The heat is on at Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack

Try to sell a Philly cheesesteak in Boston or a Chicago hot dog in Atlanta, and you’reasking for a fight from transplanted natives who know the real deal. Call yourself a Hot Chicken Shack outside of Nashville, Tennessee and the reaction from Music City visitors is bound to heat up fast.

Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack, which originally opened in a little bitty building on Hendersonville Road in 2009, can at least trace some lineage to the birthplace of the fiery fowl.

The founder, the late Rocky Lindsley, was a musician in country music singer Lorrie Morgan’s band in Nashville. Her father, Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry member George Morgan, was an early devotee of the iconic dish from Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Decades ago, when the Opry was at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville, George would stop by on his way home after the Saturday night Opry show and pick up a bag of hot chicken to go from the back door.

Lorrie grew up on hot chicken (she had her own restaurant for a while), Rocky became a fan through her, and he decided to bring it to Asheville.

Rich Cundiff, who owns all three current Rocky’s with his wife Lauren, says Lindsley figured out a viable recipe, but couldn’t quite master the business of selling the chicken.

“I think he probably sat in the parking lot of Prince’s with binoculars on, watching deliveries to see what went into the chicken,” Rich says with a laugh. “He was a one-man show on Hendersonville Road and didn’t last long. We helped him get the Patton store open in 2011, but he only stayed a year. I was still COO for Earth Fare and so Lauren – who had no restaurant experience at all – came in and ran it.”

At first, Rich didn’t recognize the vaunted place of the hot chicken, seeing it as part of a larger vision for a restaurant specializing in southern fare. Then he went to the Nashville mecca and met The Queen.

Andre Prince Jeffries – James Beard American Classics recipient and great niece of notorious founder Thornton Prince – has been ruling the Prince’s kingdom since 1980. Rich and his son Aidan got an audience with Ms. Andre and what he saw convinced him to change focus. “We went back into her little office, and she was counting money bills into grocery bags,” he recalls. “That’s when we realized we had oopsed our way into a pretty cool thing.”

Though he says Ms. Andre was very nice and welcoming – and remembered meeting Rocky Lindsley years before — she would not let Rich in her kitchen.

Though Nashville hot chicken had not reached the cult status it now enjoys – and that attracts over 30,000 people to the annual four-hour July 4th Music City Hot Chicken Festival – Rich and Lauren realized they were part of something big.

In the beginning they served the hot chicken as it was done at Prince’s – bone-in breast on two pieces of white bread with pickles – but added tenders a few years later. “I know purists get upset about that, but tenders are probably 75% of our sales.”

He says over the years, the menu grew “way past reasonableness” with starters, salads, sandwiches, plates, pot pie and rotisserie chicken; he put that southern fare flair on the roster of sides, which includes classics like mac and cheese, corn pudding, collard greens, and his mother’s sweet potato casserole recipe.

They’ve evolved their spice levels from plain and mild up to Rocky’s Hot and Extra Hot. “We took off the XX hot, it’s not a good look when ambulances come to a restaurant.”

But the chicken methodology remains the same.  “We brine, buttermilk bathe and dredge the chicken, let the gluten set up, then deep fry it. There’s a little spice in the dredge, but the heat comes from the grit.”

The “grit” is the spice blend – Rocky Lindsley’s recipe is as top secret as Ms. Andre’s – that seasons the oil and makes a grit, which is used to ‘paint’ the chicken. A little bit of grit for the low end of the heat meter, a lot of grit for the flamethrowers. “We sell the most honey mild,” Rich says. “Once you get into hot and Rocky’s hot, you’re in rarefied air.”

The Cundiff’s favorite menu item is the most recent – the Rocky’s Royale. “It’s a fried boneless breast with American cheese, pickles and Zippy ranch on a toasted roll. It’s heavy on pickles, it all melts together and has a little kick. We like the honey medium level for a little sweet and a little heat. Man, it’s really good.”

For more about Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack, rockyshotchickenshack.com.

— Kay West

Photos courtesy of Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack