Peppery Pete Feels the Burn at Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen

It took a while for Nashville-style hot chicken to find its way to Brooklyn, but Pete Wells is happy that it’s now served at a handful of local establishments, including Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen on Columbia Street. The chicken is available in five different spice levels, all with silly names. The room is full of branding and catchphrases, to the degree where Pete concludes that it’s "so clearly positioned to spawn multiple locations that it almost seems pregnant." Thankfully, the kitchen gets the chicken right:

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.

A lot of the sides and desserts are skippable, but Pete likes the collards, the biscuits, the pimento cheese, and the banana pudding. One star.

Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen Likes It Hot, but Not Hellish [NYT]