Lou Martin’s chicken with “Sweet Spicy Love” sauce has been featured on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Lou Martin celebrates the 20th anniversary of his restaurant, Uncle Lou’s Fried Chicken, this month. That’s a lot of chicken thighs, legs, and breasts slathered with his signature “Sweet Spicy Love” sauce. The restaurant serves hamburgers and other items, but the fried chicken recipe came from his great-grandmother. Martin came up with the sauce.
When he was about 13, his mother told him the secret to “Madear’s” fried chicken. She told him again decades later when he decided to sell chicken at his new restaurant. Today, if people ask him how his great-grandmother prepared her chicken, Martin says, “Madear said the secret to fried chicken is —.” And that’s all he’s going to say. It’s a secret.
Born and raised in Memphis, Martin has been in the food industry since high school. In 1988, he opened his first restaurant, Catfish Express, where he sold farm-raised catfish. “I had no idea about running a business,” he says. “I had a few dollars and an idea.”
He then went into the concession business, selling turkey legs at his “Turkey Express” booth at the Mid-South Fair and Memphis in May, before opening his short-lived Turkey Express restaurant Downtown.
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