Three days after Christmas, in a part of northeast Nashville that many locals describe as “dicey,” a Ford Explorer crashed through the front of a discount-tobacco shop at one end of a strip mall. Police later called the incident an attempted burglary. The vehicle, which had been reported stolen, was propelled by a brick weighting the accelerator. The store was empty—it was four-thirty in the morning. The authorities arrived to find the Ford abandoned and the shop on fire.
Two doors down, just past Jennifer Nails, Tyreese Lawless had come to work early, as usual, to clean the fryers at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. After hearing a boom, he got out of there, in case the flames reached the restaurant. Lawless began calling colleagues—to them, and to generations of customers, Prince’s is a kind of second home. Firefighters went inside and started yanking down ceiling tiles and singed insulation. Ducts and wiring lay exposed, and there was extensive damage from smoke and water. As a precaution, the fire department shut off the strip mall’s gas and electricity. Yellow police tape outside Prince’s front door stretched toward the shattered glass of the targeted bodega.
When Nashville residents learned that Prince’s would be closed indefinitely, a minor panic ensued. In the past decade or so, the restaurant’s signature dish, hot chicken, has proliferated worldwide, and the original incarnation, fried chicken bathed in fiery spices, has been subjected to relentless permutation—tacos, ramen, sushi, oysters, apple fritters, empanadas, pâté, poutine. The invention, now known everywhere as Nashville hot chicken, sounds like a viral novelty, like the cronut, but it long predates Instagram: it became popular more than eighty years ago, in the city’s black community, and the recipe originated with one family, the Princes. After the fire, @ThuggBugg_ tweeted, “Literally any other hot chicken place coulda burned down but it had to be prince’s.” Addressing the driver of the Ford Explorer, @OcifferJJ declared, “All of Nashville hates you sir.”
In November, Eater named Prince’s one of the thirty-eight essential places to dine in America. Six years ago, the James Beard Foundation gave the restaurant its America’s Classics award, which honors “timeless” establishments serving “quality food that reflects the character of its community.” Nashville hot chicken, the foundation said, was a “totemic” creation. The proprietors of Prince’s, and its many imitators, regularly appear on TV food-and-travel shows. Anthony Bourdain, after sampling the hot chicken of a competitor, Bolton’s, said, “I eat many strange and spicy things around the world, but never in my life have I experienced something like this.” He added, “Is it food? Or an initiation ritual for Yankees?”
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