Buffalo wings don't come from buffaloes, they come from Buffalo.
If you love chocolate, you either have been or want to go to Hershey, PA. If you love sourdough bread, San Francisco would be your destination.
Well, for those who love buffalo wings, you have to visit the Anchor Bar, just north of downtown Buffalo. And I went there on my way to Toronto on August 29.
Is this the easiest place to find? Honestly, no. I took a bus downtown from the airport, and then went on the light-rail system from downtown to the Summer-Best stop. The bar is only a couple of blocks away from the light-rail stop, but it isn't in the greatest neighborhood. But it was a partly sunny Friday afternoon at lunch time, and so it seemed fine.
It's a dark bar, just the kind of place you would think they were invented. There is a bit of prestige on the walls on its status as the birthplace. But otherwise, it's a regular bar with tons of TVs turned to sports.
I sat at the bar, and looked directly up to see a picture of the owner with the late Tim Russert, perhaps Buffalo's most well-known son. Seemed fitting somehow.
You can get 10 or 20 wings. There was a larger size, but figured 20 would be my maximum. And there were a lot of other things on the menu, but I was there for one thing: wings.
They give you a choice of sauces: mild, medium, hot, and suicide. Forget the mild — you are literally wasting your time. I had picked mild, and when I realized the mistake, the bartender was more than happy to give me a side of medium sauce — a much better pick.
Depending on what kind of place you have had buffalo wings, you might know different sauces. The home one is definitely a cayenne pepper influenced pick. The people down the bar got hot and a side of suicide sauce. I tried one of their hot ones — plenty hot. I couldn't try suicide — just too much.
The wings themselves were meaty and seriously, the best chicken wings I have ever had. They were huge, full of meat, and flavorful. The sauce almost got in the way. I ordered 20 and was plenty hungry, but I seriously could not finish all of them.
The accompaniments are celery and blue cheese dressing. The dressing is right about where you want it to be — creamy but not too much. I generally criticize blue cheese dressing for not having enough blue cheese and this one didn't either. But it was better than average. (The best BC dressing was at the recently departed Steak and Ale, filled with chunks of blue cheese.)
The ambiance was also festive. Like I said, sports dominated the TV screens. But room was made when Sarah Palin was first introduced to the world on our TVs. And not getting political, the responses from the patrons felt real, a unassembled, unofficial focus group.
Food is necessary, but food can also be fun. Yes, we should eat pretty well most of the time. But the balance of food sometimes requires a little chocolate, sourdough, and yes, even a chicken wing or two. Especially when you consume them in a special place.
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