Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Nashville Hot Chicken and the Pork Tenderloin: A Tale of Two Sandwiches

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One of the things you’re sure to hear about if you read up on Nashville is a local dish called “Nashville hot chicken,” a local culinary specialty.

Prince’s hot chicken, CC SA-2.0

To listen to people talk about it, you’d think eating Nashville hot chicken was some kind of ancient local religious rite. In fact, Nashville hot chicken appears to be a dish of fairly recent provenance. According to the Wikipedia entry for it:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville for generations. The current dish may have been introduced as early as the 1930s, however, the current style of spice paste may only date back to the mid-1970s. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of Andre Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. She has operated the restaurant since 1980; before that time, it was owned by her great-uncle, Thornton Prince. Although impossible to verify, Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a womanizer, and after a particularly late night out his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge. Instead, Thornton decided he liked it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café.

In other words, it’s possible that this dish has been around a while in some form in the local black community, but what we know today as the Nashville hot chicken is from the 70s or 80s. A Midwestern reader with longstanding family ties to Nashville told me a while back that at least through the 1990s he never heard hot chicken mentioned there. I read that Nashville hot chicken is now supposedly popular around the south, but having spent extensive time in Alabama 10-15 years ago, I never once came across it there.

An enterprising journalist should write a true history of hot chicken, but it appears that this was a minor product, until fairly recently mostly limited to the black community and not even especially prevalent there.

Yet once again Nashville managed to take something about itself and create a mythos around it to build the brand. I just read this week that Pringles is now releasing a Nashville hot chicken flavor.

Being from Indiana I can’t help but contrast this with the pork tenderloin sandwich, which may be served regionally in various places (supposedly especially in Iowa) but is a particular speciality in Indiana.

I did not eat these growing up. The far Southern Indiana area I grew up in had a strong Kentucky influence and orientation, and tenderloins were not a thing there. I suspect there are other parts of the state where that’s also true. For example, I’ve never seen one on a menu in Northwest Indiana, nor have my many friends from there ever referenced it. But the pork tenderloin is fairly ubiquitous in Central Indiana, where it is on practically every bar and grill menu. I’m not sure of the actual origins and history of this product either, but it’s been around at least as long as Nashville hot chicken and in a much more extensive way.

Yet, as typical for Midwest food products, this never became a branding element outside Indianapolis or outside the state. (A better example might be Cincinnati style chili, which is better known, but never became “cool” in any sort of national way, though Skyline chili tried to expand regionally a while back).

Why was Indianapolis unable to do with the tenderloin what Nashville did with hot chicken?

For one thing, it never actually tried. The most telling thing in this regard is that I’ve never once seen or heard of a chef at any of the new hip restaurants in Indy do an interpretation the pork tenderloin. My wife lived her entire adult life in Indy until recently and she couldn’t think of one either, though it’s possible it happened recently.

Go to the restaurant page of the Indianapolis tourism agency and there’s no mention of a pork tenderloin sandwich, nor a picture of it. There’s nothing on the Indianapolis Monthly dining page either, though I know they occasionally do cover tenderloins. One place that I have seen do something with it is north suburban Hamilton County, which has an annual tenderloin trail event – conveniently happening this month – with discounts at 27 different places on “Tenderloin Tuesdays.”

I again and again see that Southern cities start with little to nothing, and yet what they do have they treat as the greatest things of all time. As illustrated by Nashville hot chicken, they’ve also looked at their often neglected black community as a source of local cultural identity.

The Midwestern cities not only fail at this consistently, they typically don’t even try. There are tons of regional food products in the Midwest – Chicago style dogs, St. Louis pizza, etc. – but other than Chicago’s deep dish pizza, they have been dramatically underexploited in the marketplace even as these cities say that they are very keen to raise their brand profiles.

Note: I will be on vacation next week and likely not posting. I will also be traveling extensively during July and may only be able to post intermittently.

Comments

  1. Kevin Kastner says

    It’s generally agreed upon that the Hoosier tenderloin dates from Nick’s Kitchen, which still exists in my old hometown of Huntington.
    https://nickskitchen.net/
    Huntington was (and still is) a town with a large German influence, and the sandwich is similar to a schnitzel on a bun.

    I’ve thought about starting a tenderloin-themed restaurant for years…it is amazing that we don’t have one.

  2. Jim Grey says

    I think the tenderloin sandwich is really a small-town thing, not an Indianapolis thing. That’s not to say Indianapolis couldn’t or shouldn’t co-opt it, but so far it hasn’t.

    Another overlooked Indiana thing is fried chicken where black pepper is the primary spice in the coating. You’ll find that in restaurants all around the state. IMHO the most delicious is Wagner’s Village Inn in Oldenburg. Indianapolis could co-opt that, too.

  3. Joel Simon says

    Apologies for any offense…. but could it also be that the tenderloin is just not very interesting as a food item? Like them or hate them, Hot Chicken and Cincy chili are unique food experiences. Taste is subjective, but the Indiana tenderloin isn’t terribly flavorful or memorable and therefore hard to make iconic. From Jim’s description it sounds like Wagner’s chicken might be a tad more distinctive

  4. Roland S says

    Nashville hot chicken is only part of a broader identity that’s seen as cool. It’s far from the centerpiece of Nashville’s identity, nor could it ever serve in such a role. The biggest kernel in that identity is obviously country music, even if you don’t like modern pop country Nashville still embraces the music of Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and their latter-day counterparts as well as Jack White’s eclectic rock-n-roll. Indy obviously has motorsport which could play a similar role but I don’t see them trying to broaden the scope beyond Indycar and Nascar, or to provide new ways of enjoying motorsport that shed the redneck connotations. (Why not some kind of sanctioned street racing, for example?) If I’m missing something, I’d love to hear about it.

    Getting back to food, though, I think city leaders in the Midwest specifically are reluctant to play into a stereotype of Midwesterners as obese, plain-spoken and conservative. No other region has such a reputation for obesity (deserved or not) so it’s understandable that leaders don’t embrace their distinctive regional fattening foods. Even in Chicago, deep dish pizza is still kind of a tourist joke for many, despite a minority of local diehards.

    • Matt says

      Southerners aren’t afraid to sell. Midwesterners seem to think there’s something a bit unsavory about sales, for some reason.

  5. Carl says

    I grew up in rural Missouri and saw pork tenderloin sandwiches on lots of menus. I was sort of near KC, but I also saw it further east where we had relatives, at state and county fairs, etc.

  6. David says

    The key indicator that Nashville Hot Chicken is a new food fad and NOT an old time favorite is that the dish is spicy. Most mid-Century dishes in America were anything but spicy, and not just in the Midwest. Even In the late 20th Century most popular ‘spicy’ foods were ethnic foods which by today’s standards not considered especially spicy.

    Think about chain Mexican restaurants catering to American audiences, Deli Sandwiches and Hot Dogs with Brown (slightly Spicier) Mustard, Asian dishes like Take-Out General Tso’s Chicken or Sushi with a customary dab of wasabi.

    I used to commonly run into people (and not just in the Midwest) who put mayo on their Ham and Cheese since mustard was too spicy.

    There is a new passion for very spicy food in this country. Some are claiming it is because the country now has a more sophisticated palate. However I think the real driver has been the rapid ethnic change in the past 40 years.

    Look for more traditional foods to get spiced up and become new ‘local’ specialties.

  7. David Holmes says

    I’m not convinced that there is a “southern cities are better than midwestern cities or rust belt cities at promoting themselves” lesson in this. I’ve never heard of Nashville hot chicken other than in this blog (not Cincinnati style chili for that matter). The only nationally or internationally known foods that are linked to specific US cities that come to mind are Buffalo wings, Philadelphia cheese steaks, Chicago-style hot dogs, Chicago-style deep dish pizza, and Kansas City-style barbeque. I’m drawing a blank for pretty much all of the southern or sunbelt boomtowns (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc.). Perhaps New Orleans-style red beans and rice. But overall, I say the legacy cities (including those in the rust belt) dominate this aspect of American culture.

    • the urban politician says

      Totally agree. I don’t see any lesson here either.

      I think Aaron is reading way too much into a friggin piece of chicken on a piece of bread.

      I for one lived in Nashville for 4 years and never once heard of ‘Nashville hot chicken”

      But I knew about Chicago style pizza, Chicago style hot dogs, and Italian beef sandwiches since I was a kid.

      Lets stop turning EVERY. SINGLE. EXPERIENCE. into a “awww, look at yet another missed opportunity for those poor widdle over-wooked midwestern cities….booo hooo hooo….”

    • Skip says

      I see that KFC now offers a Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich here in Madison, WI. So it is spreading.

    • Chris Barnett says

      Never heard of Texas smoked beef brisket, Memphis and Carolina styles of BBQ, Coastal Carolina Gullah food, Jambalaya?

      Perhaps those styles are so old and integrated into modern American cuisine that most folks don’t think of them as Sunbelt regional specialties.

  8. Skip says

    Also, St. Louis has some interesting culinary traditions though I only knew of their BBQ before reading this:

    affotd.com/2015/06/30/st-louis-americas-weirdest-culinary-city/amp

  10. problogic says

    Very true. As a native of Indy, I don’t recall ever trying a pork tenderloin sandwich there, but I do eat them regularly when travel to Lake Wawasee in NE Indiana. Lots of great culinary delights that go unloved here in the Midwest – one of the best is from Traverse City – Cherry Salsa – so addicting!