Dave’s Hot Chicken

Dave's Hot Chicken is the hottest restaurant concept in the country. It's making its way from East Hollywood to the East Coast and I'm right there first Massachusetts location in Newton/ When you walk in, you will notice this street art, the artists come all the way from Hollywood to paint for two days, although they do customize it. This is designed to be the shape of Boston. I mean this does not look like a Burger King or Panera Bread The guy bringing the concept to the area is my poultry hero Al Graziano. He's got locations in Newton, Woburn, New Hampshire and there's tons more locations on the way.

Al Graziano - Dave's Hot Chicken: "So I think the cool thing about Dave’s Hot, you have cool brands and you have places that make great chicken and I think we were some of the first people to do both right. So you take high quality Michelin style cooking techniques into a hot chicken tender and then you add in all the street art, loud music, more of that edgy cool factor that we have today. They married up together and I think that's what sets us aside from everybody else."

Dave's Hot Chicken is a new cool concept but in a way it's a throwback to the old days of fast food or quick service because it's a very limited menu. You have two kinds of fried chicken tenders or sliders, a handful of sides and shakes and that's it but that allows them to just focus on a few great items done perfectly served quickly. Your standard Nashville hot chicken is coated, spiced, fried, sauced, and served on a plain piece of white bread. Here they don't sauce it they drop a little bit of a dry rub on the chicken so the flavor is a little bit different This chicken is fresh never frozen.  I don't know how they did it but that's why Dave’s is a national phenomenon.  Important announcement this chicken is wicked good You've got seven levels of spice No spice, light mild, mild, medium, hot, extra hot, and Reaper

Al Graziano - Dave's Hot Chicken: "That is are probably a biggest question we get in the store: 'does it have to be spicy?' Not necessarily No. So you can you know starting with no spice, which is simply just a tender with right out of the fryer not dipped in anything dry rub all the way up to the Carolina Reaper, which can get really, really fun for whether you like it or not. Every single one is delicious. So as soon as you the immediately when you bite into the piece of chicken no matter what spice level you get, you get smacked with amazing flavor. I do medium. I love spice but not to go too far south but I need a little bit of kick because I say right in the middle."

After you choose your spice level, the real tough decision comes: Do you want the tender or the slider? This is the tender as you can see it's gigantic. I'm at about the length of my hand and it comes just on a piece of plain white bread. Now they will give you Dave’s sauce on the side but if you want to just focus on the chicken I think you want the tender.

This is the slider it's the same gigantic piece of chicken however you get pickles, kale slaw, and a toasted potato roll. So you get the squishiness and the toastiness of the roll. That's why to me I choose the slider over the tender. A great southern touches these pickles on a tender when I order at the counter I asked for extra pickles because they add a little more crunch little more flavor to the chicken The Dave’s sauce is not hot it's more sweet and tangy more 1000 Island dressing than a hot sauce but when you put a spicy chicken in here and take a bite… it perfectly complements the chicken.

Al Graziano - Dave's Hot Chicken: "It's some sweetness from the potato roll. You get some texture with the crispiness with the chicken and the kale slaw and then you get the acidity from the pickles. All that in one bite and then drizzled with some creamy Dave sauce. It's probably the best bite of food you get really anywhere."

My favorite side of Dave's is the crinkle cut fries. This is a heavily seasoned fry. I think it goes great in the Dave sauce. I also think it goes great with ketchup I mean the crinkle cut fry has been shown by MIT scientists to hold more ketchup than any other kind of French fry.

I'm a Mac and Cheese freak. To me, it's the number one comfort food that there is and I love the mac and cheese here. It is really creamy. Made with an elbow pasta and the cheese gets inside and outside the elbow pasta so it's cheesy and soft. But the macaroni is a little bit al dente so it's got some substance to it. You may not think that mac and cheese pairs with spicy hot chicken. It's a southern thing, but trust me somehow the flavor combination works

Dave's hot chicken makes three kinds of shakes and when I say shake I mean real milk and real ice cream. Now I really like the vanilla and I absolutely love the chocolate but I think you should get the strawberry I don't understand the chemistry behind it. I'm just telling you that the strawberry shake pairs the best with Nashville hot chicken. Maybe 85% of the sales in quick service these days is drive thru. But as you can see here at Dave's there is no drive thru so you have to come in or get Uber Eats and I do

Al Graziano - Dave's Hot Chicken: "We just made it a whole lot better and a whole lot more fun. I think everybody wants to have a good time. Everybody wants to have a good experience. We just happen to make incredible chicken alongside that…. there's nothing there's nothing better."

If you want to rejoin Nashville hot chicken and build your culinary street cred, you must visit Dave's Hot Chicken.