The Broadway musical A Chorus Line (1985) tagged the city of Buffalo with an unfortunate phrase: “To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.”
In total, I haven’t been to Buffalo much more than a handful of times in my life, but it is the capital of western New York, the region I grew up in. Located on Lake Erie, the city was prosperous in the first half of the 20th century as a transportation hub, especially for grain movement. As shipping methods advanced, making its canal system redundant, Buffalo became increasingly less prosperous. If high unemployment and alarming school dropout rates weren’t bad enough, the Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls from 1991 to 1994. Since then, films and other media have picked up on the proverb from A Chorus Line.
Still, the world owes Buffalo.
I owe Buffalo.
Although each of our personalities is complex, I find it helpful to have a few low-stakes obsessions. They add color to our lives and at times provide a little distraction. If anything, revealing a frivolous interest can give another person something to hold on to when trying to make sense of you. In my case, friends might say: This is Ryan. He likes chicken wings.
In truth, I love chicken wings. It’s the only thing I’ll order if it’s on the menu. Even if I know that the wings in the restaurant are not up to par, I’ll still take them over a burger. Whenever I return to western New York, my family never asks what I want to do – because it’s always to eat at the local bar with the best wings. In a confusing world and post-truth society, there’s two things I am sure of: 1) The farther one gets away from western New York, the worse the wings will be, and 2) Cleaning a chicken bone of all meat is a mark of good character.
According to most sources, the chicken wing originated in Buffalo’s Anchor Bar in 1964. Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the bar, was tasked with making a snack for her son’s friends, who had showed up late and unannounced at the establishment. Until then, chicken wings were considered a waste byproduct and either thrown away or used for chicken stock. Teressa fried up the wings and dipped them in hot sauce. Her son’s friends liked them so much that the Anchor Bar put them on the menu the next day. In fact, Dick Winger, who sold the bar hot sauce (and was prophetically named), went on the road with Teressa’s son to promote the new product, which spread quickly in popularity. This eventually attracted the attention of large chains. In 1982, the franchise Buffalo Wild Wings was founded, and in 1990 McDonalds began including chicken wings on their menu, soon followed by Domino's and Pizza Hut.
In addition to The Anchor Bar, it’s worth tipping the hat to the chicken itself when it comes to giving credit for wings. Technically classified as a dinosaur, the chicken is the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Even more interesting, recent research suggests that chickens seemed to have volunteered for the role they now play. While it was originally thought that chickens became domesticated 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, it is now believed to have occurred in Southeast Asia as late as 1500 B.C. Dry rice farming became prevalent in the region at that time. The red jungle fowl – previously elusive – began hanging around these human settlements because of the increased bug population they created. There is evidence that as the red jungle fowl came in closer contact with humans, people began to use them for cockfighting and sometimes in worship. Still, perhaps not guessing how tasty they were, it wasn’t until the Roman Empire (27 B.C. to A.D. 476) that their meat and eggs were regularly consumed.
Now I live abroad, and for all of my searching, I have never found a good chicken wing in Europe. They’re always smaller (different raising practices), not always crispy, and in the worst cases the sauce is left on the side. There has been improvements in the last 20 years – when I first arrived, most restaurants still left the drumettes, flats and even the tips still attached – but I’ve never found a high-quality wing like the ones back home. That remains the privilege of Buffalo and the western New York region.
My wife sometimes asks why I keep ordering wings where we live, even if I know they won’t be good. In the end, I believe it’s a way to explain to myself where I come from and how that place has shaped me. It’s a chance to connect, across geography and time, with the gritty people who continue to make a life there, even as they still wait for a Super Bowl victory.
I tell her: My name is Ryan. I like chicken wings.
