A Farewell Ode To Hot Chicken As We Know It

I am, in case you haven't had the pleasure, talking about hot chicken, a Nashville original that can be traced all the way back to the 1930s. Biting in yields a burn quite unlike any you've ever experienced. The spice sticks to and around your lips and lingers for long, long minutes, scalding both your tongue and the back of your throat. Your eyes water with tears of pain, your sinuses are immediately cleared and your entire face feels some sort of masochistic pleasure...and that's just from a medium heat level. Somehow, despite the full-body discomfort, you always crave more. It's this constant craving that singlehandedly fuels frequent trips to my alma mater.

Despite its immense popularity in Nashville (more than 20 restaurants in town specialize in its various preparations), hot chicken took years to catch on elsewhere in the United States. And I was more than fine with that — it was my (not-so) little Nashville treat, my safe haven, my ephemeral escape. It was my intimate knowledge of the intricacies of the dish that gave me some semblance of credibility with Music City locals, despite my blatantly obvious Yankee traits.

Leave it to a national fast-food chain to potentially distort the storied past and unique qualities associated with this iconic dish. Based on a report in The Tennesseean, I am now fearful for the future of hot chicken as we know it.

I suppose it was only a matter of time. Slowly but surely, the rest of the country got wind of this magical concoction that Nashvillians strive so hard to perfect and keep secret (good luck getting any chef to reveal his or her recipe). And I was fine with that, too — I even published a map pinpointing 19 restaurants across the country currently serving hot chicken in some form (with another nine venues in the works). None of the renditions I've tried from the list have tasted quite like any you'd find in Nashville, but many places have made valiant efforts to replicate the original, often due to a chef's personal affinity for the dish. Some will even add a touch of local flair or flavor. That's harmless enough. Respectable, even. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The actual downfall began somewhat recently with headlines proclaiming hot chicken to be "the new fried chicken" (whatever that means) while celeb chefs like Carla Hall jumped on board with restaurant plans of their own. Multiple publications and websites gazed into their crystal balls and declared it a surefire "food trend" in 2016. That's right, a trend, dragging along with it the promise of self-proclaimed "foodies" lining up by the hundreds until it inevitably becomes time to scatter to the next Instagram-friendly hybrid, leaving hot chicken to succumb to a sudden and insignificant death.

The final nail in the coffin for hot chicken's status as a relatively little-known food item serving as an instant conversation starter and connection between Nashville residents and in-the-know outsiders was brutally hammered in this week. Following a test of the item in its Pittsburgh-area stores (seriously, yinz?), KFC announced plans to carry out a food-truck tour serving its own take on hot chicken, stopping at eight other cities named Nashville across America (located mostly in the Midwest). The fast-food chain intends to introduce the flavored chicken to its stores nationwide soon after the conclusion of the grease-drenched road trip.

It's a sad time for my beloved dish, my first (and just maybe my only) true love. The truth is that thousands more will soon sample a dish that's undeniably worth sampling. But what they'll sample — whether it's from a drive-thru KFC at a highway rest-stop or at a restaurant serving up some uninspired variation just to meet demand for the "in" foods of the moment — will be a far cry from the hot chicken that's so deeply intertwined in the fabric of an entire city and its people. They'll henceforth always equate whatever they ate with the two formerly beautiful words "hot chicken." And for that, I'll shed a tear.

Whether these new consumers immediately embrace this wholly bastardized version of a classic regional dish or merely cast it aside at the end of its fleeting days as a "trend" is ultimately irrelevant. You'll still find me at the counter at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, squinting to watch a minuscule, two-pronged-antenna television tuned to daytime programming. I'll be patiently waiting to sweat away my sorrows over a proper plate of hot chicken, forever dreaming of those sundresses.