In the US, the Dave’s Hot Chicken restaurant chain began life as a humble pop-up in a parking lot in Los Angeles. Since then, it’s expanded to include over 380 restaurants across 44 states – as well as restaurants in Canada and the Middle East.
As of December 2024, you’ll find Dave’s Hot Chicken in the UK, too. Their first restaurant opened on Shaftesbury Avenue, drawing massive queues for their Nashville-style fried chicken sliders, tenders and sides. Since then, they’ve expanded to other cities, with more restaurants planned for the coming few years.
We recently ended up making a pitstop in Stevenage to break up a long journey: a town where a Dave’s Hot Chicken branch opened in October 2025. It would have been rude not to give the place a go while we were there.
From the outside, it’s 100% got that US fast food joint vibe…
The artwork is pretty impressive, and that carries through to the interior, too – along with their signature bold red accents.
There’s plenty of space for dining in, and a choice of ordering at the counter or by self-service machine. Once you’ve ordered, you’re given a ticket with your order number and wait to collect – and food comes out pretty quickly.
At Dave’s Hot Chicken you’ll find a range of meal deals, each with different combinations of sliders, tenders and chicken bites, and in various sizes depending on hunger level. With each chicken order you’ll be asked to choose your spice preference on a 7-level scale, ranging from zero spice to Reaper (which apparently requires you to sign a waiver in some countries!)
In addition, there are Southern-style sides – loaded fries, mac and cheese, kale slaw – along with shakes, slushers and soft drinks.
I went for the “Dave’s #2” meal (£13.49): two sliders, fries, kale slaw, pickles and Dave’s sauce to share with the child. I paid extra to upgrade from a regular soft drink to a shake, and extra again to transform my fries into cheese fries. I think the milkshake payment was worth it, the cheese fries not so much.
The child chose no spice for his slider, I went for mild. And I’m glad I did, because across the table, my husband went for the two-tender meal, one medium, one hot. Even the medium was probably what most UK places would describe as hot, while the hot was pretty intense.
We took our trays over to a table, at which point I realised I’d been given normal fries rather than cheese…this was quickly rectified with a few pumps from a massive container of cheese sauce by the kitchen team.
Ordering one meal for the child and I to share was definitely the right decision – just look at the size of it!
The buns for the sliders were definitely normal slider-sized buns, but the chicken tenders inside were absolutely enormous. The flavour was beautiful and for the most part they were tender and succulent, but they probably could have done with a little less time in the fryer – they were pretty crispy around the thinner edges. They’d also curled up while cooking, making the sliders pretty tricky to eat without dismantling them. We loved the addition of the slaw and juicy pickles, though.
The fries were decent, nicely cooked and evenly seasoned, but the cheese sauce tasted pretty artificial and I probably wouldn’t order it again.
The Dave’s sauce was perfect for the chips: creamy, slightly tangy, mildly spiced and full of flavour.
And my chocolate shake? Pretty good: a strong chocolate flavour and nice and creamy, but not quite as thick as at some other fast food chains. Can we take a moment for the cup though, please – design-wise, Dave’s Hot Chicken is brilliant!
With cities like Leicester, Sheffield and Bristol in the pipeline, Dave’s Hot Chicken has big expansion plans for the UK. Would I head back? I’m not sure, in all honesty – it was tasty enough, but given how difficult the sliders were to eat without deconstructing them and the fact that the chicken was a bit overdone, there are other chicken chains I’d probably choose first.