Hattie B’s

There was Nashville hot chicken before Hattie B's became famous, and there's been a lot more of it since. The credit — and the responsibility — for putting the format on the national map belongs to this operation, and it has held up under that pressure better than most restaurants would.

The heat scale runs from Southern (no heat) to Shut the Cluck Up (good luck), and the names are accurate enough to function as a genuine warning system. The sweet spot for most people lands somewhere around Hot or Damn Hot — enough to feel something, not enough to lose the point of a meal. The chicken underneath the cayenne paste is properly fried, properly juicy, the kind of bird that would be good even without the fire.

The pickle-and-white-bread presentation is correct. The sides — pimento mac, greens, potato salad — are better than they need to be. The line is always long and the wait is almost always worth it.

Nashville has exported a lot of things. Hot chicken is the most delicious of them, and Hattie B's is the reason the world knows about it.

Hattie B's is the institution that made hot chicken famous. We'll review it properly soon. In the meantime: order the Hot, get the pickle, eat over the tray.