Prince's Hot Chicken Shack

123 Ewing Drive #3
Nashville, TN 37207
(615) 226-9442
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If you have ever seen any type of travel show about Nashville, they undoubtedly mention hot chicken. Hot chicken (along with meat and three) is one of the staples of this incredible area. Unfortunately one of the most famous hot chicken joints also happened to be one of my least favorites. The picture below screams everything I like about hole in the wall food spots. Cheap table clothes, amazing branding, and phone numbers with no area code.

When you walk into this place, the air is thick and warm, the crowd is large, and the service friendly. You order at the window and jockey for a table/seat. Luckily, the Southern friendliness did not hold up well against the Philadelphia attitude, and I was able to snake a table within ten minutes of ordering.

There are a variety of awards around the restaurant. I was getting very excited. This is one of my favorites.

And then you wait. And wait. And WAIT. It took about 45 minutes from ordering to getting your food. I got a half a chicken at the "hot" spice level, a lemonade, coleslaw, pickles, and potato salad. The counter lady said "you eating all that yourself?". I nodded and took my trays away in shame. Luckily for me, I don't care about my tendencies for gluttonous over-intake and soon was trying to pry the skin off of a thigh that was approximately the temperature of the sun. It took no less than ten minutes to get the chicken to a first degree burn temperature and shove it into my gullet.

Look at this line up. Fried chicken on a slice of white bread with some pickles. Perfection.

There was one problem, however. Now I am a HUGE fan of hot food. Love it. I DON'T love unbalanced heat that is just there to burn. There were still two levels of heat above the "hot" flavor I ordered, so I figured I was in the clear. Not so much. The only way I can describe the level of burn on this chicken is like this.

I could barely get the skin down. I was afraid I was going to vomit involuntarily from the level of spice hitting my throat. I was actually laughing hysterically as it was all going down, because I just couldn't understand the place. My god, some honey or sugar would have done wonders to this stuff. It was pure burn, nothing else. Literally brushing cayenne paste onto the chicken that has cayenne in the breading, and was perhaps soaked in Lucifer's sweat. The skin was crunchy but nearly inedible, the meat was hot but tolerable, and the temperature inside of this place did not help matters. I thought someone slipped me some hallucinogens.

While I am glad I went, I don't know that I would rush back. If so, I would likely get the medium or (gasp) mild. It was just not enjoyable in its hot form and that made me sad. So sad.

Nashville Biscuit House

805 Gallatin Ave.
Nashville, TN 37206
(615) 228-4504
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Nashville is know for a couple things. One being biscuits, another being "meat and three" and the third being hot chicken. More on hot chicken later (I will be writing about it next). For now, let's focus on biscuits. Nashville Biscuit House is a literal box of a diner, with a drive through window and no other windows. There is a line about all open hours, so just suck it up and wait if you want some greasy breakfast.

I was ready to get down, but I HAD just eaten my weight in late night burgers and hot chicken at Dino's about 8 hours prior.

They offer things like the below.

I decided to be healthy and skip the ultimate platter, instead opting for a breakfast platter, featuring only grits, bacon, fried eggs, and toast. To that, I added a whole order of biscuits and gravy, and a country ham biscuit sandwich. Who said I couldn't do moderation?

The country ham biscuit sandwich was great, and featured ribbons of fat through the ham, a flaky, baking powder tinged biscuit, and a folded fried egg. The biscuit itself was a thing of beauty, and the sum of the parts was a nice breakfast sandwich.

A better application of the flaky dough was as a vessel for sausage gravy. This gravy was rich, silky and indulgent. My biggest problem with it was that there was a piece of plastic wrap hiding in my calorie pile. Poor quality control from the kitchen. It may have been from the sausage or the biscuits, but either way, it was not part of the allure.

The bacon was nice and thick, cooked crispy, and helped console me after the gravy incident.

The grits were coarsely ground, and smothered in butter. Not too shabby. This was a good meal, but it was overshadowed by the lack of care in the kitchen. The embarrassed waitress quickly took the gravy off of the tab, but that's the kind of thing that sticks with you. I would go back, but would look carefully in my sausage sauce on the next go-round.