As someone who spent a good amount of time in Nashville, where I was first introduced to hot chicken, I am admittedly a hot chicken snob. Most places outside of the south offer some sort of "hot chicken" sandwich and it's just a fried chicken breast with hot sauce on it. That's not fucking hot chicken god dammit. When I lived in NYC, I figured that I should be able to find some authentic hot chicken in Manhattan somewhere, right? Wrong. It's not easy to find actual Nashville-style hot chicken anywhere.
Anyway, they have one of these places near where my parents live in CA and I tried it for the first time a year ago when we were visiting over Christmas. It's the real deal. Sure, it's a chain and people will say it doesn't hold a candle to Prince's or Hattie B's but it's really, really close.
I live like 7 blocks away from this place and I drive by it every day, so I've been monitoring the progress as it's been built. I was gonna try to lose some weight this year but that may not happen now, but on the bright side I did just buy a bidet for our master bathroom so that should come in handy.