#hotheadfriedchicken

[frompantomouth]

Hot Head Fried Chicken - Milwaukee, WI

Overall: B+

3 Piece Fried Chicken, Nashville Hot

Mac and Cheese

As a disclaimer before I get into this at all, I’ve never had Nashville hot chicken before, so I don’t have a lot of context in which to evaluate this. That being said, if this is any indication, I may need to book a trip to Nashville in the immediate future. This stuff was fantastic. The chicken came perched atop a thick piece of white bread (Texas toast? can they call it that if it’s not toasted?) and was adorned with some pretty generic dill pickles that I pretty quickly discarded. Upon reaching for the first piece, I was greeted by a somewhat weird sensation of the breading separating from the chicken and the chicken simultaneously separating from the bone. I think that this was a side effect of the chicken being incredibly tender to the point that nothing could really cling to it. The breading was on the thick side and had a great crunch while also easily cracking when bit or pulled (even just picking up a piece of the chicken, as described earlier). There was no sensation of greasiness. The Nashville hot seasoning was almost one of those super sauces that I could see being amazing in almost any application. It was super rich, had a definite sweetness, and was spicy but without any burn to interfere with my ability to taste it. It also had a perfect consistency that sort of soaked into the breading, preventing the sauce-on-fingers sensation of eating buffalo wings, while also being viscous enough that when i dipped an post-bite, unbreaded piece of chicken in it, it clung well (also as opposed to a thinner, vinegary buffalo sauce). I took much pleasure in using the bread to mop up the leftover pieces of breading and any leftover sauce once the chicken had been disposed of. 

The mac and cheese was not on the same level as the chicken but was decently good. The cheese sauce was cheddar based and had a definite cheese flavor, though I’m not sure if it was quite what I’m looking for in mac and cheese - wasn’t what I would consider a classic cheddar profile. It had a really nice consistency that was thin enough to really flow through the noodles yet thick enough to stick to every nook and cranny both inside and outside of the cavatappi noodles (again, not actually macaroni despite the name) and almost had a stringy quality to it as pure, melted cheese would. Portion size was more generous that I was expecting. 

Overall, I expected Hot Head to be more of a tend-based/hipstery restaurant than someone who was taking a serious look at what they were making, but I was proven wrong. Despite only being January 5, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll end 2018 with this being the best fried chicken that I had the opportunity to eat.