Some like it hot. Others like it hotter. For those who fall into that second category, there’s no remedy that can treat their need for heat quite like Nashville-style hot chicken.
First served to serial philanderer Thornton Prince III by his girlfriend after he’d been up to his old tricks on a Saturday night, the chicken was fried and then coated in a blend of cayenne pepper and hot spices in an effort to cause suffering and inflict punishment. Instead, Prince derived pleasure from the pain and decided enough people would enjoy sadomasochistic sustenance that he began selling the hot chicken out of a small spot that would eventually become Nashville landmark Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.
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Thankfully for those who don’t reside in The Volunteer State, Prince’s poultry is no longer confined to Nashville’s city limits and has spread like a piquant plague to many other parts of the United States, including New York City, which is now home to a fast-casual eatery that will always have hot chicken on the menu.
Opened in NYC last month by business partners Chen Zeev and Josh Appelbaum, ChickenHawk will offer Nashville chicken year-round in sandwich or nugget form and let customers choose their preferred level of heat with hot (habanero), extra hot (ghost pepper) and dumb ass (Carolina reaper) all being options. In addition to Nashville chicken, ChickenHawk will also have a globally-inspired chicken collaboration with a local chef on the menu that will rotate each month.
With Indonesian fried chicken from Chef Wulan Del Valle of Urban Hawker’s Jakarta Munch and Portuguese fried chicken courtesy of Chef Nuno Sousa of Leitao on tap, ChickenHawk launched with Persian fried chicken doused in spice-infused oil with feta cheese dressing and red onion pickles by chef Einat Admony of Balaboosta as its first collaboration.
According to Zeev, the concept of having a monthly collab grew out of the initial idea of opening ChickenHawk as a ghost kitchen that multiple chefs would have access to. “As we were talking to different chefs, we realized that many of them were looking to get into the fast-casual space rather than replicate their current concepts via a ghost kitchen model. Similarly, we found that customers preferred to be able to try food from these chefs at a lower price point,” Zeev, a fried chicken lover with a background in tech, tells InsideHook. “So, we ultimately decided to give chefs that opportunity by providing them with a blank canvas, our fried chicken, while also handling all the operations.”
As Zeev points out, ChickenHawk’s sandwiches ($7) are pricier than what you’ll find at most fast-food joints, but not as costly as the offerings at higher-end burger chains. “It was important to me is bring a fried chicken concept to NYC that fills that middle bucket — high quality but still affordable enough to almost everyone,” he says. “It’s also important to me to be working with chefs, the artists, to bring their delicious flavors to the masses. One of the places in the city we really admire is 7th Street Burger. They also focus on high-end products at very affordable prices. We think 7th Street Burger is doing it brilliantly with burgers and we are setting up to do it with chicken.”
Served covered in a custom Hawksauce made from mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, spices and pickle juice, Zeev’s fried chicken recipe is the product of countless hours of experimentation with Appelbaum, who runs the Duck Season stand at Smorgarburg. “We must’ve tested thousands of fried chicken recipes over a three-month period before we settled on our recipe,” Zeev says. “We thought about the brine, the crust, the seasonings, the ratio of meat to crust, the fry temp and time. You’d be surprised at how the tiniest tweaks can make a huge difference.”
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