At all four places, Nora's order was the same: no heat, extra pickles, and could hers please go on a separate tray from Jack's. Nora is eleven, she doesn't like spicy food, and I had planned a whole Saturday of Nashville hot chicken for the rest of us. She was a good sport about it. She was also in charge of the sweet tea.
Nashville is about forty minutes up I-65 from our house, close enough that we had never treated it like a trip. That was the idea on Saturday, August 23: four hot chicken spots in one afternoon, one order at each, split four ways, so nobody would be too full to taste the last one. We stopped at a Kroger on the way in for a gallon of sweet tea, put it in the cooler with a sleeve of cups, and Nora poured.
Hot chicken is fried chicken that gets painted, after it comes out of the fryer, with a paste of cayenne and hot frying fat. It sits on a slice of white bread with dill pickle chips on top. The bread isn't decoration. It soaks up the red oil that runs off. Here's the teacher part: capsaicin, the compound in peppers that burns, dissolves in fat, not in water. So a gulp of sweet tea just spreads the burn around your mouth, while a bite of that oily bread or a swallow of milk actually carries some of it away. We learned this the hard way at stop four.
Four places, in the order we ate them
Stop one, 11:00. A small, older place on the north side, where you order at a window and wait twenty-five minutes because everything is fried to order. We got a mild quarter, dark meat, plus plain tenders for Nora. Mild here was not mild. Our family rule on trips is that everybody tries one bite of the local thing, and Nora took the smallest bite in recorded history, then drank a full cup of tea, which, as covered above, did nothing. Jack gave it an 8. Total: $14.
Stop two. A newer, busier place with a line out the door and a crowd in the parking lot. Medium tenders, crinkle-cut fries and a side of mac and cheese. The crust was thick and crunchy and held the heat in the coating instead of in the meat. Jack gave it a 9 and said the fries counted. It was my favorite too. Total: $19.
Stop three. A counter in a strip mall south of downtown, quiet in the middle of the afternoon. A mild chicken sandwich with slaw and pickles on a bun, good and tidy, the one you could eat in a car. Jack gave it a 7 because "the slaw got in the way." Total: $17.
Stop four. Picnic tables on the east side and a heat scale that goes well past hot. Ryan ordered a quarter, hot. He ate it slowly and in silence while sweat ran down the side of his face, used every slice of bread on the table, including the kids', and pointedly did not reach for the tea. Jack watched like it was a nature show. Nora photographed Ryan, not the chicken. Total: $13.
Jack's final ranking went stop two, stop one, stop three, and stop four "doesn't count because of Dad's face." Nora's ranking is her photos, and her favorite is the one of her dad. My own list matched Jack's, except I'd move stop three up a spot for the slaw, which he says he will never understand. We were home by 5:30 with half a gallon of tea left and nobody hungry for supper. A grilled cheese for Nora at 8:00 was the only cooking I did all day, and for $87 we had a better Saturday than most of the ones we spend at home.
What it cost
- Gas: $12 (about 95 miles with the driving between stops, roughly 4.3 gallons at $2.85)
- Lodging: $0
- Food: $67 (the four stops at $14, $19, $17 and $13, plus a gallon of tea)
- Admissions: $0
- Parking: $8 (one paid lot; the other three stops had free parking)
- Total: $87
- Food per person: $16.75
