IF the restaurant you have been directed to lies between the 7-Eleven and the dry cleaners in a dusty strip mall,’ wrote Jonathan Gold, the late, great Los Angeles based seer of serious eating, ‘you’re probably at the right place.’ Prince’s Hot Chicken, little more than a glass-fronted, nondescript shopfront on the northern edge of Nashville, Tennessee, is just that place.
It’s a few minutes after noon, on a sultry Southern afternoon, and the queue snakes gently round the block. Inside, five ageing booths and a large serving hatch, manned by Andre Prince, the great-niece of founder Thornton Prince. The story goes that Thornton had quite an eye for the ladies and, one night, after stumbling home late with lipstick on his collar, his girlfriend had had enough.
