Val Tikhonova

SALIVATION STATION: Delectable chicken and fries sits on the table at Hattie B’s Chicken, patiently waiting to be eaten. The restaurant was founded in Nashville, Tennessee, but opened their Austin location on Feb. 28, 2024.

Hattie B’s Chicken is a restaurant founded in Nashville, Tennessee and their main focus point is great chicken.

The restaurant was opened by Nick Bishop Jr. After seeing his dad and his grandfather in the restaurant business their whole lives, he decided that he was going to open one of his own. His goal was to bring hospitality into a restaurant that felt familiar and to bring authentic Nashville style chicken to other states.

Hattie B’s is open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. on weekdays other than Friday, and 11 a.m. to -11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and they’re located on 2529 South Lamar Boulevard.

Hattie B’s menu consists of different “heat” levels of chicken, meaning different levels of spiciness. White chicken, dark chicken, and parts of the chicken that you’re able to purchase like wings or breasts are available. They have chicken tenders and chicken sandwiches that you can customize based on what part of the chicken you want and how spicy you want it to be. They  also have waffles.

They offer countless sides like mac and cheese, potato salad, crinkle cut fries, bacon cheddar grits, baked beans, coleslaw and pea salad. They have desserts like banana pudding, peach cobbler and floats of any soda you can think of.

My first impression of the building was that it seemed cleaner and more inviting than most places that mainly serve chicken. One of the first things that I noticed going inside was that the music that they were playing inside was extremely loud, it sounded like it was hurting the speakers it was coming out of, it was a bit distracting.

Walking in you first see the line you stand in to order, shirts and other merchandise you’re able to purchase to your right and a huge menu on the same wall to look at while you’re in the line.

We purchased the mac and cheese, crinkle cut fries, coke float, peach cobbler, and the ½ Bird and it all came out to about $26.

When you order you’re given a number that you attach to the paper towel holder on whatever table you chose, it was quite busy when we went so it took a while for our food to come out, but it wasn’t too long of a wait. The layout of the seating is one big room that is half inside and half outside.

The sides we ordered are pretty common for the most restaurants, and they were just what we expected. The mac and cheese had little flavor and had bits of pepper in it which sounded good but didn’t taste amazing, and the bits of pepper overpowered the mac and cheese. The container itself was not filled up very much, maybe 3/5ths of the cup was filled and was not worth $4.

  The crinkle cut fries were also pretty bland, I could see the effort in putting a little bit of seasoning on the outside but because of the size of them the middle of the fries were flavorless and just made them bland overall.

The peach cobbler was actually pretty good, it looked mediocre when it was given to us but it tasted better than expected, it was given to us hot and the bits of pie crust tasted great with the peaches. I enjoyed it.

The coke float was okay, I’m used to getting a bit more than one small scoop of ice cream in a float so it was a little less than expected but I liked the ice cream they used and the cup was filled to the brim.

The chicken that we ordered was called ½ Bird which was just one quarter of a breast with one leg quarter. It was about $15 and it came with two sides.

I’d say the price is reasonable considering that we received a large amount of chicken in our order. The chicken was cooked well and wasn’t dry at all. We chose the medium spicy option and I’d say it correlated with the flavor. The seasoning slightly  reminded me of the flavor of a taki, this isn’t bad but it was different from the chicken I’m used to eating. I have had better but it wasn’t bad.

Overall, considering the service, environment and food, I liked Hattie B’s Chicken; It was a fun place to eat at and a lot of people seemed to like it too because it was packed. I’d recommend it to someone wanting to try a different tasting chicken with the familiarity of the Texan environment.