Wings
Deep-fried, unbreaded chicken wings tossed in hot sauce and butter, served with celery and blue cheese. Around here they're just "wings". Nobody calls them Buffalo wings.
🏆 Where to get the best wings
- 1 Judi's Lounge Order this: Jamaican Jerk BBQ, extra crispy and saucy. Or go Hot, saucy and crispy.
- 2 Hustler's Tavern Order this: Don't skip the BBQ Blueberry hot wings.
- 3 The Griffon Gastropub, Military Road Order this: The Boom Boom wings, tossed in their homemade Boom Boom sauce.
- 4 Duff's Famous Wings Order this: The classic hot wings, made with Frank's. Grab an ice-cold fountain loganberry to go with them.
Also serving it
📜 A little history
Buffalo's most famous export has more than one origin story. The best-known one comes from the Anchor Bar on Main Street. It says that in 1964 Teressa Bellissimo deep-fried chicken wings, which were then a cheap cut often used for soup, cut them into flats and drums, tossed them in a butter-and-hot-sauce mix and served them with celery and blue cheese. Even the Bellissimos told it two ways. One version is about a delivery mix-up; the other is about a late-night snack for son Dominic's friends.
Others give the credit to John Young, a Black restaurateur. By the mid-1960s his Wings & Things on Jefferson Avenue was serving whole, breaded wings in his tangy "mambo sauce." Whoever came first, wings spread through Buffalo's pizzerias in the 1970s and from there around the world.
Did you know? The Buffalo History Museum found "Chicken Wings, fried" on an 1857 menu from Buffalo's Clarendon Hotel, more than a century before the Anchor Bar.