Chicken fight

Earlier this summer, someone from the Village Voice wrote about "Nashville-style hot chicken" on a menu in Brooklyn.

Then my friend Dana at the Nashville Scene wrote about the Village Voice writing about "Nashville-style hot chicken" in Brooklyn.

Then someone from New York magazine wrote about Dana at the Nashville Scene writing about "Nashville-style hot chicken" in Brooklyn.

So I couldn’t help myself.

I wanted to write about it, too.

Is the chicken hot enough in Brooklyn? Can they take the heat? Are New Yorkers total hot chicken wimps? While these questions have been raised, I wonder if we should all just wave a greasy white napkin in surrender.

I don’t consider myself a hot chicken expert, and I’ve never attempted to make it. But I have had my share of Prince’s Hot Chicken, and in one of the most interesting afternoons of my existence, I took Thomas Keller there for lunch (More on that here.) So while I was in New York for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this summer, I had to check out the Nashville-style chicken for myself at Peaches HotHouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Yes, a few differences should be noted.

At Peaches HotHouse the chicken is pleasantly orange. Like a sunset.

At Prince’s it’s rusty-brown like a paint chip from the walls of hell.

At Peaches HotHouse the chicken rests on a sturdy mattress of egg bread.

At Prince’s it sits on a standard-issue slice of white bread so thick with grease you could wring it out.

At Peaches HotHouse there are no windows for placing an order. No paper plates with celebrity signatures nailed to the wall. No vending machine in the corner. And -- brace yourselves purists -- no skillets for frying (they use a fryer instead).

So what about the heat?

When I visited Peaches HotHouse, I had to box up my chicken mid-meal and run off to the airport. I ended up missing my flight. So while waiting to speak with a ticket agent, I scarfed down the rest of it without a single…drop…of…water.

But all things considered, I love what the guys in New York are doing.

The crisp crust balances a bit of burn with a touch of sweet while holding together the moist, juicy insides. The chicken comes alongside a mound of mouth-cooling macaroni salad. Nice touch. And the egg bread, albeit it sans grease, adds sophistication. Lord knows we could stand to lay off the grease in Tennessee occasionally.

When it comes to heat, I spoke with Ben Grossman, one of the owners of Peaches HotHouse, who said truly “hot-hot” Prince’s-style versions can be cooked to order on request.

“The chicken that we serve up here is probably more like a medium down in Nashville,” he said. “But we do offer two more varieties of hot, hot chicken which you need to ask for. I remember when I was eating down at Prince’s I could only take a few bites.”

(Uh-huh.)

But then Ben almost earned a bless-your-heart merit badge when he added that he and his partner Craig Samuel – both Brooklynites – have a “Southern spirit.”

Ben said he learned about Prince’s through a Southern Foodways Alliance documentary (watch it here), and he visited Prince’s, Bolton’s and 400 Degrees on a trip through the South. His version of Nashville-style hot chicken on the Peaches HotHouse menu is his best-selling item. But it also makes up only about 20 percent of actual sales, because these guys (they’re classically trained chefs) have plenty more on the menu such a spicy-sweet watermelon and arugula salad with lime and ginger.

I appreciate that Peaches Hothouse isn’t trying to rip off our hot chicken – rather they're paying homage to it with their own version. And I like knowing that Nashville now has something to export besides country music.

Hot chicken on a stick at the Music City Hot Chicken Festival in July.

The line at the festival for Prince’s was outrageous. We waited for Bolton’s instead.

Bawk.



What to do after a hot chicken festival?

Drink moonshine!

For a different kind of burn...

Ahem. Number 1....

I love lists. I make one every day (at least). And when I was robbed last year, it truly thrilled me to see my to-do list tumble out of my bag as the criminals ran away.

So it's also with much joy that I welcome the season of the "best of" list. This time of year magazines and newspapers recap everything -- books, movies, music (and on and on....and on!).

But I like that the "best of" list expresses opinion and offers a mini celebration of everything that's been good about a year.

As not to miss my opportunity, here are some of my favorite things from '09. (Disclaimer: List not even close to conclusive.)

1. I love Heidi Swanson's cookbook, Super Natural Cooking.

But this year it was in her blog that I found the recipe for "Green Soup with Ginger." The sassy bits of root make it fragrant, and it's loaded with healthy greens and hunks of sweet potatoes. Even though I try to experiment lots, it's rare that a dish enters "the repertoire." The Green Soup did. It makes me feel good.

2. "Let's Go Surfing" by The Drums...Ditto for feel good.

The Drums - "Let's Go Surfing" Music Video from Pheasant Plucker on Vimeo.

3. Nine Kinds of Naked by Tony Vigorito.

It actually came out in late 2008, but I learned about it this year thanks to Samir and Matt. It's a zany manifesto on synchronicity. An excerpt:

"The average raindrop exists for twenty-three minutes......But this was a raindrop destined to live fast and die young, the vanguard of a mighty storm, an oversized dollop pitched from the center of a churning free-for-all, spinning like a glass speedball toward a home run, streaking out of the sky like it was late for a waterfall, a shimmering, pulsing bead reflecting a world on the brink of chaos and beauty."

4. The Ace Hotel in New York City

I have a mini minibar obsession. It's not that I enjoy taking things from them (too expensive), I just love looking at them. They're like carefully edited treasure chests. You never know what you're going to get and they usually express the style of a hotel.

At Ace there's nothing mini about them. They're full-sized old-fashioned refrigerators with everything from bottles of St. Germain to potato chips from far-flung lands.

But I loved the Ace Hotel for way more than the minibar.

Such as its little slogans...

And its restaurant, the Breslin Bar and Dining Room (from chef April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig), where I sank my incisors into a juicy lamb burger topped with a thin slice of feta and spread with cumin mayonnaise.

5. This band.

The guys from Parachute Musical let me climb onto their green van and travel with them for 1,200 miles while writing about their every move. I laughed more that week than I might have all year. I sort of turned into a dude temporarily. But most importantly they let me ask them anything and never held back the truth. For a journalist that's heaven. Oh and they're wicked talented.

6. Farms.

I spent time learning about a few of them this year and fell in love with the people from Bells Bend Neighborhood Farms just outside Nashville. A doctor couple, who live on the main property, started the farm to help save their community from development. They built fences while tearing others down and pretty much handed over their land to a 23-year-old farmer. On Tuesday nights they also hand over the kitchen to the farm's workers and volunteers for a group meal and celebration of harvest.

Farmer Eric.

Eric's dog Red guarding the lettuces.

7. The Southern Foodways Alliance.

I can't stop talking about them. The people with the SFA help preserve Southern culture and discuss food in intelligent, alternative ways. They also throw a great party.

At the symposium in Oxford this year, we heard a lecture on hip hop and chicken. We watched a New Orleans food critic come to tears over his city and Springsteen, and we listened as a Columbia University professor peppered his lecture with snippets of Billie Holiday and James Brown's Keep it Funky. Later, we boarded a bus bound for a catfish fry while passing around a bottle of Evan Williams. H1N1? Pshhh.

Perhaps I'm biased, but there's a certain eccentricity among some Southern people that I adore. It's as if the humidity seeps into our bones and made us a little crazy. Good-crazy, that is. The people with the SFA seem to embrace that, too.

Dinner music

When I arrived at the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium last weekend, I knew the discussions would focus on food and music. I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly.

At the intro dinner I made a new friend named Bob Roth who had traveled to Oxford from Chicago. We sat down to eat at City Grocery where Chef John Currence had made a meal inspired by his time on the road with a band -- gussied-up diner food of buttermilk cardamom biscuits with truffled duck sausage gravy; lamb meatloaf with roof-dried tomato ketchup, and more. (Wow.)

Over dinner our conversation turned to music in the natural sort of way that happens when people gather -- symposium or not. Bob suggested a song and wrote the title next to my plate.

So the official meeting had yet to commence, but food and music were already on the table.

Here's Todd Snider (the poet and "tipsy gypsy" from East Nashville) with Money, Compliments, Publicity.

Culture club, y'all

Can I get an amen for the Southern Foodways Alliance?

They're responsible for this T-shirt (along with the designer Billy Reid)...


But more than awesome slogans, SFA preserves Southern food culture through film, interviews, charitable work, etc.

I like to write about food because I think it's such a poignant expression of culture. It's art, travel, agriculture, health and social issues... but it’s also a bologna sandwich with Aunt Eunice, if you know what I mean. I believe SFA celebrates food culture in all its simplicity -- and complexity -- so I can't wait for their annual conference next week about Southern food and music and how the two have influenced one another.

The SFA also puts out a collection of the Best of Southern Food Writing every year. It's usually some of my favorite writers like Rick Bragg and R.W. Apple Jr. from the New York Times, so I have pored over every word of every book. But this year, they chose one of my stories from The Tennessean, and I couldn't have been more surprised if they’d thrown an iron skillet at my forehead. I'm so flattered, and convinced frankly that it was more my subject than my writing -- a feisty chef in her 80s named Phila Hach. She has such a positive, magnetic spirit that every time I visit her I want to crawl into the folds of her apron and live off her little crumbs of wisdom. (If you want to read the story about her, click here: "She's the Grace Before Dinner.")

I'm glad, too, that the SFA seems to have a sense of humor about the culture thing. Yeah, we're probably gonna get all deep on food and music, but we'll also be treated to a chitlin -themed performance by the Memphis Ballet, and one session led by Roy Blount Jr. will cover Songs About Food That Are Really About Sex. Uh-huh. Make cornbread not war indeed.

I’m thinking this is an example from Old Crow Medicine Show. I wonder if he'll mention it…

Old Crow Medicine Show - Mary's Kitchen - Live at Lightning 100 from WRLT Lightning 100 on Vimeo.