LA Hot Chicken and New York Wings Land in the Twin Cities

Two rapidly expanding coastal chains are finding their footing in the Midwest

Two coastal chain restaurants landed in the Cities last week, bringing Nashville-style hot chicken and saucy chicken wings in tow. Los Angeles-based Dave’s Hot Chicken, franchised by former NBA player Kris Humphries, is now open on St. Paul’s Ford Parkway; out in the south suburbs, New York City’s Atomic Wings is setting up shop in Edina.

Dave’s Hot Chicken is a truly prolific chain: It has more than 50 locations in California alone, and many more — like, hundreds — across the U.S. and Canada, plus a few in the Gulf States. But it started, in 2017, as a late-night chicken stand in a Los Angeles parking lot. Back then, founders David Kopushyan, Arman Oganesyan, and Tommy Rubenyan offered just a few things: chicken tenders served with white bread, kale coleslaw, curly fries, and sweet tea. Eater LA was quick to the scene when it opened, sketching a vignette of a scrappy pop-up with two small fryers and minimal social media clout.

From there, effectively, the chain blew up, going from two restaurant locations in 2020 to more than 700 in development by 2023. Dave’s has expanded so quickly by leaning heavily on franchisees — the Humphries family, which plans to bring 16 total locations to Minnesota, is one of them.

Dave’s Hot Chicken owes its rapid success in part to the long tail of the Nashville hot chicken craze, arguably one of the U.S.’s defining food trends of the 2010s and beyond. Worthy questions have been raised about who, exactly, gets to capitalize on that trend: Hot chicken, for nearly a century, was cooked and eaten almost exclusively in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods, at legacy restaurants like Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. All of the sudden, circa 2017, KFC and Shake Shack were serving it.

I drove out to Dave’s for its launch on March 15, and pulled up just after the doors opened. There was a DJ playing a set outside — I caught Curtis Mayfield, I think — and inside, it was packed. Officially speaking, Dave’s opened its first metro restaurant at Ridgedale Center in Minnetonka this summer, but this was its first location to hit the Cities proper, and clearly people had been waiting for it. I stood in line for about five minutes and ordered the #3 combo: one tender and one slider with fries. Did I want cheese on my fries, the cashier asked me? I did.

I haven’t had the chance yet to do the full hot chicken tour in Nashville, and taste the dish in its home territory. I can say, though, that the chicken I had at Dave’s was very good. The meat was juicy, with a buttermilk tang; the breading was crackly and laced with a little sweetness underneath the cayenne. I swear I tasted something reminiscent of a seafood boil — maybe a little Old Bay. I got the medium, which is my go-to spice level, and it was very tame, so here’s your sign to go hotter (though know that the “Reaper” level requires signing a waiver).

Dave’s Hot Chicken certainly isn’t the first Nashville-style hot chicken restaurant to open in the Twin Cities, however. That’s Nashville Coop, from brothers Arif and Kamal Mohamed, who serve a mean Texas toast and tenders, plus sandwiches, seasoned fries, and sides with both Southern and Ethiopian influences. If you want your hard-earned chicken dollars to go to a local business, head there.

Meanwhile, New York’s Atomic Wings — another rapidly expanding chicken chain — is setting up shop in Edina, with more locations to follow. Ron Harris, the franchisee behind Firehouse Subs, is the name behind the Minnesota expansion. The Edina location was originally supposed to open March 7, but when I drove down last weekend, the restaurant’s interior was still under construction.

Based on Eater New York critic Robert Sietsema’s review of the chain, though, the finest of Atomic Wings’ vast selection of sauces and dry rubs may be its namesake Atomic sauce, the hottest of its five variations on buffalo sauce. There’s a whole spectrum of flavors available, though — from ranch, garlic parmesan, and creamy aioli to hot lemon pepper and mesquite rubs — for both bone-in and boneless wings. Even better, I saw a halal certification sticker on the door. Keep an eye out for an opening in the next few weeks.