The Sun's Not Yellow, That's Chicken

Galileo was wrong. He said so himself in later years: The earth doesn’t revolve around the sun. For now and here in New York City, the world revolves around a tender piece of deep golden fried chicken. The fried chicken scene, like the photosphere, is speckled and varied. Stephen Tanner, a skinny motherfucker with a beard, has colonized North Brooklyn. He began at a very good shitbox in the back of a bar under the Williamsburg bridge called Pies N’ Thighs in 2008. When the original location closed, Tanner brought his snake oil mojo to the kitchen at Egg, then to Pies N’ Thighs 2.0 and now to a spicy fried chicken sandwich at The Commodore.

In Manhattan, Korean fried chicken remains dominant, from Kyochon to Bonchon to exactly one half of the infamous Momofuku Fried Chicken dinner—though Hill Country’s new Hill Country Chicken brings Texas crunch to Manhattan. But to my mind, the brightest and by far the hottest spot is to be found at Peaches HotHouse, a small, charming joint in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Peaches HotHouse specializes in a perverse sub-genre of fried chicken known as Nashville Hot Chicken. This is chicken as weapon, chicken as crucible, chicken as cat o’ nine tails, chicken as revenge. In fact, Andre Prince, the owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville—probably the best purveyor and keeper of the Hot Chicken flame—says her recipe came from her great uncle’s scorned woman, who added hot sauce in a fit of jilted pique. It makes sadomasochists of us all. At Peaches HotHouse, the Hot Chicken comes Regular, Hot and Extra Hot, all served, as tradition demands, atop a thick slice of egg bread and a couple pickle slices ($12). In each permutation, the breasts, thighs and legs wear a thick, crispy, impressive anorak.

It’s sandpaper-rough, not granola chunky, and darker than its northern variants. As the menu conscientiously notes, “Caution: HOT is EXTREMELY SPICY!” but I, Icarus-like, wanted hotter. My mistake.

Peaches HotHouse Extra Hot fried chicken is psychotropically and painfully hot. It’s confusingly hot since such hotness has little analogue. One is rendered speechless after a bite not merely because one’s mouth, burning, cannot form the words needed, but because one’s mind is rendered insensible, inchoate and utterly unprepared to conceptualize how extremely spicy spiciness in extremis is. But this Rimbaudian derangement isn’t without its dose of sweet pleasure. The men behind Peaches, Ben Grossman and Craig Samuel, who also own Peaches in Stuyvesant Heights, sprinkle sugar on the crispy skin; before the pain sets in, one could almost be eating crisp San Gennaro zeppole. The meat, underneath and beyond the madness, is moist, tender and immensely flavorful. But the fried chicken ayoasca ceremony is addictive and the rhythm—eat, sweet, heat, repeat—when softened with bites of bacon creamed corn ($3) or a spoonful of a jumbo lump crabmeat Low Country rice bowl ($14), a variation on what they call a purloo in the low Country—is hypnotic. If you prefer your fried chicken without the man versus food dynamic (although like most things, this is really man versus himself), go with the Hot. The regular is good also, but regular and there’s still plenty of cayenne to go around. The gambit here is to submit oneself to the incantatory ecstasy of the Extra Hot Hot Chicken and to fly closer to the exact center of the burning sun.

>> Peaches HotHouse

415 Tompkins Ave. (at Hancock St.), Brooklyn, 718-483-9111.