Hot Chicken

Hot chicken is a signature dish of Nashville, Tennessee, traditionally consisting of chicken parts that are fried in cayenne pepper paste until they develop a rusty red color. It is usually served on slices of white bread with sliced pickles or coleslaw on the side. The dish was invented in the 1930s by a man named Thornton Prince, who was a notorious womanizer. One of Prince's girlfriends was mad at him, so she made him chicken for breakfast and added the spiciest ingredients that she could find, in hopes that Prince will hate the dish, but her plan backfired and Prince loved it so much that he even took it to his brothers, who shared his positive emotions. The chicken dish has then been brought over to Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, a restaurant owned by the brothers. What began as an act of revenge is now considered a staple of late-night dining in Nashville, and the dish became so popular in recent years that it can also be found in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.