What to Eat in Pittsburgh

During my weekly (OK, daily) Yelp search of “hot and new” places, I found a new place in Oakland. It claimed to serve hot chicken. That was all we needed to know.

In case you don’t know the backstory behind hot chicken…..

It’s been around for decades, originating at a place in Nashville called Prince’s. Here’s our favorite story about the birth of hot chicken. The short version is, it was created by a matriarch of the Prince family in the 1930s to punish her cheating husband. Unexpectedly, it was delicious.

We were lucky enough to eat at Prince’s when we drove from Birmingham to Pittsburgh in 2017. Here’s a pic I snapped of the interior:

The place was small-ish with a few tables and an enormous line, so long that there was actually a woman unaffiliated with Prince’s selling slices of cake and pie to eat while you wait. (That’s her in the photo. We had some mud pie and it was, predictably, delicious.)  Their menu was pretty simple: wings, tenders, and quarters, not all of which were available at any given time. The spice level varied from no spice through 6 levels of increased spice to “xxx hot.”  They also had a few simple sides (cole slaw, baked beans, ranch to cut the spiciness). The chicken is served simply on white Wonderbread (a common way to serve meat in the South) and was well-seasoned with plenty of cayenne mixed into the batter. If I recall correctly, we got the mild and it made our eyes water so I can’t imaging the consequences of anything with an “x” in front of it. It was incredibly juicy and crispy. Sadly, we didn’t take any pictures of the chicken (probably because we had waited 2 hours to get it and were also babysitting our two pet rabbits in the car outside – long story.)

Backing up a step, we knew we had to eat at Prince’s on our road trip because hot chicken was becoming very popular in Birmingham. Our very first hot chicken experience came after a blog fan alerted us to a hot chicken truck that had been turning up around town. Obviously, we had to blog about it. Here’s one of our favorite pics from that post:

The truck was called Eugene’s. Eugene’s was so delicious that it went on to be a staple food truck around town, and also opened a very popular brick-and-mortar location.  The menu was similar to Prince’s: mostly tenders, several levels of spice, a few sides. Very simple, but absolutely fantastic. Again, very crispy,  very juicy, very spicy. While the truck served just the tenders, the restaurant expanded on that a bit to include hot chicken sandwiches, chicken and waffles, and a nice selection of sides. Friends of the What To Eat in Birmingham blog Jo and Leight who were from New Zealand loved Eugene’s so much that they chose it for their last meal in the US and fantasized about opening a branch back home.

Here’s a pic collage we made after eating at the brick-and-mortar Eugene’s:

Notice the banana pudding (or “nana puddin'” as is the correct way to pronounce it) at the bottom right. Nice touch.

Soon after Eugene’s opened in Birmingham, Hattie B’s, another Nashville hot chicken joint, chose Birmingham as their second location. Mr. Foodie and I had a debate about whether to blog about it – it was really good, but not as good as Eugene’s, so out of loyalty, we did not. However, here are some photos from the experience. Note the Wonderbread, pickles, and collard greens as a side.

It seems like hot chicken mainly existed in Nashville at Prince’s and other places until a certain point, when it exploded around the country. When we wrote the Eugene’s post in 2016, hot chicken was really taking off, according to this article. The exact moment of that inflection point isn’t really clear, but if this tells you anything, KFC actually started selling hot chicken right around that time. Not that KFC is any benchmark of quality but… I’m sure KFC knew what they were doing. Clearly hot chicken had a broad appeal.

Despite all of this hot chicken excitement, there are areas of the country devoid of the dish. Pittsburgh was among them. Until now. Prove me wrong, but I do believe this is the first hot chicken place in town.

According to this piece, CHiKN is owned by the same folks who own Stack’d, which is right next door on Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The sign outside is hard to miss:

When we entered, we asked for high chairs for our two little foodies (now almost 9 months old now and eating table food!). The guy actually ran next door to Stack’d in his short sleeved CHiKN shirt not once but twice to get them. That was classy.

It’s going to be hard not to make comparisons between CHiKN and Prince’s, Hattie B’s, and Eugene’s. Clearly, CHiKN does not need to be a carbon copy of these places to be good. However, given that hot chicken is a food genre with a unique history and special place in the Nashville / Southern food scene, we were hoping for some fidelity to the original versions. I would say that the key components of a hot chicken place that shouldn’t be tampered with are: casual atmosphere, chicken is the star of the show, things get spicy really quick, the chicken is served with some kind of sauce that can serve to cut the spice, pickle chips are involved, there’s an option for people who can’t do spice, and the sides are simple and complement the chicken well.

Just like Prince’s, Hattie B’s, and Eugene’s brick and mortar location, the restaurant is fast casual. The line can get long (we saw it ebb and flow over the 90 minutes we were there), but it moved really fast. The place is very bright and airy on the inside with some cool design features (plant wall!). That reminded us a lot of Hattie B’s and Eugene’s.

As you can see, around 1pm on the first Saturday after it opened, it was packed.

We were lucky to snag a booth. Mr. Foodie stayed with the kiddos and trusted me with the ordering. When going to a new place, we try to order just a little at first to be sure we like it before ordering a larger sampling (or the whole menu).  We started with the chicken sandwich, since this is actually the hardest thing to pull off due to sogginess (think about it – the chicken should be crispy coming out of the fryer but can get soggy sitting on a bun, especially if sauce is involved, and the bun can get soggy). The sandwich was advertised as being dressed with pickle chips (check!), slaw, and comeback sauce (we’ll get to that in a minute). The cashier had helpful advice about the spice level – medium makes the eyes water, mild is spicy and enjoyable. I selected mild, with fries and some sweet tea (of course).

They give you a little buzzer that you put on a sensor on the table in order for the server to find you, although we didn’t get to use ours as the little foodies kept throwing it on the floor. Despite that, by shouting our name out, the server found us right away.

Here’s the sandwich. It’s a beaut. Super photogenic, I must admit:

A gorgeous close-up:

 

That messy sandwich was absolutely delicious.  The bun was definitely not soggy despite having a decent amount of comeback sauce slathered on it. The spice level made me cough, but my eyes weren’t watering. The chicken was wet (more like Eugene’s texture than Prince’s), but not soggy. It was incredibly juicy, crispy, and clearly the star of the show (check!). The crinkle cut lightly seasoned fries were a good complement to the chicken (check!). It was served on a fancy brioche bun, which while not Wonderbread, is actually much better (sorry Wonderbread….).

A moment about comeback sauce: we hadn’t encountered comeback sauce until we moved to the South. It’s like a slightly spicy roumelade, which thanks to this article, we learned originated in a Greek restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi. (In some cities, Southern food has a Greek influence due to Greek immigration to the area in the late 1800s.)  It’s not ranch, but it’s mayo-based. I’ll give it a check.

I immediately ran back up to the counter to order more food. We realized we hadn’t gotten anything other than fries for the kiddos, and clearly we wanted to try more. I got an order of three “no spice” chicken tenders, which came out quickly:

Super juicy and crunchy, flavorful but not spicy at all. We had a chance to focus more on the pickle chips (check!), which seemed homemade – they were dill, heavy on the dill at that (check out those dill pieces on the close-up), and delicious. Served again with comeback sauce. One kiddo was recovering from a stomach bug and rejected all solid food, but the other kiddo devoured several french fries and a whole chicken finger (all broken up into tiny pieces, of course).

We decided we wanted to try the “mild” tenders on their own to get the best sense for their spice level, rather than as a larger piece on a sandwich. It’s for the blog post, we reasoned. Back up I went (hello again! just ordering some more tenders….) This time, we decided to go big and basically eat the rest of the menu. At that point, the main items we had not gotten were mac and cheese and a concrete (custard dessert, we chose the peanut butter fudge flavor). There’s also a chicken and waffles option – that’s for next time.

Here’s the whole tray:

 

The chicken was the same juiciness as all the chicken that came before it (excellent consistency throughout the meal). It was crunchy, with that same wet but not soggy consistency. It was incredibly well seasoned, but only very slightly spicy. Hmmm, we thought. The sandwich seemed much spicier. In retrospect that might be because the comeback sauce has a bit of a kick to it? I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Up close view:

The mac and cheese was definitely different than what we’ve had before – not as creamy, a bit drier, but still extremely cheesy and rich. We loved it, and so did our little foodie. We put a few spoonfuls on the table and he devoured it.

We first became familiar with the term “concrete” when the second Shake Shack in NYC opened right near our apartment in 2010. Basically, concretes are like very thick milkshakes, made with custard rather than ice cream, and typically include mix-ins. According to this blog they originated in Coney Island, but we’ve also noticed them at classic burger chains like Freddy’s and smaller burger joints.  This one was vanilla-based with crumbled peanut butter cups in the bottom and fudgey chocolate pieces on top, covered in chocolate sauce. Nothing to complain about there. A great end to a greasy, spicy meal.

But not quite yet – we felt like we hadn’t gotten the full spice experience. We hypothesized that the mild is truly mild, but tasted spicier on the sandwich due to the comeback sauce. Alternatively, it’s possible that the chicken on the sandwich was actually the next step hotter: medium (oops!). We had to try to figure itout. So, we did what any good blogger would do – we ordered our very last set of three tenders.

I’m not sure why we kept taking pictures of the various tenders, as they all look pretty much the same (I guess the spicier they are, the darker they are, but only by a little). The medium was definitely make-you-cough spicy, probably about the spiciest that I would enjoy eating more than one without having to take a long break. We were no closer to solving our spice mystery: either there was a spice level mix-up on our earlier order, or that comeback sauce adds a kick.

We decided to cut ourselves off at that point – after all, there were only two of us who could eat spicy food at the table, we were feeling a little (ok, extremely) stuffed, and we figured nothing other than some serious GI distress would come from adding something spicier on top of that.

In sum, we can definitely say that based on our experience with other hot chicken, CHiKN meets all of the essential criteria, and adds its own spin with comeback sauce rather than ranch (an acceptable alternative) and concretes (we will never complain about ice cream, never ever). Since tenders are the classic version, we would recommend starting with those, but the chicken sandwich is just as outstanding.

On a very sad note, as we were researching this piece, we read that the original Prince’s location is closed “indefinitely” due to a fire. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to eat there. Luckily, there’s another location in Nashville, so the chicken lives on, but that location was really special. RIP.