“Some men just want to watch the world burn.” That’s exactly what I thought when I told my girlfriend I was going to write this article. We sat at Panda Express in Rivergate and ate our lunch. I decided I’d get the Sichuan Hot Chicken again thinking the first go around was surely a fluke. I was wrong.
Let me stop and say I’ve lived in Nashville for nearly 30 years. Not to sound pretentious, but I was eating hot chicken before it was a “cool destination food.” Hey, I’m all for the hot chicken explosion! As someone who loves spicy food, I want to try all of the hot chicken variations- the good, the bad, and the ones that shouldn’t exist.
So, I take the first bite of my Sichuan Hot Chicken, and it’s just as good if not better than the first time I had it. I’ll say it- Panda Express has the best non hot chicken establishment hot chicken in the game right now. That is a hill I will gladly die on. It’s got just enough spice so someone like me, who’s pretty well-seasoned in the spicy food game, gets a hint of heat and a lot of flavor. I could almost see where it would be too spicy for some and not spicy enough for others- but then you get the flavor. And that’s the big one. I feel like you get so much more flavor from the Sichuan Hot Chicken- some hot chicken places haven’t even figured out how to give you that much flavor.
So I made it through my second go and decided this was the article I was writing. I’ve had everything from Bolton’s, Hattie B’s, most of the big spots in Nashville and attended the hot chicken festival for several years in a row. I even tried KFC’s hot chicken abomination. This hot chicken from Panda Express is honestly better than it has any right to be and I will get it every time I go to Panda Express, until its time is up.
If you’re at Panda Express, and for some reason you aren’t sure what to get, take a chance on the Sichuan Hot Chicken.
-RighteousJesse (Twitter)
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