Prince's hot chicken is so good that it completely changed the way I thought about fried chicken. Essentially, BP (that's Before Prince's), I almost wouldn't buy it in a restaurant. I'd had my taste buds mangled by too much bad fast-food chicken, and I believed that good fried chicken was made at home. And it is, but not all of it.
Prince's isn't a shack, it's a small shop in a dilapidated strip mall in a seedy section of north Nashville. It's not for everybody. I've been approached by panhandlers and drug dealers during the daytime hours there. But oh, the chicken.
Start with the fact that, hot aside, this is really, really good pan-fried chicken. It's meaty and tasty and filling. Even if it was just Prince's Chicken Shack, I'd go there. But the hot. Wow. I don't know anything to compare it to. This isn't a Buffalo wings hot or a hot sauce hot. It's a peppers-from-hell hot. Apparently, it's a paste that is put on after the chicken fries. Not to fear -- it's so spicy and flavorful that it completely infiltrates every inch of chicken. Eating Prince's is a perfect mixture of dining pleasure and pain. Your mouth is on fire and you wonder how you can take another bite, but at the same time, you HAVE to have that next bite.
Buy a side item and work it in to cool things down. I like the fries personally, but I hear the beans are good too. Use the pickle slices to your advantage as well. Drink something non-carbonated liberally.
And save the bread for last. Prince's hot chicken, as mentioned before, comes on a bed of toast. While you're burning yourself out on the chicken, the toast sops up grease and sauce, and marinates into Fire Toast. It's the best and craziest part of the meal. It will always make me sweat and occasionally will bring a tear or three. And I eat the chicken mild.
Which is my last point. You can get the chicken plain, mild, medium, hot, or extra-hot. Stay away from the latter two unless you know what you're doing. Mild packs plenty of punch, and medium would be considered hot in any sane place in the world.
It's slow, the restaurant is tiny and dingy, and as I mentioned above, the atmosphere is rather seedy. But wow, is it worth it.
"Leg Quarter, extra hot. This is fried chicken to dream about, and good reason to consider relocating to Nashville. We devoured even the soft white bread because so much chicken juice and spice soaked in and made it delicious. (Bruce Bilmes photo)"
Michael Stern
"Forget princehood. Here is the King of Chicken!"
Michael Stern
