Nashville hot chicken showdown: Hattie B's v Prince's and the best of the rest

Nashville hot chicken is so famous it smoothed my entry into the United States.

"Are you heading to Nashville for the music?" the US border officer asks in Austin, after learning my next stop.

"More the hot chicken," I say.

At this, he laughs so hard the people in the queue behind me begin to look nervous.

"Oh, I had it a few years ago," he says. "Damn near died. I've got it all on video."

And there it is: the uniting power of poultry so hot it becomes a shared trauma.

Like all good food legends, Nashville hot chicken begins with sex, revenge ... and a woman who deserves more credit than history gives her. The story goes that Thorton Prince, a handsome man-about-town, came home after one late night too many. The next day, his furious girlfriend decided to punish him by loading his fried chicken breakfast with a brutal quantity of spice.

It backfired spectacularly. Prince loved it - and by the 1930s, his family had turned that act of culinary vengeance into a business. Today, Prince's Hot Chicken is still regarded as the original, the place from which Nashville's fiery obsession spread across the city and then the world.

The formula is deceptively simple: fried chicken on white bread, pickles and a hot spice paste, all served with a couple of sides in a neat little basket with a jaunty checked-paper lining.

Despite not being first, Hattie B's is now the the most ubiquitous of the hot chicken outlets, with five in Nashville, including the airport for that final fix. So it's to here I head first, at 8pm on a Wednesday. I am about 50th in the queue at Hattie B's near Broadway, which sounds grim - but is actually entertaining, within range of all the neon, honky-tonks, cowboys and girls and competing blasts of live music from every direction. The air smells like cookie dough and barbecue sauce.

Ordering here feels like being cross-examined by a very cheerful chicken lawyer. Fried or grilled? Sandwich, tenders or on the bone? Wings or half a chicken? Breast and wing or leg and thigh? What kind of sauce? Sides? Then come the heat levels: Southern, mild, medium, hot!, damn hot! and the ominous "Shut the Cluck Up!!!"

A friend has warned me the final level may remove the top layer of your lips, so for research purposes I choose "Damn Hot".

The chicken arrives fast, dark, glossy and dangerous. It is properly hot but it is also juicy, crunchy and deeply addictive. The sides are excellent too - I've gone for the coleslaw and the mac and cheese. Paired with beer from a plastic cup at an outside table, it's a damn fine introduction to the third Nashville religion (after Jesus and music).

The next day, I go to Prince's at the huge and roaming Assembly Food Hall - one of four in the area (including - like Hattie B's - an airport offering).

Prince's offers 10 heat levels from plain through to XXX Hot. Again, in the name of journalism, I order the second-hottest. This proves unwise almost immediately.

Prince's is fiercer than Hattie B's. The heat feels older and more evil: it doesn't just sit on the chicken; it seeps into the bread, the pickles and my fingers, lingering long after I've finished.

The mac and cheese and pickles are sweeter than I'd like (isn't everything in this country?) but the chicken itself has the authority of an original. It tastes less polished than Hattie B's, but more serious. This is not a theme-park version of Nashville hot chicken. This is the very thing.

Today, Thorton Prince's great-niece, Andre Prince Jeffries, remains the matriarch and keeper of the Prince's Hot Chicken legacy, with Semone Jeffries now listed as CEO.

For something more fun, locals steer me to Red's 615 Kitchen, a small and noisy shack near Centennial Park with a cult following and a signature dish. Red's does the classics (tenders, sandwiches, chicken and waffles) but all everyone talks about is the Hot Chicken Mac and Cheese Crunchwrap: a huge toasted tortilla with hot chicken, pimento mac and cheese, bacon, pickles and comeback sauce. It sounds like something invented at 1am after a long night partying in Nashville - which is, of course, its appeal.

Eaten with paprika-seasoned fries to catch the spill, the "wrap" is huge, messy and gloriously indulgent. Heat levels run from Southern to mild, medium, hot and "Nashville Fire". I choose hot, which is no small thing: a proper head-kicker, softened just enough by the sweetness of the tortilla and the mac and cheese. The chicken itself is excellent - juicy, well-seasoned and far better than it has any right to be inside something this chaotic.

Then there is Goo Goo Cluster, Nashville's famous chocolate institution, which has found a way to drag hot chicken into dessert.

The original Goo Goo Cluster was created in Nashville in 1912: a round mound of caramel, marshmallow nougat, roasted peanuts and milk chocolate, billed as America's first combination candy bar.

At the Goo Goo shop, the hot chicken version sounds like a joke: cinnamon whiskey, hot chicken spice ganache and chocolate. The first bite is sweet. Then, faintly but unmistakably, comes the ghost of spicy fried chicken. It is bizarre. It is clever. It is very Nashville.

Prince's wins for the chicken: hotter, deeper and with the weight of history behind it, as well as a much more simple ordering experience. Hattie B's wins for the full deal: better sides, so many options and a queue that doubles as Broadway theatre. But Red's - I just love the vibe and that messy, sloppy, moreish wrap so much. Weeks later I'm still dreaming about it.