Today is National Hot Chicken Day, which sounds like a holiday I want to celebrate at least once a week!

In recent years, Nashville’s hot chicken has evolved from a local delicacy to a bit of a phenomenon. When we lived in Nashville a decade or so ago, you didn’t hear a lot about it, other than the word-of-mouth that it existed and it was delicious; these days, chain restaurants like KFC and O’Charley’s offer up their own versions of “Nashville Hot Chicken” that sort of taste like the real thing.

As for the “real thing,” Bob and I love it. We find a way to pick up some chicken on every trip to Nashville, and we’ve attended the Hot Chicken Festival. But, to be honest, I hadn’t given a ton of thought to the origins of the iconic dish beyond the legend that Thornton Prince’s lady friend made some allegedly inedible cayenne-spiced chicken as payback for his dalliances, and it turned out delicious. Of course, I receive a lot of press releases in which marketers purport to know the origin of foods, the “original” bourbon distillers, and so on, so I take these origin stories with a bit of a grain of salt. Or, at least I did until I read the new book Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story by Rachel Louise Martin.

In Hot, Hot Chicken, Dr. Martin, a writer and Nashville native, sets out to learn why hot chicken has been a legendary dish for decades among Nashville’s Black community, but only gained notoriety in white Nashville relatively recently. The result is a fascinating history of the Prince family, soul food in the Mid-South, and the experiences of Black Nashvillians from the Reconstruction Era to the present day.

Dr. Martin’s painstaking research traces the Prince family through over a century of public records. She provides excellent insight into the zoning and segregation laws that created two distinct Nashvilles — one for Black people and one for white people — for so long. A particularly interesting anecdote arises in the 1950s when a group of white folks — musicians from the Grand Old Opry, including George Morgan (father of Lorrie Morgan) followed the delicious smell of Mr. Prince’s original Chicken Shack and attempted to order some for themselves. Soon the restaurant, previously frequented solely by Black diners, was forced to put up racially segregated dining rooms to comply with the Jim Crow laws. It’s a harsh reminder of the not-too-distant South.

In recent years, there has been so much good work done towards setting the record straight on the role that Black Southerners played in creating the regional cuisine and beverages that are an integral part of the cultural identity of the Southeastern United States. These days, any serious whiskey enthusiast knows that Mr. Jack Daniel learned about distilling from Nathan “Nearest” Green. The study of Southern Foodways has expanded to acknowledge the role of enslaved cooks in creating the staple recipes of both Black and white Southern cooks. In Hot, Hot Chicken, Dr. Martin continues this important tradition by tracing hot chicken’s roots from the food served by enslaved cooks in plantation houses to the burgeoning soul food movement of the twentieth century. In the process, she produces an unflinching history of the city of Nashville.

Sophie and I enjoyed some hot chicken at Centennial Park, 2019

Hot, Hot Chicken is a must-read for anyone who loves the food and writing of Sean Brock and Vivian Howard, who wants to learn more about how Black Southerners shaped our cuisine, or anyone who, like me, just loves Nashville and its signature dish of hot chicken!