I signed my life away to eat this Central California hot chicken

There’s not much original about Houston TX Hot Chicken, an outpost of which recently dropped from the fast casual generator in the sky onto Bakersfield’s arterial Rosedale Highway.

But there’s also at least one thing unique and singular — very much by design — about the experience.  

Houston TX Hot Chicken (or HHC, if you follow its branding; it was founded nowhere near Texas) is more a pandemic-era stunt food slathered in slick marketing than a responsible vehicle for your daily intake of calories.  

But that, too, is by design.  

“Founded in 2020 by Houston Crosta and Edmond Barseghian as a small passion project, HHC has turned into the talk of the town and is fast becoming a nationally recognized brand and household name,” the Las Vegas-based small restaurant chain’s website says.  

It also proclaims a very “Bachelor”-esque, “We are making history in the fast-casual restaurants industry and would love for you to be a part of our journey!”

From the moment you park in front of the building — the same slate gray that your landlord just painted his house — and walk through the door, the experience is a well-choreographed mishmash of today’s winning, if not mid, mass-produced food formulas. And if you didn’t know better, you’d think we lived in a time of unlimited resources where people enjoy every meal better than the pharaohs had it. The final form of easy-to-understand, late-stage capitalist excess — bright, airy, with little left to ponder.

HHC’s Las Vegas headquarters seems to have some sway in the matter of design. Once inside, your eyes never get a break, your synapses never stop firing and your mouth never stops watering. There are flat screens at every sight line featuring TikTok snippets and images of graphically enhanced oversized chunks of hot chicken being prepared and consumed.

The queue to the cashier is orderly and well-spaced, a reflection of this time of permanent social distancing. It stretches nearly to the door, and sometimes outside, even at slow times of the day.

On approach, the menu dominates your view: clear, alluring, digital images on the oversized screens behind the counter. Not a whole lot of reading going on, just scan left to right: Here are the sandwiches. Here are the tenders. Here are the sauces. Here are the sides. Here are the shakes.  

The ordering queue was fast, maybe too fast. I knew what I was there for and yet, hypnotized by the flash of images coming at me from all directions, I was taken by surprise when it was my turn. Fortunately, the cashiers are professionals: friendly and uniformed head to toe in visors, shirts and pants that are black and crisp.  

Whether or not you request a tutorial, they’ll walk you through the menu, quickly. They gesture behind them to the memorized selections like a weather forecaster in front of a green screen.

With a little time to kill before I received my meal, I started a conversation with longtime Bakersfield resident Anthony Rodriguez, who said he likes hot chicken and is a fan of the YouTube series Hot Ones where celebs like Jennifer Lawrence try to answer softball questions as tears stream down their cheeks after they take a bite of a scorching hot wing.

Rodriguez admitted there was a fine line between “wanting to try something good and something for fun,” and HHC might just straddle it.  

“I know it’s trendy right now, hot chicken,” he told SFGATE. “But I had to come try it,” he continued.

“I did the original chicken with the coleslaw on the side. I went with medium, the one right in the middle,” he explained. “I like to test my limits a little bit. But I don’t want to hurt the next day.”

Part of the reason may be because HHC came in to town (ahem) hot, with its best marketing tactic leading the way. Can a customer survive what the chain calls the “Houston, We Have a Problem!” level of spice?

Whether it’s a gimmick or legally binding (or both), every HHC patron who orders their chicken at a “Houston, We Have a Problem!” level signs a waiver in case of injury or death. With no money or fanfare on the line, I decided to take the challenge, ordering three tenders: one medium, one spicy and one that hit the limit.  

The cashier, who allowed me to take a picture of her holding the waiver as I signed it, also recommended HHC’s plain vanilla shake. “It’ll cool you down at a critical time,” she advised, noting that between four and nine people order the restaurant’s spiciest offering per day.

With my new dining companion Rodriguez looking on — he said his own sandwich was “tender and delicious” but “didn’t have the kick” he was expecting — I dispatched the medium- and spicy-level tenders without a pause or a sip of my shake.  

Feeling ready to take on the death-defying feat of 2 million SHUs, I recalled the words of longtime Bakersfield food critic Pete Tittl, who wrote in his November review of the restaurant, “Houston TX Hot Chicken is another one of those food-as-dare places where uncomfortable heat is the primary selling point.”

I paused for a moment as I put on the mandatory restaurant-supplied latex gloves for the feat and examined the potentially deadly hot tender. It was larger (!) and slightly darker, more of a burnt sienna, than the other tenders. A pickle wedge, also doused in spice, was skewered onto the top.  

Had I completely fallen prey to a restaurant’s marketing trap? Or was this going to be an actual challenge? Suffice to say, the two pieces I’d enjoyed prior were cooked to perfection yet provided little in terms of kick. Was there a chance that I might simply enjoy this heat-filled climax and move on?

I took a bite — more of a nibble — and … nothing.

Rodriguez checked in for a status update. I nodded while I chewed and gave him a thumbs-up as I took a second, much bigger, bite.

Thirty seconds later, still nothing. I popped the remainder of the tender in my mouth. Done!

(Pause to let the group text know I’d triumphed.)

Then, as soon as I set my phone down, it kicked in.

It wasn’t the four-alarm fire of an old-timey cartoon character that swallowed something hot. My feet didn’t kick out behind me, and steam didn’t come flowing out of my ears. But something did happen. The interior of my mouth turned into the Fountains of Bellagio. So did my eyes. So did my brow. All the pent-up sweat and drool and tears of the last five years came out at once like a cathartic tsunami. My lips went root-canal-level numb and my throat started to close up. Breaths were labored, audible, and my vision turned blurry.  

Rodriguez was now only visible on the shimmery lake surface as I continued to sink my way to the bottom.

“Are you OK?” he asked as a hum started in my ears and vibrated down my esophagus to the pit of my stomach. Without answering, I popped the top off my vanilla shake and started scooping as much as I could using the straw as a shovel. This wasn’t hot. This was just straight pain: mile 24 of a marathon, a broken nose, the first big post-college breakup, a swift kick in the groin, all at once.  

It was so much focused agony all I could do was laugh-cough.  

And then, five minutes and two-thirds of my shake later, just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, the hurt started to dissipate. Though the chicken was still part of me (and I would have a possibly related rumbling in my stomach for the next 36 hours), the task had been completed. I was on the other side of the pain cave looking back at it, feeling — with instant nostalgia and a tinge of guilt — a sense of accomplishment, 18 months of therapy in three bites.  

On this day, HHC had won and won me over.  

“The presentation, the taste is good. I got mild,” Victor Chavez of Shafter, who was also sitting next to me during the spectacle, commented once he saw I was in the clear. “Honestly, I think next time I’ll take it up a notch, but maybe not all the way.”

Houston TX Hot Chicken, 3925 Rosedale Highway, Suite B, Bakersfield. Open Sunday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-midnight.