“I try everybody’s chicken,” Kim Prince says. But as the niece of André Prince Jeffries, owner of the legendary Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville, she often regrets it.

“Just because you put it on your menu does not make it Nashville hot chicken,” she says. “I’ve been stumped that they would use the word Nashville so loosely.”

Marinated in spices hot enough to drain the sinuses, her family’s hot chicken has been a local tradition since the 1930s. But word began to spread in 2011, when Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack was featured on TravelChannel’s Man v Food Nation and then was presented with a James Beard award honoring restaurants that serve timeless regional cuisine in 2013. Today, the “hot chicken” label can be found on the menus of KFC and Panda Express, as well as a slew of restaurants and food trucks in cities across the country.

Prince had to stand by and watch outsiders capitalize on her family’s recipe as she struggled for years to find the financial backing for her own venture. Determined not to lean on her aunt for support, she attracted investors who offered predatory deals and sought help from banks which were equally as unhelpful.

But in November, wearing a chef’s jacket, bandanna and her hair in two french braids, Prince was signing for shipments arriving and advising workers where decor needed to be hung on freshly painted walls. She was in the final stages of Tuesday’s grand opening, the day she takes her family’s legacy back. Her new restaurant, Hotville Chicken in South Los Angeles, marks the first time a member of her family has opened a hot chicken restaurant outside of Nashville (they operate two restaurants there).

“You can’t get more authentic than getting it from me,” Prince says. “I’m unapologetic about saying that.”

This opening was a long time in the making, and her struggle is not an exception, but more like the rule. According to the National Restaurant Association, just 8% of US restaurants are black-owned, largely because the racial wealth gap has made it difficult for African Americans to access the resources needed to launch food establishments.

Adding salt to that wound is how black culinary traditions have historically influenced food trends that non-blacks profit from

Adding salt to the wound is that although African Americans have a harder time starting their own restaurants, black culinary traditions have historically influenced food trends that non-blacks profit from. Adrian E Miller, James Beard award-winning author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine says that over the past 25 years, black and “ethnic” foods have increasingly been reinterpreted and absorbed by the mainstream. In 2016, for instance, the department store Neiman Marcus sparked outrage for selling $66 collard greens and bacon, which is a soul food staple typically found in black-owned restaurants for under $10.

“Southern food, it’s exploding in popularity, but the people benefiting tend to be white chefs,” Miller says. “People aren’t going out to support soul food places. They’re going to places run by white chefs who may or may not be making good versions of that food.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville. Photograph: Joe Buglewicz

Per Prince family lore, Nashville hot chicken dates back to the 1930s when Thornton Prince III, great uncle of André Prince Jeffries, returned home late. His suspicious girlfriend ignored the adage that revenge is a dish best served cold and instead rooted through her kitchen for the strongest spices she could find and served him hot chicken. Thornton Prince III not only tolerated the extra heat, but he enjoyed the meal so much that he and his brothers opened the original BBQ Chicken Shack in Nashville. Now known as Prince’s, the restaurant offers hot chicken in different cuts and spice levels served with white bread and pickles to tourists, businessmen and locals – black, white and every shade between.

“It’s been in my family for almost 90 years,” André Prince Jeffries, 73, tells me over the phone from Nashville. “We were the only ones for a long time, and I’m glad that Kim has the desire to spread the restaurant.”

Growing up, Prince spent time in both LA and Nashville. Her Tennessee summers were spent watching her aunt preparing chicken at Prince’s. That means “she’s already got it”, says Jeffries of the “hot chicken touch”.

With no written recipe, the Princes learn to perfect hot chicken through instinct, observation and experimentation. Prince began to practice cooking hot chicken as a college student in the 1990s and kept at it for a decade. “We taste test until you get the Prince family nod,” she says.

Although her family members had given her cooking the OK, it took her until 2016 to muster the courage to leave behind her entertainment career in production and development and open her own restaurant. There was just one problem: she couldn’t afford the $7,000 monthly lease to run such a business. So, she started off with Hotville pop-ups while prepping and at a Los Angeles Chinatown restaurant. In August 2017, the restaurant was sold and Prince lost that last shred of stability. “I had to move out abruptly,” she says. “I cried a lot of tears.”

Enter Greg Dulan, who runs three successful restaurants in the LA area. He offered to let her store kitchen equipment at Dulan’s on Crenshaw – a local soul food institution – and to hold pop-ups there.

Having witnessed Prince’s pop-ups selling out on the Dulan’s patio, he believed in Hotville enough to become Prince’s business partner.

“There’s a social aspect of eating hot chicken that you don’t normally see in a restaurant setting,” Dulan says. “This one is sweating and asking for water, the other one is laughing because he’s burning. Therein lies the value, and then when you add Nashville authenticity with the Prince family, a good recipe, a great experience, a great story – that’s what’s going to make Hotville super successful.”

But Dulan and Prince were teaming up and heading straight into stiff competition. LA has more than two dozen restaurants specializing in hot chicken, and even more feature the dish as a menu item.

Dave’s Hot Chicken opened its doors in 2017. Founder David Kopushyan says he visited the Prince’s pop-up “numerous times” during its 42-week run from 2016 to 2017.

“Seeing places like Hotville resonate locally definitely reinforced the idea that a hot chicken restaurant could work in LA,” Kopushyan says. Today Dave’s has two locations, in East Hollywood and North Hollywood, and Kopushyan says the business has the potential to grow to hundreds of franchises in the near future.

“Dave’s Hot Chicken is a good product,” Prince says. “But our flavor profile is so distinctly different, it can’t be compared. It is not Hotville Chicken, and I don’t think they’re trying to be. They’re Dave’s.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hot chicken and the usual sides. Photograph: Ben Rollins/The Guardian

Although Prince and Kopushyan have met, she hasn’t gotten to know him well. In fact, most owners of hot chicken restaurants in Los Angeles remain strangers to her. Chef Johnny Ray Zone of Howlin’ Rays in LA’s Chinatown is the exception. Since Howlin’ opened in 2016, Zone has made a point of paying respect to the Nashville restaurants that have inspired him, a move Prince appreciates.

“She’s seen how many times I go out to Nashville,” Zone says. “She’s seen me fly my staff out to Nashville to teach them about the culture. Like, ‘Hey, guys, this is what this business is about. This is why this business is open,’” he says.

Howlin’ Rays stands out as the first Nashville hot chicken restaurant to open in Los Angeles, first as a food truck in 2015 and then permanently in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza the following year. Two-hour lines still wind through the mall filled mostly with eateries – from ice cream to Filipino food to pho – alongside standalone vendors peddling bamboo and battery-run stuffed animals.

He tells customers about Prince’s by verbally recommending them and listing them and other staple Nashville soul food restaurants on the Howlin’ Rays website. He also hung a large photo of him and his staff with Prince Jeffries at Prince’s in Nashville in his restaurant. It’s more than most other restaurateurs serving hot chicken do. But Prince points out a chain reaction, saying that the new hot chicken restaurants peppered throughout Los Angeles likely owe a debt to Howlin’ Rays.

“A lot of them are modeled after Howlin’ Rays,” she says. “But long lines alone don’t constitute success. You have to operate your business well.”

Prince and Zone share a philosophy about hot chicken. Both say it’s not just about the food. “I feel like we’re so successful at Howlin’ Rays because of how we treat people,” Zone says. “We’re representing southern hospitality.”

He acknowledges that people will now inevitably compare Hotville to his own restaurant, but he doesn’t view Prince or Hotville as a rival. “I’m more supportive of her than competing with her,” he says.

And the feeling is mutual. “Johnny is like a cousin to me,” Prince says. “If I give him a ring, he’ll stop what he’s doing and come over. When Greg [Dulan] and I text him, he responds. Hot chicken – it’s communal. It brings people together. It doesn’t divide anybody, so there’s no competition.”

Why can’t [chefs] culturally source that this is a specialty that started out at Prince’s Hot Chicken?

Allyship among restaurateurs from different cultures shouldn’t be unusual, according to Miller. He says particular foods should not be off limits to chefs just because of race, but argues that respect is key when partaking in cross-cultural food experiences.

“I just think if you’re going to make the food of the ‘other’, you should at least give a shout out to the originators,” he says. “Chefs shout out where they locally sourced their food from, why can’t they culturally source that this is a specialty that started out at Prince’s Hot Chicken, an African American restaurant?” Miller says it’s clear that many restaurants have divorced hot chicken from its origins. When he sees it on menus, he often “plays dumb” and asks servers to tell him about the dish. Most can’t tell him how it’s made or where it’s from.

“There’s a lot of murkiness about its background, and the bad part is people aren’t hearing Prince’s story,” he says. “With the opening of Hotville, there’s a huge opportunity … to tell their story.”

Prince agrees. At its core, Nashville hot chicken is her family, she says. Hotville diners will taste, feel and hear that, she predicts. “I think that my ancestors would be very, very proud to see how far the incidental bird fried in the skillet with pepper all over it, of how far it’s come.”