At Asad’s, Stunning Hot Chicken Is Always Worth the Wait

The rare short line (and some lucky diners) at Asad’s Hot Chicken in the Northeast / Photography by Scott Lewis

At Asad’s Hot Chicken, everyone waits. 

There’s gonna be a line every time you go. Probably a long one, curling past the side of this orange hut in the same parking lot as Philly Gas on Roosevelt Boulevard. Maybe (if you’re lucky) it’ll be a short one. But there’s gonna be a line.

Asad’s is, essentially, just a box with a man inside, making halal fried chicken and fries. Huge, delicious and angry chicken tenders, dark red in color, coated with a blazing cayenne-and-paprika-heavy spice rub that could thaw mammoths from glaciers. The place serves sandwiches made with thick white-meat pieces on soft brioche rolls, with fat pickles and a creamy sweet-hot mayonnaise sauce that barely touches the burn but keeps everything stuck together just right. Order your chicken “mild” and it’s hot enough to make you sweat. “Hot” will melt your head after four or five bites. “Extra-hot” is basically eating fire. Tasty, sure. But dangerous if you’re not prepared. There’s coleslaw on the side, and that helps. But the real extinguishers are the dozen varieties of smoothies and juices listed on a second menu off to the side of the ordering window. 

A hot chicken sandwich at Asad’s, plus cheese fries (naturally).

Here, all walks of Philly life wait. I’ve stood in line and watched a man order nothing but six smoothies, all banana. I’ve seen doctors still in their scrubs, teenagers, old men and construction workers, and a person who tried to order from her car, shouting across 10 feet of sunbaked parking lot. I’ve eavesdropped on debates about the best time to arrive (no consensus), how hot the hot chicken actually is (very), if it’s really worth the wait (yes). And while still four back from the window on one September afternoon, I watched a man in a quicksilver Mercedes SLK pull into the lot, see the line, and peel away — bottoming out on the sharp dip turning onto Cottman Avenue, sparks grinding off his low front spoiler. Everyone in line laughed and gave him the finger or just shook their heads. 

Because the line at Asad’s is perfectly Philly — impatient yet oddly polite, unavoidably inconvenient, loud, weird, diverse and vocal. There’s a fuck-’em-if-they-don’t-get-it undercurrent leveled at anyone who walks away, and a grudging persistence in those who stick it out. 

You have to go prepared to wait, knowing that the reward is some of the best hot chicken in the city. The line might be long, but it moves. People come and people go. Eventually, you all get what you came for. 

Except that guy in the Mercedes, of course. Mr. Impatient, with his sunglasses and dinged front end? He’s just one less body in line ahead of the next person who comes, knowing that at Asad’s, the wait is always worth it.

2 Stars — Come if you’re in the neighborhood

Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in the region
★★★★: come from anywhere in the country

Published as “On Patience and Poultry” in the November 2022 issue of Philadelphia magazine.