Nashville-style chilli chook charts a fine line between pleasure and pain

I’ve just read a piece in The New Yorker about “hot chicken”, a phenomenon that has passed me by, not being particularly immersed in Americana or its culinary diaspora. It was headlined: “The Spice Trade: An African-American chicken dish has gone viral. Who’s getting the big money?”

The story didn’t penetrate the “big money” question too far but was nonetheless a fascinating insight into the phenomenon of Nashville hot chicken and its origins with the Prince family, who still operate the 80-year old institution Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.

It gives heavily spiced, deep-fried chicken valuable historical and cultural context. As one expert quoted says: “Hot chicken, particularly in the African-American community, was always more than just about eating chicken.”

The piece retells the story behind hot chicken’s creation: that Thornton Prince III – born in 1893 – came home late one night, thus angering his girlfriend who suspected mischief. Her revenge was to create fried chicken with so much hot cayenne it hurt, in many senses. Apparently it worked, but it also rather pleased Mr Prince, by way of chilli’s unquestionable pleasure/pain dichotomy.

Prince went on to open a joint selling fiery cayenne chicken, BBQ Chicken Shack, which descendant André Prince Jeffries ultimately renamed Prince’s. The article talks about the secret recipe and the dish’s devotees; it talks about when famous Charleston chef Sean Brock – indirectly responsible for hot chicken’s arrival Down Under – first went to Prince’s in 2013.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Brock’s friend asked Jeffries, canvassing the XXXHot option. “Just don’t let it happen in here,” Jeffries replied. Apparently, they recommend “toilet roll in the ice box” to first timers.

Oddly, the story doesn’t mention the one thing that fuels the worldwide phenomenon that is hot chicken, and that’s the meat itself. To sell lots of tasty hot chicken at a reasonable price, you need cheap chicken. It’s that simple. And cheap chicken means that you, personally, have to live with the way the bird lived. They often don’t live that well.

The big Australian player in the Nashville-style chicken scene, with four restaurants, is Belles, fronted by chef and former Brock employee (in Charleston) Morgan McGlone. At neither its website nor its menu will you find information about its poultry supplier, Cordina Farms, which intensely farms meat birds cage-free, in barns, to a standard the RSPCA deems acceptable.

Another player is chef Aaron Turner, whose Hot Chicken Project restaurants don’t publish suppliers either, but use the Bannockburn brand, which complies with the Free Range Egg and Poultry Australia standard. It may be part of the big Turi family of poultry brands but this is a step up from high-density poultry, from a welfare perspective. And ultimately, it’s all about compromise.

So I’m not saying don’t eat at these places; frankly, I loved my Belles hot chicken sanger with pickles. Just understand: everything has its price – and in this case, it represents tacit approval of industrial bird farming. Your choice.