Hattie B’s | Nashville | Delicious As F*ck

Review

About

Hattie B's opened in 2012 and accomplished something genuinely impressive — it took a regional dish and put it on the national map. The hot chicken is consistently cooked. The heat scale actually functions. The sides, particularly the pimento mac and banana pudding, are legitimately good. None of this is in dispute.

What's also not in dispute: Hattie B's is now a chain with locations across the country, lines staffed primarily by visitors holding Nashville bucket lists, and a brand identity that has eclipsed the dish it was built around. Prince's has been doing this since 1945. Bolton's does it with more edge. The hot chicken at Hattie B's is real — it's just no longer the reason to seek it out when better, less crowded, more interesting versions exist.

Nope — not because the food is bad, but because Nashville has outgrown Hattie B's as a recommendation. Send visitors there if you want. We're pointing our people somewhere else.

Consistent, well-fried chicken with a heat scale that works. Also: multiple locations, lines around the block with visitors, and a brand that has grown bigger than its original purpose.

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.