{"id":10802,"date":"2019-12-04T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000004965"},"modified":"2020-09-29T12:36:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:36:26","slug":"addison-nashville-hot-chicken-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/addison-nashville-hot-chicken-opinion","title":{"rendered":"Stop calling your food ‘Nashville hot’ when it’s not\u2014because there’s history there"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I ever had Kim Prince’s Nashville hot chicken\u2014she’s the niece of Andr\u00e9 Prince Jeffries, the matriarch behind Nashville\u2019s iconic, James Beard Award-winning Prince\u2019s Hot Chicken Shack who’s finally opening up her first brick-and-mortar<\/a> in Crenshaw\u2014I was mesmerized and feeling the heat and, most importantly, feeling the privilege of eating her food.<\/p>\n

And, by the way, not just kind of feeling the heat, like when I eat a Serrano pepper or haba\u00f1ero whole. No. That heat is a steady one that is only sometimes overwhelming. This… Well, I was actually sweating, my ears and face reddening. I had lost clarity about three bites in and a dizzy, disorientation overtook me. I had to pucker my lips to suck in air, vainly hoping it would cool the fire seeping across my mouth. And amid all this, I kept wanting\u2014needing<\/em>\u2014to take another bite.<\/p>\n

When it came to others using the name her family made and has harnessed for nearly 100 years, Kim was clear: “It\u2019s a community, not a competition.” She was open to the idea of Nashville heat escaping its birth town, her family’s grasp, and expanding. She was willing to let it go and let it be. But there was and is a fiery caveat to that sweetness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing is: if you slap the name \u2018Nashville\u2019 on it, it better bring the heat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And now, let’s be honest, “Nashville hot” is being bastardized; not necessarily with malicious intent but because it is an easy marketing tactic, an appealing trend that makes it easy for chefs and restaurateurs to easily misuse.<\/p>\n

For example, l love\u00a0<\/em>the spicy sweetbreads at Restauration; I even featured them as one of my favorite things I was eating<\/a>. But they aren’t remotely near Nashville hot, despite being labeled as so. They’re just spicy. And that’s OK.<\/p>\n

I genuinely appreciate the spicy chicken sandwich at Portuguese Bend, which comes with a warning that the sandwich is genuinely hot. But it is not remotely, on any level, near Nashville hot. It’s just spicy. And that’s OK.<\/p>\n

I bring up places I truly admire and respect above to showcase that this isn’t about unsatisfactory food; it’s about food history and how we’re associating that history with the way we market our food. That’s what makes experiencing anything that is truly “Nashville hot” a privilege.<\/p>\n

Nashville heat is an essential part of Black American history and food<\/h3>\n

The legend, at least according to Kim and countless family members, is that her great-great Uncle Thornton Prince got into a quarrel of sorts with a lover, causing the lover to dump what she thought was an unsavory amount of spice into his chicken rub. Come a few minutes after using it, his mouth was sweltering but his palate was forever changed.<\/p>\n

Nashville hot chicken is a deeply geographic<\/em>, deeply Southern<\/em>, deeply B<\/em>lack American food<\/em>. It connected the Black community in a time of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement; it still does so to this day. Like soul food itself, Nashville hot chicken is cooked in a history both ugly and beautiful.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Nashville hot chicken out here, most locals think their proper introduction to this fiery piece of fried chicken came by way of Howlin\u2019 Ray\u2019s, a tiny-but-mighty bird shop tucked inside a mini-mall in Downtown Los Angeles\u2019 Chinatown. It’s a shop, mind you, that owes its existence to the Prince family. With a line that rarely, if ever, dips under 45 minutes thanks to its cult-like following, Howlin\u2019 and Kim Prince’s Hotville are the closest things you can score befitting Prince\u2019s Hot Chicken Shack itself.<\/p>\n

What Prince\u2019s created, and, what Kim and Howlin\u2019 have brought to the West Coast, is an oddly addicting piece of spicy fried chicken that shouldn\u2019t be addicting, but most definitely is. And it’s special. It’s food that sat side-by-side with everything from the Nashville sit-ins of the 1960s to current love of uplifting racism <\/a>in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Its resilience shows up in the presence of the heat.\u00a0It’s not the subtle heat of Memphis fried chicken\u2014which you can experience a prime example of at Gus\u2019s on Long Beach Boulevard\u2014but a sweat-inducing heat, especially if you enter into the upper echelons of hot chicken\u2019s heat scale. That scale, for the most part thanks to the history of Prince\u2019s, is always on a six-figure scale when excluding the plain option: mild, medium, hot, extra hot, extra-extra hot and the fiery extra-extra-extra hot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s folks out there blasting their birds with ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers,\u201d Kim once said, throwing shade at those throwing heat without skill. \u201cThe point isn\u2019t just<\/em>\u00a0to bring heat; I can throw in pepper after pepper if that\u2019s all I wanted to achieve. It\u2019s about making you sweat but making you want to keep eating.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it isn’t just about bringing the heat but pairing what would typically be an ungodly fire to a perfected taste. If it’s just fire breathing across your palate, it’s not Nashville hot. If it’s great taste but little heat, it’s not Nashville hot.<\/p>\n

If you need a lesson to learn the distinction, we’re blessed that we no longer have to go to Nashville\u2014you can just get a two-piece meal from Kim Prince herself.<\/p>\n

Hotville Chicken is located at 4070 Marlton Avenue, Los Angeles, 90008.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Brian Addison is a columnist and editor for the Long Beach Post.\u00a0<\/em>Reach him at\u00a0brian@lbpost.com\u00a0or on social media at\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn’t about unsatisfactory food; it’s about food history and how we’re associating that history with the way we market our food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":70341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2691],"class_list":["post-10802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","tag-commentary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}