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.

I got a desperate text message from my old friend Charlie yesterday. It said this:

Buscos is no longer. RIP Full Bird, you will be missed.

My heart and mind raced. I furiously began texting him back, peppering him with questions about what happened. He didn’t know. He just knew it was gone. Busco’s is gone.

Busco’s was not the best deli in Rockville Centre, N.Y. Not even close. That honor belonged to E&W, right across the street, or my former employer DeBono’s, a bit off the beaten path.

But Busco’s boasted something none of the others could. The Full Bird. Her majesty.

There’s nothing particularly notable about a chicken cutlet hero with bacon and american cheese. Hell, something similar is on the specials board at every deli in America.

Busco’s did theirs particularly well, though. The proportions were great, and they sliced up the chicken cutlets into thin strips and piled them on the bread, maximizing delicious surface area and minimizing the all the inherent problems prompted by oddly shaped chicken cutlets. Every bite of every full bird had chicken, bacon and cheese on it. That’s important. Sandwich uniformity should not be underrated.

And the Full Bird is notable because it was the first of its kind in Rockville Centre, or at least the first I became familiar with. Before high school, my friends and I ate at Taco Bell and the McDonald’s Express. We were middle schoolers, so we didn’t have much money.

But in my first few weeks of football practice in high school, an older guy named Nick De Luca — a Mets fan, I know, so maybe he’s reading somewhere. Whatup De Luca? — took me to Busco’s and introduced me to the Full Bird.

Holy lord. I had eaten sandwiches before, of course, but usually the type we made at home on Pepperidge Farm bread with cold cuts from the supermarket. Not like this. This was a sandwich to make you love sandwiches. It was the sandwich that made me love sandwiches.

Football practice is an exhausting thing, and something that works up an appetite that can only be sated by piles of fried protein. We ate a whole lot of Full Birds those days. I never really gained any weight from them because we were exercising so much, but I realize now that I probably shaved about five years off my life with all the cholesterol. Whatever. Totally worth it.

And I would be remiss if I eulogized Busco’s without mentioning its best-ever employee. Busco’s was a true local place, the type where you recognized all the guys behind the counter. There was the mustache guy who I think was the owner, and that guy Pete who went to school with my brother, plus the older brother of that kid Jimmy from my Little League team.

And then there was Pat Greenfield. I should note that when I reminisce here about people from Rockville Centre I usually use made-up names so no future employer Googles them and ends up here to find me poking fun of them. But Nick De Luca and Pat Greenfield are real. These men deserve to be celebrated.

Greenfield was nothing short of the most legendary deli man in town history. A hero of heroes. When I went into the trade myself years later, I emulated Pat Greenfield. He was a hulking guy and I think a stud pitcher on the high-school baseball team a few years earlier. He wasn’t much one for conversation. He just made sandwiches.

But oh, how he made them. Oh, oh, oh. It’s not just about the amount of meat, though Greenfield gave you a ton. It’s about the proportion. The right mix of meat, cheese, bacon and dressing. And Greenfield — I don’t know if he studied or trained or just had an innate knack for it — he was the master. People in line would let other, less savvy customers cut ahead so they could get a Greenfield sandwich. Worth the wait.

Sometimes, when bragging about my own impressive abilities as a deli man, I claim this story for myself. But that’s a lie. It’s part of the Greenfield legend:

One time, my dad and I were waiting on line for sandwiches at Busco’s. Full Birds, no doubt. Greenfield was behind the counter working on someone else’s. He spun around to ask the person if she wanted tomatoes on it, but in so doing, he lifted up the sandwich and presented it to the crowd. And it was beautiful. It sparkled in the flourescent light, that signature Greenfield mix of ingredients.

There are people who are paid to dress up food for advertising photo shoots, and I can guarantee none of them has ever created a sandwich that looked like that one. It was perfect. It epitomized what sandwiches should look like. The crowd gasped. Seriously. A deli full of hungry, chatty customers fell silent at the sight of Greenfield’s hero.

Now Busco’s is no more, and Greenfield has gone off to who knows where. Hopefully he’s making sandwiches somewhere. He doesn’t know me, but maybe he’ll find this and agree to come to my house to make me some sandwiches.

That’s all I got. This is a sad day.

UPDATE, 8:05 p.m.: Just got a call from Charlie with an update. He called the nearby deli rumored to be taking over the Busco’s location, and it turns out commenter/Watson elementary school alum BHorn is right — Busco’s is taking over that deli, and not the other way around.

So Busco’s will be moving one town away, but the girl who answered the phone assured Charlie that the Full Bird would soon be added to the menu. As Charlie put it, “Like a beautiful bacon-filled Phoenix rising from the ashes.”

Long live The Full Bird.

I’ve also since been informed that Pat Greenfield is indeed still making tremendous sandwiches, just now at the aforementioned E&W Deli across the street. And someone else pointed out that this post will ultimately be sent to him and he’ll inevitably read it. Which is a bit awkward since, like I said, he has no idea who I am. But thanks for the sandwiches, dude. Your efforts are appreciated.