When you have decided whether you want thighs, drumsticks, breasts, tenders or some combination of these, one of the smiling people working at the counter will ask: “Do you want Southern, Hoot & Honey, Hoot, Hootie Hoot, Hoot-N-Nannie, or Boomshakalaka?”

It’s like having a conversation with an owl. Even when you know that Ms. Hall, a host on “The Chew,” has been identified with the phrase “hootie hoo” since her days as a “Top Chef” contestant, this is not an easy question to answer the first time you hear it, or the second or third time, either.

Most customers fall back on a number system, one to six. Level one, Southern, gets no hot oil and is easy enough to eat. Like all the chicken, it sits on white bread and has pickle slices pinned on it with toothpicks. Level two is slicked all over with just enough oil to give it a rounder flavor that is sweet, savory and spicy but not cruel.

Heat tolerance is of course a personal thing, but at level three I became slightly more aware of my skin; at level four, I became conscious of the passing of time; at level five, I began tearing off chunks of white bread and stuffing them into my mouth. Level six gave me second thoughts, but not serious pain.

(If you want to go to the dark side, the chicken for you is the extra hot at Peaches HotHouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, although the chile payload is delivered by a spice powder sprinkled over the top; parts of the crust that aren’t powdered just taste like regular fried chicken.)

The meat at Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen tastes natural, which is to say it hasn’t been twisted beyond recognition by aggressive brining of the kind practiced at Root & Bone and other places around town. Ms. Hall seems to have focused her efforts on the crust, and it is excellent, a darkish shell both formidably crunchy and a little chewy. Spice or no spice, this is not a style of fried chicken you often find in New York.