Coca-Cola Field, Buffalo, NY
Web: National Buffalo Wing Festival
Phone: 716.565.4141
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"Anchor Bar brought only medium sauce, and its wings were hugely disappointing, a soggy mess of weak flavor that constitued a disgrace to the famous restaurant's name."
Last year, we took a fairly exhaustive, four-part look at the National Buffalo Wing Festival (1, 2, 3, 4), which we noted hadn't blown us away on wing quality, but certainly impressed us in scope, as well as in branding - for instance, who designed that awesome logo? Local organizer Drew Cerza had assembled an enviably grand event in the center of a baseball stadium, gathered quite a few chicken wing vendors to both sell wings and compete in various sauce contests, and created a collection of fun events - a wing eating championship, fun runs, and so on - to keep attendees entertained rather than just snacking. This year, rather than repeating our coverage, we're publishing only two articles: the first one, which discussed some basic facts and linked to a large collection of photos from the event, and this one, which briefly runs through our thoughts on what was good, and what wasn't so good at this year's WingFest. Before getting into the meat of the article, it's worth mentioning that Coca-Cola Field - previously named Dunn Tire Park - was more packed with vendors and people at the very start of the event this year than last year, though roughly 1/3 of the over 30 vendors were selling or giving away non-wing foods.
That still leaves the National Buffalo Wing Festival with 19 or 20 places from around the country that fancy themselves as specialists in wings - or 18 more than you'd find at the Taste of Buffalo. Those who weren't substantially or exclusively selling wings were offering everything from variants on chicken to wing sauce-flavored snacks to completely unrelated food and drink items. What's important to understand early on is that this this isn't really a place to walk around and sample a bunch of different authentic Buffalo-style wings, at least, any more. There were actually a grand total of only three places from Buffalo and its suburbs that were selling Buffalo-style wings, and even then, they - and others - were selling all sorts of variants, as well.
The purpose of this festival has become, in our view, to celebrate the concept of a chicken wing as a delivery system for various flavors. We catalogued the many types of non-traditional wings last year, which left us with a different set of questions this time. For instance, we wondered what would it be like if we came from out of town to sample wings from the famous Anchor Bar here? Last year, we noted that the lines at the Anchor Bar's stand were massive, so we made it a priority to stop there early and see what all the out-of-towners were going to be getting. What we got was no choice - the Anchor was only serving medium wings this year - and they were hugely disappointing, a soggy mess of weak flavor that had basically nothing in common with good wings, let alone ones from the Anchor. They were worse than the "not good enough" ones served at the satellite Anchor Bar location at the Buffalo/Niagara International Airport, and frankly a disgrace to the Anchor Bar name.
So who had good wings? We really liked the Nuclear wings at Alliger's House of Wings from Sayre, Pennsylvania, which were as spicy and true to the traditional Buffalo flavor as we found in a brief visit this time; the sauce wouldn't have been out of place at local favorite Duff's. Alliger's Singapore version wasn't as hot, but wasn't in any way bad, either. Another good place was Swings, a self-described "wing specialist" from Buffalo that showed up with untraditional flavors, and impressed us with its Hickory Smoke BBQ wings, which had a rich brown barbecue sauce that was heavier on tang than sugar. Swings' Spicy Honey BBQ sauce went in the other direction, less distinctively, and its Taco flavored wings tasted as if they'd been soaked in packets of pure taco seasoning and water - not bad, not great.
We also revisited Pesci's Pizza, which once again was the lone place at the National Buffalo Wing Festival offering Hawg Wings, or barbecue-basted pork shanks that we loved the year before; they were just about as good this time. Another place, The Wing Coop, offered three types of wings that we sampled one after another: the good sweet, spicy, and sesame seed Confucius, the creamy, passable Loco Lime, and the forgettable but hot Santo Tabasco. We didn't revisit Quaker Steak & Lube at this event since it's now open in Western New York, but its non-traditional wings do include some strong options discussed in last year's roundup. That said, we've been disappointed in the wing quality on our last couple of visits to the restaurant - we've had plates of buffet-quality wings rather than the near-gourmet stuff it was serving before - and are hoping this place turns its kitchen around before we have to dock its rating.
Whose wings weren't very good? Hurricane Wings, a chain, had Sea Salt & Vinegar, Thai Ginger & Garlic Glaze, and a Mango BBQ that we tried; all were relatively (and surprisingly) lifeless. We skipped places we'd visited and found unimpressive last year, such as Sean's booYah!, vendor of insanely buttery wings, Arooga's Grille House, and Wing Street. Thankfully, the Seneca Niagara Casino stayed on the reservation this year rather than re-serving its nauseating Habanero Loganberry wings. That said, non-traditional wings are always a gamble whether they're being served by a casino or a specialty wing shop; one person's "wow" is another person's "ewww."
Surprises: you can now sample Chiavetta's BBQ chicken - Buffalo's other famous chicken - right on site at a Chiavetta's stand. Bocce's has a very nice stand, as did Falletta's, both restaurants known for specialties other than wings. Syd & Nic's Roast Beef is selling Roast Beef Sandwiches for those who may be interested. And many of the other vendors are repeats from last year, covered in our extended 2008 report on WingFest, including Buffalo Wings & Beer, Mrs. Coffee, and others.
We circled back this year to try something we'd missed last time: the Buffalo Chicken Wing Soup from Danny's South Restaurant. With a surprisingly thick broth that managed to pack plenty of Frank's Red Hot flavor without tasting overwhelmingly spicy, this truly very good soup included somewhat too small pieces of chicken, innocuous bleu cheese, and celery. While the soup could have stood to have more meat inside, the broth was good enough to impress both of us, and we'd order it again. Soon thereafter, we visited the booth of Yancey's Fancy Cheeses, which was giving away cube samples of four different Buffalo-inspired cheeses -surprisingly spicy - and tried flavors of good Buffalo Cheddar Kettlecorn from a brand called Popcorn, Indiana, plus the Hot Buffalo Wing Pretzels from Snyder's of Hanover. All three had lines of people waiting to try the freebies; all were worth stopping by.
When friends asked whether it was worth going to the Festival, we disagreed: one said "not really" immediately, citing the generally unimpressive crispiness and flavors of the pre-fried wings, but one of us felt that it probably was, given the low cost of admission, the reasonable 3-for-$2 wing pricing, and the intriguing variety of non-wing items that were available. Even those who might otherwise feel dragged along to such an event would have been happy to find desserts and Stuffed Hungarian Hot Pepper Sandwiches at Falletta's, ribs from the Lafayette Tap Room, pizza from Bocce's, and the boneless chicken fingers and wings from places such as Barber Foods and Pilgrim's Pride. However, to the extent that the National Buffalo Wing Festival isn't drawing participation from many of the area's best wing restaurants, and the Anchor Bar is a huge let-down in a venue where it should be shining, the message is becoming clear: if you want to try a lot of different wings and wing-like things, come here; if you want to try really great wings, go directly to Buffalo's best wing restaurants, instead.
