This spin on a Nashville legend is true to its roots

One of the keys to Nashville hot chicken is that it actually must be spicy — not just well-seasoned, but hot with an exclamation point. The team at Slim & Husky’s, a pizzeria chain based in Nashville that now has two locations in Atlanta, doesn’t skimp on the spice on their hot chicken pizza.

The pie is topped with both chicken sausage and white meat seasoned with the traditional Nashville spices (heavy on the cayenne pepper). The restaurant’s four-cheese blend and a jalapeno-cilantro ranch sauce cool things down a touch, but sliced jalapenos and banana peppers add fresh heat to the mix.

All these toppings, plus a hot honey drizzle, sit atop a cracker-thin, oblong pizza crust, which is cooked with a little extra cheese scattered around the edges, and baked to a sturdy, crunchy edge that supports the weight of the toppings without sponging away flavor. It’s a tasty marvel of pizza engineering.