Prince's Hot Chicken Shack

Posted By Michael Stern on May 13, 2007 11:40 PM

I cannot absolutely say that Prince's Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville serves the best fried chicken on earth, given that this planet is also home to Keaton's, Stroud's, the Blue Willow Inn, Chicken on the Way, Brenda's Diner, and the Bon Ton Mini Mart; but if I did declare it #1, I would sleep well at night. It is spectacular.

First, a word of warning: It is not for all aficionados of fried chicken which, generally speaking, is a gentle-tempered comfort-food dish. This bird is h-o-t. Of the four degrees of Scoville scale pain Prince's offers, even mild packs a punch; hot made my eyes water and lips tingle; frankly, I chickened out on trying extra-hot. Unlike typical hot wings, these quarters and halves are not bathed in sticky hot sauce; they are relatively dry and ferociously seasoned down to the bone; and their crust, which strips off in luxurious patches that are equal measures crunch and chew, is radiant with red-orange spice. It's salty but not throat-parching; and the miracle of it is that the flavor of plush chicken imbued with plenty of natural schmaltz (chicken fat) bursts right through the heat.

One woman in the parking lot told Jane and me that she ate lunch – extra-hot – at Prince's Tuesday through Saturday (it is closed Sunday and Monday), and that the one time when she got home and discovered she accidentally had been given a paper bag full of mild, she drove the 30 minutes back to Prince's to exchange it for the right stuff.

All meals come from the kitchen in brown paper bags, even if you plan to dine at one of the few tables in the storefront restaurant, where seats are scarce at mealtime. You will always wait for your food because there are no heat lamps here; every order is made as it is called back to the kitchen.

At first, when 55 of us from the Roadfood Nashville eating marathon tour arrived, I thought we might have made a mistake to consider this little place a good choice for so many people. The staff seemed to be overwhelmed. It took over 30 minutes for the people at the back of the line to get their chicken, and some got breast quarters when they wanted leg-thigh quarters. But such inconveniences are utterly trivial in the presence of fried chicken greatness.

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Posted By Michael Campbell on April 24, 2011 10:05 PM

Excellent chicken. Do not let the location or the look of the restaurant fool or discourage you. The price is right and the experience is unforgettable. I ate there two weeks ago for the first time. I went back again this weekend during my visit to see my new granddaughter. Now I have two reasons to visit Nashville.

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Fried Chicken

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Posted By Joe Cox on July 18, 2009 10:44 PM

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.

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Fried Chicken

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