 Americans ate 100 pounds of chicken per person in 2022. The question we seek to answer today is, who's eating it right? My name's Trey Crowder. As a stand-up, I spend most of my weekends on the road. And I spend most of that time listening to folks tell me that their regional cuisine is the best in the world. The object of this show is to settle these debates once and for all. Welcome to Grubbin. On one side, Hotville Chicken chef and owner, Kim Prince, is representing a Titan of the genre, Nashville Hot Chicken. Nashville Hot Chicken is not a trend. It's a tradition. And on the other side, Chamelea co-founder Kevin Sun speaks for the other KFC, Korean fried chicken. Chamelea stands for Chicken Somalia. So let's start with some history. Nashville Hot Chicken's origin story is infamous at this point. Nashville womanizer Thornton Prince gets caught running around on his then girlfriend. He was out late. Yeah. Carousing. Who responds by serving him a plate of fried chicken secretly packed with atomic bomb levels of cayenne and hot peppers. But this act of culinary revenge backfires because it turns out that the only thing Prince loves more than the ladies is sadistically spiced poultry. The spices that we use initially are just strictly cayenne pepper. It was just a lot of it. He took her recipe and created Prince's Hot Chicken, a restaurant that's become a Nashville institution and spawned legions of imitators. Kim, you are a descendant of the great Thornton Prince. Is that right? Great, great uncle. Quite the legacy. It is. While Nashville Fried Chicken emanates from a lover's quarrel, Korean fried chicken emanates from a literal war, the Korean War. The story goes that U.S. soldiers wanted to make Turkey on Thanksgiving. But since they didn't have Turkey, they made fried chicken, which is always the right decision. Anyways, they passed on their recipe to the Korean soldiers who transformed it into something else entirely. The crust is thicker, so much so that really it's like more of a shell. Double frying technique ensures that the exterior of the chicken is extra crispy. And instead of going the spicy route, Korean fried chicken has served in a variety of sweet sauces. Commercially, Korean fried chicken began to thrive in the 1990s when workers who were laid off after a major financial crisis used their pensions to start fried chicken restaurants. Soon, the creation crossed the Pacific and Korean fried chicken thrived stateside, particularly here in my adopted home of Los Angeles. All right, let's get to know these birds. I'm going to have these chefs walk me through how they prep their poultry for prime time. Start at the beginning. How do y'all brine your birds? We use just salt, pepper, we throw in some garlic, but we try to just keep it simple. Just do water and lemon and salt. You need to put salt in your meat. Right, let's talk frying technique now. With our chicken, we do slow and low. We cook it like 300. The outside, while it may have like a little bit of texture, like crust on the outside, you might hear a crunch, but it's not going to be like super crispy. That's not original Nashville hot chicken. Sure. Korean fried chicken, we actually fry twice. In the first fry, we're essentially frying at a low temperature to cook the chicken throughout. And the second fry is just really quick flash fry at a very high temperature. So we actually use a lot of corn starch or potato starch compared to like just traditional flour. Right. Adding the different starches just really helps the finished product become a little more crispier, but also come out a little lighter as well. Talk to me about the flavor profile. Cayenne is the main pepper. I don't want people's first experience to be so traumatic. Right. Or so explosive that it's just burned. That's not Nashville hot chicken. Nashville hot chicken has different herbs and spices, and you should be able to taste them. There's so many sauces that we can pair with, like soy garlic being one of the most popular ones these days. For me, Mike, like Korean fried chicken, I would think back to like, it's called yangnyeom in Korean, which is basically like a sweet and spicy, like chili paste. Very thick and rich sauce that we coat the chicken in after. I think the sweetness has a nice contrast to the rich and savory flavors that come from the chicken, as well as the spice as well. No fried chicken dinner is complete without sides. So what are y'all bringing to the table? Nashville hot chicken is always going to be two slices of bread underneath it. Pickles on top because of the acidity in it to help cut the spice level once it hits your tongue. And then we always serve mac and cheese. You can always do collard greens. I think almost every Korean can speak for this. We always have some sort of like pickled radish. It's called moo, and it's literally just like sliced up radish in some sort of vinegary solution. Essentially, it just helps to just cleanse the palate between each bite. Well, well, well. Once again, our great meeting of the minds has produced a tie. We'll give each of our guests one last chance to explain why their dish is superior. We'll start with Kim. Tradition Trump's trend, and we've been on America's table for quite a long time. And Nashville hot chicken is just good. Everybody needs a little kick. Kevin. Fried chicken was brought up to Korea. We were able to make it our own by using a wide variety of different sauces to create different flavors. Everything just really complements the chicken really well. I want some chicken so bad. I can hear your stomach growl. I know, I know. So thank you to our guests for sharing your expertise with us. Hopefully we've inspired folks to try some new grub and taught them a thing or two. Y'all keep the conversation going in the comments and keep it spicy. But, you know, respectful. If you like what you sawed, subscribe to the Attention YouTube channel. Continue your culinary education and check out Dish History. Get your mind right with free therapy. Or hey, spend some more time with you boy and watch my show South and Off.