In a comment posted today on our July 3 entry about Nashville's second Music City Hot Chicken Festival, held July 4 at East Nashville's East Park, reader S L asked today for some kind of recap: winners, turnout, etc. I'll be happy to oblige—and to pose some questions about the future of this (paradoxically) cool event.
The big winner this year was Justin Jones, whose bright cartoon "Soda Pong" used to run in the Scene. It was great to finally meet him and shake his (rubber-gloved, cayenne-scented) hand. I did not get to sample Team Soda Pong's bird, but the remains had vestiges of pitch-black, pepper-scorched crust that looked mighty tempting. Justin said he would send us the recipe, stressing that he was not an expert, and that lots of trial and error had gone into it. But he also said it was every Nashvillian's duty to try and propagate the hot-chicken mythos by at least giving the fiery fowl a whirl.
The event looked like a huge success, with big happy (if hungry) crowds, more activities, and the welcome addition of a Yazoo beer tent. Better still, there were at least double the number of food booths, with newcomers such as Dee's Q, Otter's and Murfreesboro's The Chicken Shack alongside Prince's, Bolton's and 400 Degrees. A booth dispensing watermelon was a nice Independence Day touch. (A nice report can be found at Nashville Restaurants, where we stole the image above.)
The insurmountable problem, though, is that the slow cooking hot chicken requires puts it completely at odds with the nature of a festival. The lines at the food booths move at a crawl; replenishment takes forever. But who wants to rush chicken?
The other major problem, ironically enough, is the heat. I know logistically (and philosophically) that the Fourth of July makes sense, but summer temperatures keep a lot of folks even from going to Prince's in months without an "R." One humble suggestion: move the festivities to LP Field. Not only does it have ample parking, it can accommodate thousands of people and a large-scale cooking event indoors, as Iron Fork proved.
Obviously, the visible boost in attendance this year and the growth of the event showed that the Hot Chicken Festival is becoming, er, a feather in the city's cap. But how to serve more people without ruining the chicken's unique properties—the whole reason for the festival, after all—and how to make it more comfortable? These conundrums require the full power of the Bites brain trust.
