Wing Festival wrapup

Since RandomThoughts101 asked, yes, we did make it down to the Wing Festival. The wings were, as always, excellent. What Amanda and I like best about the Wing Festival is that it gives us an opportunity to see some creativity in wing coatings and sauces. We are both fierce Duff’s supporters when it comes to the traditional Buffalo-style chicken wing, but we can get those any day. Speaking of Duff’s, anyone know why they never participate in this event?

The inclement weather setup they used this year certainly made it a bit more difficult to navigate. All the food vendors were stuffed under tents, as were all the people trying to get wings from those vendors. That made us avoid some of the more popular stands like WingStop which just had insane lines and you couldn’t get close enough to see what their choices were. Luckily most of the time it wasn’t raining, so we’d duck into a tent, grab some wings, and then run back outside to avoid the mob. The upside to this is that it appeared that the festival was very well attended, although it could have just been the compaction making it seem that way.

One other point of contention – the ticket booths were set up completely bizzare. This was the first year where they were selling both food and admission tickets at the entrance, although you couldn’t get both from the same person. They didn’t require you to wait in line twice, but it just seemed clumsy because after you got your admission tickets you stepped to your side to get food tickets, but had to wait for people already getting food tickets. It was all being fed by one big line, but you still felt like you were cutting in front of people. Not to mention some lazy volunteers at one booth with some misleading signage sat there and watched the line get longer and longer and never bothered to say “We can help who’s next.” We must have been in line for 10 minutes before someone just walked up to them to see if they were also selling tickets (they were) which then caused a stampede from the back of the line to that booth. One more person to wrangle the people into different lines would have helped a lot.

On to the wings… my favorites this year were:

#3) Imperial Pizza – These guys know how to do BBQ wings. Both their traditional BBQ and their Surry BBQ (spicy!) are excellent. I remember after last year saying, “Wow! Wings so good and so close to home (they’re on Abbott Rd). We have to go there sometime!” We never did. We won’t make that mistake again this year.

#2) Fiddle Inn – These newcomers from Harborcreek, PA had two types of wings that actually got me to come back a second time – their Pepper Jack wings, which were based on a blend of a Jack Daniels sauce with a strong pepper kick we’re excellent. TGI Friday’s has nothing on this sauce. They also have something called an Everything Wing, which despite my best efforts to analyze, I couldn’t place all the flavors. There was definitely a blend of a traditional wing sauce and some finely chopped garlic, but beyond that, all I can say is that it’s the wing’s culinary equivalent to a Kitchen Sink pizza from Santora’s. Excellent! As an added bonus, the Fiddle Inn itself is housed in a circa 1800 stagecoach stop. Outstanding wings and adaptive reuse to boot!

#1) Wahoo Willies – While I certainly wouldn’t advocate anyone leaving Buffalo to go to North Carolina for wings, if you happen to be in the area this place is worth the stop. They took a slightly different approach with their wings, cooking all of them in a blend of caribbean jerk seasonings, and then letting you try dipping them in their various sauces, which were conveniently for sale. The best part about these wings were that the jerk seasoning itself without any of the sauces was better than a lot of the wings we tried. Topping them off with a bit of their Caribbean Ranch dressing made it that much better. You can order the sauce on their website, so we may need to attempt to recreate these at home. Outstanding!

Financial recap:
$4 Parking
$10 Admission (for 2)
$20 Food Tickets
$8 Drinks (1 Pepsi, 1 Budweiser)
——————————-
$42 Grand Total

Not bad for an afternoon of food and fun. I overheard one great exchange between two 20-something guys as the rain started to fall:

“More rain? Buffalo sucks!”
“No, rain sucks. Buffalo rocks!”

That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Although it could have been one of the spicier wings too, I suppose. 🙂

Update: Looks like the festival also agreed with some of my picks:

Best Hot Traditional Wing Sauce, Fiddle Inn, Harbor Creek, Pa.
Most Creative Sweet Wing Sauce, Wahoo Willie’s of Wilmington, N.C.