Chile Chicken Nashville Hot Chicken – Albuquerque, New Mexico
My brother Mario–seven years younger, much better looking and quite a bit smarter–and I have shared many memorable firsts. There was the time I taught him how to drive on our dad’s 1965 standard transmission Chevrolet pickup truck. He was a quick study, soon terrifying our grandmother with drifting skills Formula D drivers would envy. I took him to his first championship wrestling match at Albuquerque’s Civic Auditorium where we watched “Rapid” Ricky Romero dispatch “Yellow Belly” Robley. Mario would go on to similarly dominate high school wrestling opponents (though unlike Robley, he didn’t pull “foreign objects” from his trunks with which to beat his opponents). Already in our grizzled 30s, we once beat two much younger (and ostensibly more fit) starters on Peñasco’s state championship basketball team. That may not have been a first, but like the four touchdowns scored by Al Bundy, it was one of those youth-reclaiming victories we’ll boast of well into our 80s. Fittingly, I was with Mario when he experienced Nashville hot chicken for the first time. There are some things brothers will confide only in one another. One of us told the other the Nashville hot chicken too hot to handle, but the…
