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At the Chicken Guy! ribbon-cutting ceremony, held on Thursday, August 5, celebrity chef and self-proclaimed mayor of Flavortown Guy Fieri gave a nod to Nashville’s iconic Prince’s Hot Chicken, saying he was excited to open his first restaurant in the “epicenter of great fried chicken” — Music City.
At a press event with plenty of mid-week tourists looking on snapping photos (and snagging fried chicken samples), Fieri answered a very short round of questions, where he said he knew he wanted to return to Nashville after he first got a taste of iconic Prince’s nearly 20 years ago. The television chef was accompanied by the store’s “sauce slinger,” armed with a holster of sauces for the briefly unmasked samplers.
Fieri partners with restaurateur Robert Earl (Planet Hollywood) for the Nashville Chicken Guy! — located at the corner of Second Avenue and Commerce (the former home of El Rey). The restaurant, under renovations during the downtown Christmas Day bombing, sustained minimal roof damage from the blast.
Located at 139 Second Avenue North, the new fried fowl destination also offers grilled chicken options in tender and in sandwich form, plus salads, plenty of fries, and a whopping selection of 22 sauces. Fried tenders are brined in a mixture of fresh lemon juice, pickle juice, and buttermilk and infused with a proprietary blend of herbs and spices. They boast that the chicken here is all-natural, antibiotic-free, and never frozen. On the sweeter side, there are six shakes for sipping, ranging from standard chocolate to apple cinnamon cereal made with handspun vanilla soft-serve.
Chicken Guy! opened its flagship location at Disney Springs at the Walt Disney World Resort in 2018 before beginning its nationwide expansion. Fieri’s fast-casual fried chicken Restaurants are also on tap for Knoxville, Gatlinburg, and Johnson City, Tennessee in the near future. See the full menu online here.
