Dave's Hot Chicken Opens Northridge Location

NORTHRIDGE, CA — Back in 1930s Nashville Tennessee, Thornton Prince III had a reputation as a real womanizer, and his wife wasn’t happy about it. One night, in an act of revenge, Mrs. Prince doused her husband’s chicken dinner in as much hot pepper as she could find.

As far as revenge plots go, it wasn’t great. Prince loved the flaming hot chicken so much that he opened up a chicken shack selling “Nashville chicken,” or fried chicken smothered in buttermilk and cayenne pepper.

Fast forward to 2021, and Nashville chicken is taking over LA - and the world. Dave’s Hot Chicken, a fast-casual franchise of restaurants serving Nashville chicken tenders will be opening up its ninth Southern California location in Northridge on Friday.

“We’re so happy to be here,” said founder Arman Oganesyan, who noted that he and his three cofounders have a close friend who graduated from CSUN - just across the street from the new location at 9205 Reseda Blvd., in a former Chipotle’s.

Though Dave’s has become a global brand, Oganesyan said that each store tries to incorporate local elements into its interior design, so the new Northridge location features wall art of a rollerskating chicken to honor the beloved, recently shuttered Skateland rink. The second location in the San Fernando Valley - the other is in North Hollywood, and a Sherman Oaks location will open in the next few months - will start off outdoors and not take online orders to give staff time to acclimate and follow COVID protocols, Oganesyan.

Though Oganesyan said the restaurant is doing its best to avoid big crowds, that may prove a challenge, because it was snaking, hourlong lines that fueled the brand’s meteoric rise. In 2017, Oganesyan and his three friends started a popup food truck in East Hollywood. Namesake Dave Kopushyan was a trained chef who cooked really good spicy Nashville chicken for his friends, which they decided was good enough to form the “In-N-Out Burger of chicken”, as Oganesyan called it: a simple menu centered around one delicious item.

With just $1000, they opened up a cash-only late-night pop up truck in the Thai Town section of East Hollywood. “Chicken tenders are delicious on their own, and made even more so by a heavy handed heat approach from a late night cash-only stand. This is street food-meets-trend food, reworked to fit the needs of the sidewalk,” Eater LA senior editor Farley Elliott wrote in a glowing review that resulted in lines around the block.

A few months later, the friends opened up their first brick and mortar restaurant in East Hollywood, and the rest is history. Just over three years later, the location is a global franchise, and rubber chickens are springing up all over the country.

“I think early on we realized we had a really cool concept on our hands and we realized that people really loved the food,” Oganesyan said. “We wanted this to be this really good quality food that wasn’t fast food, but was really easy to get, and you didn’t have to wait hours in line to get, you just go in and get your chicken.”