Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, founded in the 1930s by Thornton Prince, is the originator. According to legend, Thornton's girlfriend coated his morning chicken in cayenne as punishment for coming home late — he loved it and began serving it commercially. The dish remained a Nashville regional institution until the 2010s, when it spread nationally.
Nashville hot chicken is fried chicken coated in a cayenne-heavy spice paste immediately after frying, served on white bread with dill pickles. The spice paste — cayenne, brown sugar, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and lard — is brushed onto the hot fried chicken and caramelises against the hot surface. The result is simultaneously crunchy, spicy, sweet, and fatty. The white bread absorbs the spiced lard that drips. Invented at Prince's Hot Chicken in Nashville in the 1930s.
- Korean fried chicken with gochujang glaze (the Asian parallel — double-fried with spicy-sweet glaze applied after frying); Sichuan ma la chicken (Sichuan-numbing-hot fried chicken — the Chinese spicy fried chicken tradition); Louisiana popcorn chicken (Cajun-spiced small fried chicken pieces — the regional American cousin).
Sweet tea (very sweet, very cold Southern iced tea) is the canonical Nashville pairing — the sugar in the tea buffers the cayenne heat. Or a cold Yazoo lager (Nashville's local brewery).