Hattie B’s Hot Chicken

When the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas opened in 2010, it leveraged new and existing concepts from famous chefs to generate excitement (and plenty of reservations) from food tourists – a strategy that informed its second phase of development in 2017 and 2018. Following David Chang’s opening of Momofuku on the second floor, the hotel invited multiple chefs and famous regional American food businesses to join him. Their concepts formed the Block 16 Urban Food Hall, a collection of miniature restaurants informed by Singaporean hawker centers and street food trends around the U.S.

Founded in Nashville in 2012, Hattie B’s Hot Chicken spun off from a cafeteria-style restaurant run by father-and-son duo Nick Bishop Sr. and Jr., focusing on various spice levels of hot chicken – a super peppery piece of fried chicken traditionally served with pickles and white bread. Invented in the 1920s-1930s by Prince’s Hot Chicken, Nashville hot chicken became a subject of national interest in the late 2000s and early 2010s, inspiring the creation of Hattie B’s, which some now consider to be better than the original.

Shown here is a Hattie B’s sandwich ordered “damn hot,” one step shy of “shut the cluck up,” the hottest version, and crinkle cut fries. Note that it’s an actual sandwich, with full bun and prominent pickles, rather than just a piece of bread to absorb hot grease, and it’s tasty – one of those tests of spice tolerance that could be fun (or embarrassing) for groups of friends making their way through the Cosmopolitan. The chain now operates locations in eight cities; this is still the only one outside of the Southern U.S.