Food and college football on TV belong on the same team. Whether you’re feeding the family or a crowd, it’s fun to match the menu to the matchup.

Some games easily lend themselves to culinary themes. When the opponent is Florida, eat gator. The annual Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans calls for gumbo or jambalaya; ditto any game played at LSU.

On December 30, the Auburn Tigers play in the TransPerfect Music City Bowl against the Maryland Terrapins. (Unfortunately, Maryland’s quarterback, former Alabaster resident and Thompson High School star Taulia Tagovailoa, has decided not to play as he enters the pro draft.)

Unfortunately, neither team provides gastronomic inspiration, unless you have access to some good turtle soup. Fortunately, the host city does – Nashville Hot Chicken.

Born in west Nashville kitchens, no other fried chicken matches its combination of juicy meat, shatteringly crisp coating, and incendiary spicing.

Its back story is equally delicious. Rakish Nashville resident Thornton Prince had a taste for spicy food and spicier women, which didn’t exactly sit well with his steady girlfriend when he showed up late one night, reeking of perfume and demanding food.

She fried some chicken for Prince. But to express her displeasure she overloaded it with every pepper and hot spice she could find, hoping he’d get the point. He loved it. She left him. And he decided to open a restaurant featuring his take on her late-night stab at revenge.

Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack has been a local legend for most of a century. But over the last decade or so, Nashville Hot Chicken has flown that coop, finding fans from coast to coast. Even fast-food chains serve interpretations.

That’s another reason Nashville Hot Chicken is perfect to eat during Auburn’s bowl game in the Music City. There are plenty of places around Alabama to touch down and score the spicy, crunchy chicken. Here are a few.

 

Chicken District (Mobile)

From the folks behind Wemo’s Wings, Chicken District offers a variety of choices, including a Nashville Hot sandwich. Nashville Hot sauce is an option for wings and tenders, which also are sold in bulk. Online ordering is available.

 

Eugene’s Hot Chicken (Birmingham – Uptown, Hoover)

Founder Zeb Carney is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, even if the sauces for his Nashville tenders and wings reach the absolute heights of evil. He describes his Hot level as “touch of burn,” Hot Damn as “not too smart, not too stupid.” Stupid Hot is self-defining. Bulk orders including 25 or 50 tenders or wings with sides, salad, and tea are available.

 

Hangry Joe’s Hot Chicken (Montgomery)

The international chain (14 states plus locations in Dubai and South Korea) serves Nashville Hot-style chicken sandwiches, fingers, and chicken with waffle. They have three spicing levels before Hot and Angry Hot (“waiver required” on the last one, they say). Order up to 100 wings, breaded or not, online at the Montgomery location. A store in Cullman is expected to open before the Super Bowl.

 

Hattie B’s (Birmingham – Lakeview)

Nashville Hot chicken may have originated at Prince’s, but Hattie B’s has spread the gospel since its founding by the Bishop family in 2012 (they served it before that at their Bishop’s Meat & 3 restaurant. Hattie B’s now has 12 restaurants in five states, and ships nationwide. It serves bird on the bone or no bone, with six heat levels. Four, up to Hot, are described as “everyday heat levels.” For “enthusiasts only” are Damn Hot!! And Shut the Cluck Up!!! Catering portions are available.

 

Super Chix Chicken and Custard

Locations include Huntsville, Madison, and Hoover, with a Birmingham location planned for 2024. Nashville Hot is one of the options for its self-described Texas-Style sandwiches. Party packs of tenders, nuggets, and mini sandwiches are available.