If it seems to you that a lot of Nashville-style hot chicken places have opened in the Valley recently, it is not your imagination.
The dish, largely unknown to the Phoenix area not very long ago, is coming to the Valley in a wave.
That may come as a surprise to Valley dwellers, but not much to Timothy Charles Davis, the Nashville-based author of “The Hot Chicken Cookbook: The Fiery History and Red-Hot Recipes of Nashville’s Beloved Bird.”
Hot chicken has been a thing in Nashville since perhaps the 1930s. The origin story, as told to Monroe’s Hot Chicken owner Larry White by the niece of the original owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, is that a fed-up wife decided to take her revenge on her philandering husband by making him chicken too spicy to eat.
Only problem? He loved it and wanted to bring it to the masses.
More recently — Davis figures about 2014 or ‘15 — the audience grew outside Nashville.
“It started appearing on menus everywhere, and then, yeah, they are tons of chains now that are all over the United States, even some in Europe,” he said. “It’s wild to see something expand like that in real time.”
Davis, a freelance journalist, even wrote an article for Medium expounding on 10 reasons Nashville hot chicken is having a moment, from the growth of the city and its increasing popularity as a destination to the role of social media.
“You can have a reaction video of you eating hot chicken and crying,” he said. “It’s a little different than eating macaroni and cheese or something where it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, it’s really good,’ but it doesn’t have this kind of thing where you’re sweating and your nose is running. It fits in with the social media moment.”
Kyle Preston, owner of Twist Hot Chicken in Peoria, agrees.
“Hot chicken offers all these different heat levels, and then the hottest one is almost like this challenge — a see-how-tough-you-are kind of thing,” he said. “It just is popular for content, and people like spicy food.”
Preston tried hot chicken places in California, which he believes were a catalyst for its growth.
“My hypothesis is that when it got big in California, that’s when people really started to take notice of it,” he said. “And to my knowledge, you kind of have to credit Dave’s Hot Chicken for that. They’re the big boy in LA.”
Preston notes good hot chicken requires more than a sauce. It is in how it is prepared and fried. And Davis agrees. He said it starts with good chicken.
“The really good places around here, it’s not just hot,” he said. “It’s got some depth to the flavor.”
Now Phoenicians can try it out at any of several restaurants in the Valley.
Monroe’s Hot Chicken
This is in the original hot chicken restaurant in Phoenix, opening downtown in February 2019 at 45 W. Jefferson St., Phoenix, and then a Tempe location in September 2020 in the Watermark, 430 N. Scottsdale Road.
The menu has sandwiches, one with a waffle, tenders and popcorn hot chicken. The six levels of heat range from Southern (no heat) to “What the Cluck” (tagged as “call the fire department”).
Monroe’s comes from Larry White of LoLo’s Chicken and Waffles fame and therefore descended from Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Café, Phoenix’s most famous soul-food restaurant, thereby probably coming closest in roots to Nashville hot chicken.
In fact, White, who fell in love with Nashville hot chicken on trips there, went out to Nashville for a couple weeks to study the making of it from Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.
“I feel sorry for those with peanut allergies because we do cook Monroe’s hot chicken in peanut oil,” White said. “I wanted to learn the ifs, the whys, the whats, the whens, and peanut oil was consistent in everybody’s hot chicken recipe in Nashville, where hot chicken was birthed. So who am I to steer away from a tradition that has been going strong for almost a hundred years?”
Twist Hot Chicken
Preston says he liked the local hot chicken places, but found his West Valley underserved. Preston and partners opened Twist Hot Chicken in March 2022 at 8386 W. Thunderbird Road, suite 106, Peoria.
The menu features tenders, wings and five different styles of sandwiches, plus three options for Vegan sandwiches. There are six sauces and four levels of heat, from mild to “Can’t Touch This.”
Preston said he has been successful enough to look at expanding and is negotiating a lease on a space in Tempe.
“People still aren’t familiar with us and who we are, and we’re still kind of small players in the game,” he said. “But as far as Twist goes, we’re a family-owned and locally owned (restaurant). We don’t have big financial partners, and we’re not any part of big corporate franchises. So I think that’s one of the things that makes us special now is as far as being in that sector anyway.”
Dave’s Hot Chicken
Dave’s Hot Chicken comes not from Tennessee, but from California.
The story is that Dave Kopushyan and his three childhood best friends in their 20s scrapped together $900 and had a “not-so-grand opening” in an East Hollywood parking lot with a portable fryer and a couple of folding tables. It got notice on a food guide website and took off from there.
With the help of celebrity investors, Dave’s Hot Chicken has rapidly expanded into 22 states — though Tennessee is not one. It reached Arizona last fall with the opening of its Gilbert location, 1567 N. Cooper Road, in the shell of an old Burger King restaurant.
Dave’s Hot Chicken is served as either sliders or tenders. It has seven levels of heat, from no spice to “reaper.”
Angry Chickz
Angry Chickz is from another Dave with an Armenian surname in East Hollywood, but Dave Mkhitaryan does not run around the fact he is doing Nashville-style hot chicken.
Mkhitaryan discovered Nashville hot chicken in 2017, according to the website, and worked to create his own recipe, opening a restaurant in 2018. Angry Chickz now has 17 California restaurants plus one in Las Vegas and one that opened in Glendale, 5130 W. Bell Road, in October.
It also has seven levels of heat from the no-spice Country to the hottest, Angry. As with Dave’s Hot Chicken, to do the hottest level, you have to sign a waiver. It also has tenders and sliders.
Slangin’ Birdz
Another LA-area Armenian, Greg Danielyan fell in love with Nashville hot chicken on trips to the area and started doing pop-ups in Los Angeles in 2019. But he did his first brick-and-mortar restaurant in downtown Tempe, 414 S. Mill Ave., Suite 101, in late 2021.
The menu includes wings, sandwiches and tenders with five levels of heat, from “Walk of Shame” (no heat) to “Game Over.”
There is also a heat challenge in which the customer has five minutes to down 12 Carolina Reaper nuggets with no drinks or sauces to get a photo celebrating the accomplishment up on the wall and on the restaurant’s social media platforms. Again, a waiver is required.
Houston TX Hot Chicken
As the name suggests, this restaurant bills itself serving “Texas Hot Chicken,” and the eight restaurants do include one in Houston, but the name really comes from co-founder Houston Crosta, who opened the first one in 2020 with Edmond Barseghian.
The chain also has four locations in the Las Vegas area, one in California, one in Utah and one in Tempe, 927 E. University Drive, which opened in September. The local franchisees are a husband-and-wife team, Tristan and Lindsay White.
Stop us if you have heard this before: Sandwiches and tenders with seven levels of heat, the hottest of which, “Houston, We Have a Problem,” requires a waiver.
But HHC also trades on the chicken-and-waffles combination, has several dipping sauces and other menu offerings.
Mrs. Chicken
Mrs. Chicken is the Nashville hot chicken restaurant from George Frasher, who also owns Frasher’s Tavern and Frasher’s Smokehouse. It was the second hot-chicken restaurant to open in town.
This one opened in April 2019 at 4011 N. 32nd St., Phoenix. The chicken is served as leg quarter, breast quarter, on a Yardbyrd sandwich, or as wings or tenders.
There are six sauces and six levels of heat from Classic (no spice) to XXX Hot, described as “surface of the sun” hot and requiring a waiver.
Big Chicken
Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal’s chain of restaurants is more about portion sizes and not just a hot chicken restaurant, but one of the featured sandwiches is the “Uncle Jerome,” named after Shaq’s uncle, that includes Nashville hot chicken, lettuce, pickles and mayonnaise on a bun.
The restaurant opened in March in Gilbert’s Heritage District, 366 N. Gilbert Road, suite 106, in a space formerly occupied by Pomo. It is also served at Arizona State University’s Mullett Arena with 11 more planned to open in the state.
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Tom Blodgett
Gilbert News Editor | Gilbert
@sp_blodgett
tblodgett@iniusa.org
Raised in Arizona, Tom Blodgett has spent more than 35 years in journalism in Arizona and joined Independent Newsmedia in July 2022 to launch the Gilbert edition. He is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication from 2005-19 and remains editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet.
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