ooog. chicka wing.

[dragonlady7]

i had me some chicken wings.
they was yummy.

For any who don't know, the National Buffalo Wing Festival is an annual festival held on Labor Day in Rich / Dunn Tire (what's it called now?) / HSBC Stadium in downtown Buffalo. It features restaurants from around the country, each selling two wings for a dollar. There is also beer and pizza and desserts and assorted other foods (and, of course, Billy Ogden's world-famous award-winning stuffed hot peppers, winner of the Taste of the NFL First Prize 9 years in a row-- they will kick your ass but they are AWESOME).

We had some maple habanero ones from some restaurant from Massachusetts. (They were also offering cranberry habanero and some other strange flavor.) They were sweet with a slow burn.

Best just plain hot wings we had? Cap'n Morgan's of Corning, NY. They were called "Some Like It Hot" and were very flavorful, unconventional hot wings. Somewhat vinegary, but they didn't taste like Frank's, which is the traditional "hot" sauce. They were just plain flavorful.

Had some good lemon pepper wings from WingStop from Dallas, TX.

Best not-hot but wingy-wing unfancy wings? Chiavetta's "Medium". Man oh man. Chiavetta's (from a suburb of Buffalo, a famous catering company whose bottled chicken marinade, similar to oil-and-vinegar Italian dressing but much better, sells like hotcakes in bottles from the grocery store-- SO tender and SO tasty. Their wing sauce is not bad either) really really knows chicken. Their BBQ pit, giant wood-fired grills, filled the entire stadium with sweet-spicy smoke. Even the Jumbotron was nearly obscured in the haze.

From Orchard Park, Danny's South made some awesome Honey Orange BBQ wings that were just plain tasty. Dave called them "dessert wings" and ate twice as many as any others. They were tasty. Not drive-to-Orchard-Park tasty, but awesome anyway.
Hm-- their website is cute. Love how the picture of their airport location was taken in the snow without shoveling the parking lot.

I don't remember what else we ate. I think I had one wing too many. But just one. They were little wings. I'm kind of full, but not painfully so. Not five-or-six-wings-too-many full. That would be sad.
So, i'll be fine in about 20 minutes. :)

Oh, got to experience Bocce's Pizza. This pizza is what about half of Buffalo swears by. Dave's mom's best friend, who lives in Orlando (and has heavily invested in Plywood, say a little prayer for them), sometimes mail-orders this pizza.
It wasn't that good. it was OK. It was passable pizza. It was well-made and tasted like, well, pizza. but I thought their sauce was too sweet, hardly spiced at all. Couldn't taste any oregano or anything. it tasted like canned tomato sauce that maybe they'd added garlic powder to in a tiny quantity. Not great.
So, now I know that people are just kooks. I can't believe you can't get better pizza than that in Orlando. C'mon.

Anyhow, that's about all for the Chicken Wing Festival. But I spent the whole ride home gazing out the window thinking of things I'd take pictures of with my new camera-- the Peace Bridge (but not in such a manner as to arouse suspicion), the skyline, the General Mills factory right by the 190, the weird S-curves at the Delaware exit, the Forest Lawn cemetery, the crazy embankments on the 198, etc. It was fun to contemplate.

If they ship tomorrow, I'll have my camera by Thursday. Squee!

Comments

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Hey, I didn't know you were in Buffalo. My husband is from south of Buffalo, and a lot of his family still live up there.

The best wings I've ever had were from a place called Honest John's, a pizza place near Jamestown Community College. They have (had? It's been a couple years now) a lunch pizza buffet, and you get a hugeass bowl of wings with it. Good and flavorful, and they don't burn your mouth off.

And you can get damn good pizza in Orlando. I can think of two places downtown that have the good New York Style stuff.

Hope your Orlando friends make it through okay. We're northwest of Orlando, waiting for it to hit us. A lot of Orlando is already without power.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I think I had noticed somewhere in your blog that you had been in this area, at least. Weren't you married in Chatauqua or something? I thought it was somewhat local, though it could just be all the crack I smoke.

Yup yup-- an ongoing theme of my journal a few months back was about how I hated living downstate and was moving to Buffalo, and I've finally managed it. Just got me a nice house (rented from Dave's mom)-- just over the border into Tonawanda, so I get the decent garbage pickup but get to put "Buffalo" on my return address (it's a Buffalo postal code). (Also, cheaper car insurance.)


Jamestown is, I'm afraid, South, and we North Buffalonians (Dave was born and raised two tenths of a mile from here, just over the border, north of Hertel, west of Main, east of Delaware-- right near Delaware Park) think that the South Towns are like those places on the maps where there's just blank space and a note "Thar Be Sarpents"-- all we know is, they take St. Pat's Day real serious-like, and it snows a goddamn hell of a lot down there. ;) Honestly, Dave hardly knows where anything south of downtown is. Though there are a couple food places down there that we're told we gotta try. Man, there are so many food places in Buffalo, and then the grocery stores and little butcher shops are all so good-- Something tells me that I'm going to have to join a gym and get a job to support all the eating I'm gonna have to do while I live here.

Where you're from seems to determine what your favorite wings are. I like the ones from the local pizza joint down the street. All my friends from Rochester think Duff's are the best (they're just off the 290, right near the Thruway, on Sheridan way east), and will drive the 60 miles each way just to have some, but I think they're really heavy on the vinegar and find the Anchor Bar's (the originals) more tasty. (Though sometimes a bit dry.)

I have not yet tried Gabriel's Gate, which is a joint on the Elmwood Strip that has flamethrowers on the roof and everyone says is awesome.

Yeah, good luck with that hurricane thing. We were debating it, and I would take a blizzard ANY DAY over a hurricane. I mean, ANY day. Really. Even if there was a blizzard in August. I would be OK with that. Because really, you just have to stay home with an afghan and a six-pack and wait for the snow plows, and if they don't get to you for three days, well food's so cheap around here your freezer's probably stuffed full of frozen food anyway (I have two fridges, man, and there's always food in 'em), and the grill's in the garage with a full tank of propane, so really-- as long as you can shovel a path to the garage, you'll survive just fine. Honestly, it's better if they take their time with the roads. I'll just wait here with my afghan and my Buffalo Bills Hot Chocolate (the kind with amaretto and Bailey's in it that you take in a big ol' Thermos to the games).

We'll see how I feel about weather come March, but for the moment, man, I don't envy you folks one bit. (I might add that I pathologically hate sunshine.)
So, I shall definitely cross my fingers for y'alls. As Dave's mom's friend who lives in Orlando said via phone two days ago, "At least this only happens every 44 years. Or three weeks. Which was it? Oh yeah-- three weeks."

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

"At least this only happens every 44 years. Or three weeks. Which was it? Oh yeah-- three weeks."

LOL! I'm going to have to remember that. Or poach it. Whichever. :-)

Yes, Morgan grew up in Jamestown, and we got married at Chautauqua, by Daniel Bratton, who was president of Chautauqua at the time. So it was like getting married by a minor celebrity, at least it seemed that way to the photographer. My mother in law went into Falconer not long after the wedding and saw a shot from it in the photographer's window as an advertisement.

My grandmother in law lives in the village of Forestville, which I personally love. Teeny little place, my grandpa's funeral (oops, it's Morgan's grandpa really, but I'm so close to the Lee grandparents that he may as well have been mine too) was in a chuch that was the size of our house, and two years later the church community still takes care of Grandma. But if someone's been to Forestville, we can describe the Lee house and they instantly know which it is. I love small towns. Morgan's also got family in Dunkirk.

I'll have to go back and read your journal about moving to Buffalo. I never spent that much time in the area, since trips "home" were to Jamestown with a side trip to Forestville. We went up there a lot for a couple years, when Morgan was designing shows for the JCC theatre department. That's when all the wings eating happened.

Jamestown's a good place. I modeled the small town in The Book after it: fading industrial town that looks in a lot of ways like it's almost dead, but there are dynamic people who are determined to make a fulfilling creative life.

Enjoy your

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Oops, it got cut off. Enjoy your weekend. We're trying to stay dry here. It's working so far, but that's because it hasn't gotten to us yet.