I don’t know what’s up with all the non-Taco Bell-related food posts lately, but the lengthy and active discussion about Buffalo wings in the comments section the other day and an email exchange with commenter Josh got me thinking.
For the purpose of this conversation, put aside the delicious-sounding non-Buffalo style wings that Catsmeat mentioned in that thread. I have no doubt that the Green Monster wings are amazing, but they’re not Buffalo wings. I trust there are no arguments about that. This post is about classic Buffalo wings.
What are the best Buffalo wings you’ve ever had?
Can you name a place that consistently serves Buffalo wings better than every other place does? I bet you can’t. There are a lot of places that serve awesome wings, no doubt, but few that serve wings above and beyond the high standard we (justifiably) set for Buffalo wings.
Buffalo-wing sauce should be made from a combination of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and butter. Some people claim it should include celery salt and/or lemon pepper, but in any case, there’s so little variation in the recipe that there is a ceiling on how good Buffalo wings can be.
Once you go far beyond those limited components, they won’t taste like Buffalo wings anymore. We expect them to taste a certain way, and when they do, they’re awesome. But you can’t have more Buffaloy Buffalo wings or anything like that. It’s two ingredients. Just don’t mess ’em up.
Plenty of places do, of course. You can likely name a restaurant or bar that serves bad or sub-par wings. Wings can be stale, too spicy, inadequately sauced or made with sauce from the wrong ingredients. That’s bad.
But as long as a place is using Frank’s and butter, the awesomeness of the wing comes down to a number of fickle variables — the quality and freshness of the chicken, who’s preparing the wings, and how long it has been since they’ve been prepared.
So my theory — and I haven’t thoroughly worked it out yet — says that there is no one place that serves the best Buffalo wings in the world. There are many places that, at any given moment, could be serving the best Buffalo wings in the world, but only because those places make wings the right way, a relatively simple procedure.
In the thread, Sherm and others suggested that wings upstate are better than wings in the Metro area. And I don’t doubt that wings upstate tend to be better than wings around these parts.
But I bet that distinction lies solely in the choice of ingredients — upstate wing retailers are more likely to use the correct, original recipe, whereas Metro-area wing purveyors might be more likely to use more cost-efficient hot sauce or try to gild the lily in some stupid, big-city way.
Which is why, as Josh pointed out via email, there really are no destination wings. Sure, you can travel 500 miles to eat good Buffalo wings, and if they’re made correctly they’ll be completely amazing. But that’s just the nature of Buffalo wings. They won’t be appreciably or consistently better than some Buffalo wing you can find closer to your home. You just need to find the place that does it right.
Tedquarters 
Ted,
In Maryland, the wings are overpriced and inconsistent. My solution-buy a fryer and do it yourself.
Last time I made wings at home I had a happy accident. With 5-pounds of wings to cook, I was prepared for a long slog. As each batch of wings came out of the fryer, I dipped them in my Franks/butter sauce and moved them to a warm oven. When I was done with them all, I re-coated every wing.
It was stunning. The older wings, which spent a longer time in the oven, were hotter than the last batch. The Buffalo natives were impressed with this ponk from Schenectady.
Very interesting. I really need to invest in a deep fryer. For some reason my wife keeps ixnaying the idea even though she’d clearly benefit too.
I found very few good wings when I was in DC. Then Wingo’s opened up on Wisconsin and O, and all was good.
Deep friers do not come in handy often. We use ours for christmas cookies and wings. The cookies (traditional Norwegian) are stunning when hot and fresh. When the baby is old enough to have sleep-overs, Ima make the kids doughnuts.
Totally agree. I have two. Only use them for Super Bowl wings and occasional fried chicken.
The Atomic Wings outlets in Manhattan use the right recipe. The wings are hit and miss on quality though. As you suggest generally, sometimes they are great (meaty chicken, fresh) and other times not so much.
But can we all agree that Buffalo Wings should never be breaded and then fried? Nothing is more disappointing than ordering “Buffalo Wings” and getting a breaded wing back.
Yes. Buffalo wings should be fried, but not breaded. That much is obvious.
That said, I’m not here to quibble with breaded, fried chicken.
Who can quibble with fried chicken. In fact, I was eating fried chicken as a wrote my comment. The buffet place in my office building has it every Friday, as I unimaginatively call it “Fried Chicken Friday.” It is sad to say that it is the highlight of my week. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when they swapped it out for fish during Lent.
At an office I used to work in, they used to have buffalo chicken wrap day on Wednesdays. Everyone knew it and the line was out the door. It was legendary, I don’t think anyone in the building left for lunch.
I don’t know if breaded wings are technically “buffalo” style wings, but I don’t really care, they are still awesome.
Breading is a drag. What also complicates things (at least in Baltimore) is when cooks blend hot peppers into the wing sauce. Makes it too hot for words.
Ted, check out buffalo wild wings and when I was in the military, stationed at FT.Bragg, there was a place called wings over fayetteville and they would be named after different types of planes according to the amount you ordered. Also, because I’m not a fan of the bone in the buffalo wings, I go boneless which these places offer. There are buffalo wild wings throughout NY. I don’t know about the Wings place.
And, Ted, if you ever get sent to games in Pittsburgh, PNC Park has some good wings from Quaker Steak & Lube. Stand was out in RF/CF area by the river. Messy for a game but nobody is going to notice because nobody goes to the games.
I went to school in Buffalo. I’ve had good wings since return to the NYC area. I’ve had very good wings. The most consistently good wings were at Croxley Ale House (The Franklin Square location, although I’ve had them good at Avenue B, and in Rockville Center. I haven’t been to the Farmingdale version) There was a time I went there a couple of times in a couple of months, and was convinced my memory of Buffalo’s wings was just nostalgia…..until I went back to visit. Everytime I’ve gone back, I laugh at myself for thinking there are comparable wings in NYC.
My next test will be to eat wings here within days of visiting Buffalo, so the taste and memory is fresher and I can appreciably say “yup, these are better”. I prefer Duffs, ever so slightly to Anchor Bar, but they’re both excellent.
Ted, I will take you to Candlelight Inn in Scarsdale. Consistently amazing wings. The misses is convinced they put crack cocaine in them. You pick the day and the wings are on me!
There is a place in uptown NOLA, Beebo’s, at Freret and Lowerline, that consistently delivered excellent wings, when I was in college, anyways.
Also, the RSS feed pops up when I hit Apple-F — strangely, though, not when there is text in the commenting field. Is the search-the-page function partially disabled? For shame.
Whoa… that’s just weird.
I actually mistyped in my email to Ted. I meant to say that there are no destination-worthy wings *in New York City*. I would pick Duff’s over another place 100 times out of 100. Between college and law school, when I lived in Elmira, I made the three-hour trip to Buffalo to get wings there more than once.
Ted, another key is that they need to be crispy. That’s one thing they do consistently well upstate — downstate, not so much. And breading to make them crispy is just plain wrong.
And don’t get me wrong. I eat plenty of wings down here, and I’ve had some good wings. Croxley’s wings in Franklin Square mentioned by Ceetar are an example of good downstate wings. When I lived in Long Beach, the wings at the Beach Cafe on Park Avenue were pretty good. I now get wings regularly from Nicky’s of Centerport, and they’re pretty good. But upstate wings are so much better.
As a guy who grew up on the Island and has lived in Brooklyn, I imagine that if you moved upstate and ate the “pizza” that they serve up there, you would scoff at it and complain that its not downstate quality. You would still eat it because pizza is good no matter how poorly prepared, but you would still be telling your upstate friends how much their pizza sucks. Well, that’s how people from upstate look at wings down here. They’re good because wings are good, but they are not as good as they should be.
P.S.: The wings in that picture look awesome.
A series of excellent points. I do feel exactly that way about Long Island/Brooklyn pizza vs other pizza.
I guess I have to try the wings at Croxley’s next time I’m in RVC. Considering how many times I’ve wound up in there, I’m a little bit embarrassed that I’ve never had them.
In defense of the motherland, there’s some damn good pizza in New Jersey too.
Does CitiField have any dedicated Buffalo Wing stands?
What a great tie-in to the Buffalo Bisons. Make ’em the “Upstate” way and they’d be a hit at Citi.
There used to be “Chipotle Wings” at Blue Smoke, but for some strange reason, they replaced it on the menu with the Bologna Sandwich (is Jerry running Blue Smoke? Come ON!)
The best wings I’ve ever tasted come from a place near my college, Tombstone Saloon on Route 5 in Vernon, NY (Near Utica). It used to be a biker bar, and they don’t serve you, you just order from the bar. Their “Original” recipe takes a slight spin on Buffalo that has to be tasted to be fully experienced.
Anyone ever heard of this place?
Couple of things. Poster is kinda right and kinda wrong.
1. Original recipe (as developed at Anchor Bar is LOUISIANA Hot Sauce & Butter, not Franks. Franks is how Hooters & TGI Fridays does em and has become the defacto standard, but not the original.
2. Butter was the original ingredient. And if you had em way back then, you’d get it. Now invariably, it’s Margarine. So the taste you’re used to is Margarine.
3. You’ve got to pump up the sauce with a couple other ingredients to vary the hotness otherwise the hottest wings you’d get would be just as hot as the hot sauce itself (which ain’t that hot). That means you’ve got to cook in other hot peppers. You don’t mix em in, you just kinda boil em in the sauce (pre-butter/marg stage) and then scoop em out. Lotsa places use cayenne which is fine too. Also, any wing place worth it’s weight is gonna add a bit of vinegar too. The margo/butter cuts the vinegar and you’ve got to have that wack-you-in-the-nose feel when you take a whiff.
But you’re right, sauce is just those ingredients. What will kill a wing outsida that is pure bad cookin of the wing itself, usually because the wings were frozen (so they mush up when you fry em), or the temp on the fryer is wrong, or the fryer oil is OLD.