Food pilgrimage: Buffalo wings in Buffalo, part 1
The scene: No other food has grown so far so fast as the humble Buffalo-style hot wing (in Buffalo they are simply called “wings”). Within a couple of years after it was introduced in a single Buffalo restaurant, the dish had become the city’s obsession. In less than two decades it was nationally ubiquitous, an appetizer menu and bar food staple across the country, and one major international chain had launched. Hooters built its success and several hundred outlets worldwide (plus a Vegas casino, defunct airline and former pro golf tour) on the back of the humble wing, at least from a menu perspective. Today there are several large wing-centric chains (Zaxby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Wingstop). Half a century after it was invented, the hot wing has gone fully global, and can be found alongside nachos, dumplings or fried calamari on menus everywhere. It’s become the de facto food of sports, and one and a quarter billion wings are eaten just during the Super Bowl. Counting the two halves, “flats” and “drumettes,” separately, as they are served, nearly 30 billion wings are consumed annually just in this country. And it all started at Frank & Teressa’s Anchor Bar in Buffalo.
Very few foods have as clear-cut a creation story as the wing, and while who cooked the first burger is debated, the wing can be traced directly to one night in 1964. Frank and Teressa Bellissimo’s son had several friends over late to the family’s bar, opened in 1935. After regular hours they became hungry, and Teressa scrounged around looking for something to feed them. She found some wings, and wanting to cook them quickly, decided to put them in the deep fryer — as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. The fried wings had a distinctive crispy texture and inner succulence, there was some hot sauce on hand, as well as celery and bleu cheese. Everyone loved them, they became a menu item, the people of Buffalo went mad for the new dish, and the rest is culinary history. The Anchor Bar has expanded to Vegas, ships its wings nationwide, and even supplies a restaurant in Tokyo. An outpost in the airport is the first local thing arriving visitors to Buffalo see.
Back then the Anchor Bar was a smallish mom-and-pop bar, known for pizza, which is what I had with my wings when I first visited in 1993. Today, a victim of its own success, it is cavernous, has been expanded multiple times, and feels like a theme park version of itself. You vividly smell frying wings and hot sauce in the parking lot, as soon as you open your car door. There is a massive carved statue of founder Teressa outside the front door, and upon entering, there is a bar area where motorcycles hang from the ceiling and the walls are covered in license plates from all over the country. There’s a gift shop, they now make and sell their own bottled sauce, and the large back room, the original space, is covered from floor to ceiling on all sides with framed articles about the Buffalo wing. The license plate motif is fitting because the place has become a Mecca for traveling foodies, wing central, while many locals have moved on to their own hotly debated neighborhood favorites — wings are a topic of much discussion, deeply held opinions and almost unbelievable passion in these parts. A quick look around the large parking lot finds more out-of-state plates — often far-flung — than New York versions. This makes sense, because there is no other place a traveling food lover can justify beginning a visit to Buffalo, the world capital of wings.
Reason to visit: Buffalo wings.
The food: Chicken wings are prepared in a lot of different ways: grilled, roasted, smoked, baked or breaded like standard fried chicken. But “it’s only a Buffalo wing if it is deep-fried and it has a cayenne-pepper based sauce — those are the two parameters,” said Drew Cerza, better known as The Wing King. Cerza is the creator of the National Chicken Wing Festival, held last weekend — and every Labor Day — at Coca-Cola Field in downtown Buffalo. Cerza is the city’s foremost cheerleader for its signature dish, and once beat celebrity chef Bobby Flay in one of his televised “throw down” cooking contests — for Buffalo wings, of course. He recruits restaurants from around the country to come and compete at his festival; this year 113 different styles were represented.
According to Cerza, the sauce of choice has long been Frank’s RedHot, a nationally available bottled hot sauce created more than century ago in Cincinnati. It is mixed with melted butter, and then fried, naked wings are tossed in the mix. “Frank’s works because it’s balanced between the heat and the flavor, and that’s the balance you need for Buffalo wings.” It’s the sauce the Anchor Bar stared with before developing their own, and most places in the city still use it as a base, doctoring it in ways to make it their own. Wings typically come in several different levels of spiciness, and at the Anchor Bar the choices are mild, medium, hot and suicidal (the menu reads “if you dare!”). They are sold in multiples of ten, up to a “bucket” of 50. Industry-wide, what is considered a wing is actually half of a chicken wing, either a drumette or flat, and according to Cerza, customers prefer the meatier drumette about 60/40, but you typically get an even mix. As you move from mild to medium, more sauce is used, but as you move to the extra hot levels, eateries typically add hot peppers such as habanero or jalapeño to the sauce. Medium is most popular, considered standard at competitions, and when local papers do reviews, this is always the flavor against which a restaurant’s wings are judged.
The Anchor Bar’s medium wings are perfectly fried with crispy skin and juicy meat, and swimming in good-but-not-great sauce, and a bit too much of it. The suicidal are very hot, but not as deadly as they sound, and not as hot as the most incendiary offerings at some other local spots. Maybe it’s because so many tourists come here and feel obligated to try them. The first wing was okay, the second started to build heat, and I ate three before my lips started to hurt. All the wings are served with bleu cheese dressing and celery sticks, and the dressing at the Anchor Bar is excellent, thick and chunky. Some people dip their wings in bleu cheese, but Cerza recommends eating it separately on the celery so as to not change the flavor of the wings. Dairy products are the antidote to spicy foods, so it makes a good contrasting companion. In Buffalo you always get bleu cheese, and the same holds true for most of the Northeast, but Cerza says that in much of the country, especially the South and West, ranch dressing has become the norm.
The only other flavor offered at the Anchor Bar is barbecue, a variant that has made significant inroads even in Buffalo, where most restaurants offer it, and some popular local eateries have become better known for their barbecue wings than Buffalo-style. Many places have experimented and offer different flavors, but barbecue has become a standard offering, and it is typically a bit spicier, more than you would find on ribs or chicken elsewhere. Some eateries quickly put their barbecue wings under a broiler to caramelize the sugar in the sauce into more of a glaze, but at the Anchor Bar, it’s just poured on, and the sauce is fairly mild and nothing special — traditional is the way to go here.
It is also a bar, and other than bleu cheese, beer is the most common accompaniment to hot wings. The Anchor Bar has a good selection, with locally popular inexpensive choices such as Labatt Blue and Genesee Cream Ale on draft, and local craft beers like Flying Bison and Rusty Chain in bottles.
There is a full menu of everything from pasta and pizza to burgers and sandwiches, including a “chicken wing-style” sandwich and pulled pork with wing sauce, but most people come for the wings. As a result, the service is perfunctory, bordering on brusque. Just a minute after being handed menus we are asked if we are ready to order. Also, while most other places let you split orders, like five medium and five hot, here they do not, so you have to buy more to sample.
While elsewhere wings are considered an appetizer, in Buffalo it is normal to eat them as a main course. “Here we say ‘we are going out for wings tonight,’ it’s social. You’d never say, ‘we are going out for fries or hot dogs.’ They’re just things you eat. Wings are interactive, you share and you eat with your hands, there’s a certain camaraderie. And it’s not an app, it’s a main course, right in the middle of the table,” says Cerza.
Passion over wings runs extremely high, and almost every local has their favorite place. With wings served everywhere in Buffalo, the Anchor Bar is just the historic tip of the iceberg. In Part Two, the Buffalo wing journey continues ...
What regulars say: “”This is where people from other cities come for wings. Take a look at all the out-of-state plates in the parking lot” said Drew Cerza, the Wing King.
Pilgrimage-worthy?: Yes and no. There are better wings in Buffalo, but this is the birthplace and one of the most noteworthy spots in American food history.
Rating: Mmmm! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: Original, 1047 Main Street, Buffalo, N.Y.; 716-886-8920; anchorbar.com. There is also a branch in the Buffalo airport, three in the city suburbs, and one in the Venetian in Las Vegas.
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an email at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.