Nashville hot chicken spot Slappin Chick opens in Hicksville
Chicken sliders and tenders form most of the menu at Slappin Chick, a new halal eatery in Hicksville. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
The question of whether a chicken may be cooked by slapping it is one that humanity has wrestled with for thousands of years. Vexation having reached the boiling point by 2021, science weighed in with the news, via a physicist’s calculations, that the hand in question would need to strike the bird while traveling at a rate of 3,295 mph.
Now science was at last free to consider a question equally old, namely why anyone would want to cook a chicken by slapping it.
In hopes of acquiring further insight, I met up with brothers Aziz and Zafar Ahmad at their new halal restaurant Slappin Chick, which showcases the bird in tenders and sliders. The Ahmads produce very good chicken, although they do not employ the slapping method, and their restaurant is in Hicksville, although they are Flushing natives of Afghani heritage, and their specialty is Nashville hot chicken, although they have never been to Nashville.
“I went to California and had it at Howlin’ Rays,” said Zafar Ahmad, 27. Aziz, meanwhile, knew southern hot chicken only from Instagram, but that was enough to set the 20-year-old off on a six-month quest for a perfect chicken recipe.
While Slappin Chick is the brothers’ first restaurant, they have long been friends to fowl, having worked in Kennedy Fried Chicken outlets that the family runs in the Bronx. “But we wanted something different from our father.”
There is a bare bones quality to both Slappin Chick’s 24-seat dining room and its menu, which features just four plates, all of them some combination of tenders, sliders, fries and slaw. But there’s nothing skimpy about any of them. Ordering a tender plate ($13) nets you two whole-breast portions, along with fries and pickle chips, while a two-slider plate, which also comes with slaw ($15), portends buns struggling to contain the large meat. Tenders and sliders may also be purchased separately, for $5.50 and $7.50 respectively.
Despite its Nashville by proxy provenance, the Ahmads are committed to satisfying chicken lovers regardless of heat tolerance, offering six spice levels: Country (no spice), mild (country plus salt), medium, hot, slappin and slappin+. I tried all of them and stopped having fun around medium, although another in my circle couldn’t get enough of the hottest tender and actually wished I’d brought more home. To me, though, nobody could love that last one unless he was a pro, a masochist or Zafar Ahmad’s wife.
“She has freaky taste buds,” he said. “I have to tell her to stop." Ahmad himself doesn’t even make it to slappin, much less plus, admitting only to being a “hot” guy. And Aziz?
“Medium.”
Medium?! I felt like I’d been slapped. Why would two guys open a place called Slappin Chick if one was a hot chick and the other a medium? Yet another question for science.
Slappin Chick is at 19 N. Broadway in Hicksville, 718-569-5580. Opening hours are every day from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
