at a luck of the draw darts tournament (with apologies to my partner, who was throwing well that night; unfortunately, I was not). But we had a great time, and the next day, we went to lunch at the Midtown location of Hattie B’s.

Bridget’s boyfriend Brian had family who worked for Hattie B’s, a sister and a cousin who were both in management, and he let them know we were coming so we could get a “family discount” which turned out to mean having our meals comped, which was unexpected but very much appreciated. It was warmer in Nashville than it had been the previous day, and the usual line snaked out of Hattie B’s door, down the steps, and rounded the corner onto the sidewalk. It’s my understanding that on an even warmer day, the line might go around the block, and frankly I can see why. Hattie B’s was spectacular.

Hattie B’s spice levels start out at “Southern,” for no heat, then Mild, Medium, Hot, Damn Hot!!, and Shut the Cluck Up!!! They were out of the breaded chicken breasts for sandwiches the day we went–those sandwiches sell like crazy I guess–but they also offer a grilled chicken sandwich made Nashville Hot so I thought it would be worth trying the variant. Brian, brave man that he is, ordered the chicken Damn Hot!! instead of his usual order of Hot.

The sandwich consists of a chicken breast, grilled or fried, coated in the hot spice mix, with Comeback Sauce, pickles, and coleslaw on a hamburger bun. The grilled chicken turns out to be quite good, adding a char-grilled flavor to the heat of the spice mix, still crisp on the surface (though less crisp than a breaded fried chicken would be) while juicy inside, to the extent that white meat can be juicy in any case. Hattie B’s Hot spice mix hits my sweet spot, hot enough that I feel it, that pain-high of a dish that’s good and hot, the clarity of thought that arises even as your nose runs and your eyes water up. Everyone has their own spice tolerance, and mine is higher than some but definitely not as high as the real chili-heads, but for this chicken, I’m able to get through eating it without the heat becoming too much of an ordeal. I washed it down with a couple cans of Drinking Buddy by Jackalope Brewing, a Golden Ale that was designed to be paired with Hattie B’s Hot Chicken.

Brian, on the other hand… Brian struggled through the first piece of the Damn Hot!! chicken on his plate. He was sweating, resting on his elbows over the table, then leaning back and gasping for breath. That Damn Hot!! chicken he ordered looked every bit as evil as the Hot I’d gotten at Bolton’s the previous day, if not more so. Suddenly he straightened up, announced he’d pushed past the pain, and finished every bite of chicken in front of him. I salute the man; that was some Damn Hot chicken.

The primary Prince’s location on Nolensville Pike was not open that day, but the Assembly Food Hall in downtown Nashville was doing brisk business, and had its own Prince’s location (as well as a Hattie B’s).

Prince’s Hot Chicken sandwich is called The Andre. It’s served in a hamburger bun with 2 pickle slices, a choice of heat (from Plain through Lite Mild, Mild, Medium, Hot, X Hot, XX Hot, and XXX Hot), and a choice of sauce, the “Sweet Heat” or “Kickin’ Ranch.” Their website states that it comes with coleslaw as well but there was no coleslaw on the sandwich I ordered, which I requested Hot and with the Sweet Heat sauce.

There was nothing wrong with this sandwich–the chicken was fried well, the heat level was fine, the sweet heat sauce didn’t really add anything to my mind but didn’t take away from the flavor either. Some slaw might have been appreciated but the acidity of the pickles as always helped cut through the overwhelming flavor of the hot chicken.

But where Prince’s claims to be, and perhaps is, the original and gold standard when it comes to Hot Chicken, Hattie B’s may be the original and the gold standard when it comes to the Hot Chicken Sandwich. Brian told me he didn’t remember Prince’s serving Hot Chicken as a sandwich until after Hattie B’s came on the scene with their sandwich, and I can’t find any mentions of Prince’s sandwich online before a few years ago. Prince’s sandwich, at least the Andre, does appear to be a relatively recent addition to the menu, but if any readers have more detailed information about when each restaurant started serving their chicken as a sandwich, please clue me in!

In decades past, your hot chicken may have come served on a slice of white bread with two pickle slices stuck to the top with a toothpick. It may even have been called a sandwich. But a piece of bone-in fried chicken isn’t as easy to eat between slices of bread as, say, a bone-in pork chop sandwich. With the latter, you can simply use the bone as a handle and eat your way around it. With the former, I don’t believe the bread is intended to be used as a sandwich, but rather to nibble on between bites of chicken in an attempt to tame the heat.

DIY

But what if I want to make a Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich at home? you may be asking yourself.

Well it helps that I bought some of Hattie B’s Hot dry spice mix before I left Nashville. I don’t believe this is available online at the moment–at least I did not see it on their website–but it was available for sale at the restaurant itself, and as I mentioned, this particular level of heat hit the sweet spot for me between too tame and holy-shit-I-can’t-breathe.

I made a rather simple coleslaw–cabbage, carrot, red onion, mayonnaise, cider vinegar, sugar, celery seed, salt and pepper. I used the basic recipe from NYT Cooking’s Nashville Hot Chicken recipe, brining the chicken overnight, using a dry-wet-dry method with seasoned flour and a seasoned egg wash, and pan-fried several boneless, skinless chicken thighs (and a couple of breasts for comparison) before using the wet method with 5 tbsp of Hattie B’s spice mix to a cup of frying oil. Then I served my sandwiches much the same as Hattie B’s had–simply, in a cheap hamburger bun, with 2 slices of pickle and topped with slaw.

I like the wet method of applying the spice to the chicken maybe a touch better than the dry method. Though I have always been and always will be a Bolton’s Booster (though I’ll probably be switching my order from Hot to Medium going forward), the dry method does leave the possibility of having aerosolized hot chili powder hovering around the finished chicken, making inhaling near the food dangerous.

The wet method probably adds a few calories to the finished product, though I let the chicken drain for a few minutes after hitting it with the spiced oil before I assemble the sandwiches. I like using thighs for chicken sandwiches–dark meat is more forgiving for frying, especially if you are frying a large batch and reheating some of the pieces later. Not to mention that the thighs seem to be better proportioned to the bun than the breasts–at least these thighs, these breasts. The breasts are so big, so thick, that the spice on the surface gets lost a bit in the expanse of white meat between, though brining the chicken has made that white meat plenty flavorful. On the other hand, thighs present odd, jagged surfaces for the flour to cling to, making the breading more irregular, crisper, and giving the spice more breading to cling to as a result.

I ate Nashville Hot Chicken at home for most of a week after just one batch of chicken, and I’ve barely made a dent in the jar of spice mix that I brought home, so I foresee plenty of hot chicken in my future as well. But I was just looking at photos from a trip to Nashville 10 years ago, the trip when I first tried Bolton’s catfish, and daydreaming about visiting again soon. When I do, I hope to keep expanding my knowledge of the Nashville Hot Chicken scene. Any hot tips on which Hot Chicken I should try next?