Monday, June 21, 2010
Travel Advisory New Yorkers Notice Us Noticing Them Noticing Nashville-Style Hot Chicken
Posted by Dana Kopp Franklin on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 5:14 AM
- Peaches HotHouse
I noted that while the writer was positive overall, she was disappointed because the chicken seemed mild compared to scenes of Prince's avid customers sweating and weeping over their hot chicken, as seen in a Southern Foodways Alliance documentary. I quoted this response by Peaches:
"So here's the deal. After our first week, due to a few delicate constitutions, some expletives and the overall litigious nature of New Yorkers, we did turn down the heat a bit. Now we only bring the fire if someone asks. However, you may be required to sign a waiver. ... Just remember: hot in, hot out."
Being a polite Nashvillian, I didn't come out and say it sounds like New Yorkers are laughable (yet litigious) wimps when it comes to spicy poultry. But apparently I set off an alarm. New York magazine's Grub Street blog responded under the headline: "Can New Yorkers Really Not Handle Nashville Hot Chicken?"
It recapped Peaches' statement about having to scale back the spiciness, then asked, "Are they saying New York city slickers just can’t take the heat? Them’s fighting words! The Nashville Scene, for one, is excited about our weak constitutions."
OK, I don't have any kind of hot chicken schadenfreude. I love our restaurant community, its wonderful chefs and constant evolution, and of course our culinary heritage. But based on variety alone, New York's food scene beats ours up and down, side to side, from tailfeather to beak to gizzard. I just hope, for their sake, they learn to love hot chicken.
Meanwhile, thanks to Bites commenter Kay, I've learned there's another Brooklyn restaurant, in the tonier neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, that specializes in "cleaned-up Southern classics," It's called Seersucker, and Tuesday was supposed to be their inaugural "Spicy Fried Chicken Night." No word yet on how that went over, though I do know it was $18 for "half a spicy fried chicken, iceberg slaw, black eyed peas, buttermilk dipping sauce and white bread."
Seersucker, the work of Arkansas-born chef Robert Newton (a veteran of uber-upscale Le Cirque), is getting a lot of positive buzz, even though, as my colleague Steve Haruch points out, "It's got 'suck' in its name." In fact, one diner "wants to make love to the pimento cheese." I really like pimento cheese, too, but more in a friend way.
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