Cock Fight: Chain Restaurants are Serving 'Nashville Hot Chicken' to the Nation

The newsroom almost erupted into a fistfight when I asked my fellow Scene writers to choose which local hot chicken locations should be represented in our Chain Restaurant vs. Real Deal Hot Chicken Taste Test of 2016.

Everyone argued the merits of various locally owned spots — Prince's, Hattie B's, Pepperfire, 400 Degrees, Bolton's — and the discussion grew more and more heated. Each writer debated which characteristics were most important when attempting to define what makes great hot chicken, well, great. Dry rub vs. sauce, good sides vs. no sides, tenders vs. on-the-bone — there wasn't an agreement in the house.

But it was all for naught. With this taste test, I wasn't hoping to conclude who's got the very best hot chicken in Nashville, because that simply can't be done. Not unanimously and democratically, anyway, and you shouldn't trust any source who tells you otherwise. Instead, the goal of this experiment was to simply observe how hot chicken newcomers are faring in their quest to bring Nashville's famous fowl to the rest of the world.

Surely you've seen the KFC commercials that have popped up in the past few weeks introducing the fast-food chain's newest dish, Nashville Hot Chicken. The spicy bird is now available in more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. alone, and that's a lot of hot chicken. Norm Macdonald is very excited about it, but Nashvillians are wary. Joining KFC on the hot-chicken train is O'Charley's, a casual family-dining restaurant with over 200 locations in 17 Midwestern and Southern states. The Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich — served on a bun with pickles and coleslaw — is part of their new Southern-inspired menu.

So now you don't need to be in Nashville to enjoy Nashville's hot chicken — but there's no way this mass-produced poultry can be good, right?

Well, what if it is?

Of course, if you buy KFC's Nashville Hot Chicken with the preconceived notion that it will be terrible, chances are good that you will find it terrible, right? Same with O'Charley's — it's impossible not to let hot-chicken snobbery cloud your brain. The fairest way to judge these new additions to the already competitive field of hot chicken was to hold a blind taste test.

Once my co-workers' heads finally cooled, the hot chicken was ordered. We concluded that to keep the playing field as level as possible, all hot chicken samples had to be in tender form, leaving Prince's on-the-bone offering out of the running. But it's not like we need a taste test to tell you that Prince's sets the bar, right?

We ordered tenders from Jim 'N Nick's (an Alabama-born barbecue chain with more than 30 locations in seven states), Hattie B's in Midtown, KFC off Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, O'Charley's on White Bridge Road, and 400 Degrees downtown. When given an option — because some locations offer different levels of hot chicken — we went with "hot."

Surprisingly, when placed side by side, each hot chicken offering had its own unique look. KFC's meager little tenders — served with pickles, a side of coleslaw and a biscuit — were the saddest looking. They were skinny, and the sauce smelled wimpy. On the other end of the spectrum, the sauce on 400 Degrees' three very fat tenders — served on a slice of white bread with pickles — could burn nose hairs with a single whiff.

To remove any visual giveaways, the tenders were cut into bite-size chunks and the plates of chicken samples were randomly set out on the table with nothing but numbers to designate each. We also had some sides (you've got some real tangy coleslaw, Jim 'N Nick's), ranch and cups of Coke and water for palate-cleansing (and heat-defusing) purposes, and the taste test began.

As folks deliberated — sometimes going back for seconds, thirds and even fourths — the clock ticked on. The whole ordeal went on for nearly an hour. This experiment was not taken lightly. And the results were shocking.

The winner, with a very surprising 50 percent of the votes, was ... drum(stick) roll ... KFC!

Ha-ha, no, I'm kidding. But there was an upset — Jim 'N Nick's, an obviously underrated chain, took the top spot, surprising everyone in the room who was certain 400 Degrees and Hattie's would be battling for position No. 1 and No. 2. (Had we gone a notch hotter on the heat scale, most agreed that Hattie B's might have placed higher.)

A very close second was 400 Degrees, with 43.75 percent of the vote, and Hattie B's came in third with 6.25 percent. KFC and O'Charley's didn't receive any votes at all. Sad.

So, no, non-Nashvillians, chances are that the "Nashville Hot Chicken" you're eating right now in Seattle or New Mexico or Chicago isn't Nashville Hot Chicken at all. Don't be fooled by branding. If you want the real deal, you're gonna have come see us in Music City. You'll like it here — we're nice! Just be prepared to wait in line — it can take over an hour to get your hands on the good stuff.

As part of their voting process, we asked the tasting panel to write down their thoughts. Here are some of their anonymous reactions: