The Fast Food Wing Joint: BW3

My saga begins first by understanding where the chicken wing came from.

Think about it for a moment - basically the "chicken wing" is the scrap piece of chicken that nobody wanted. It's the left over bit that didn't make the cut into a whole portioned meal. Interestingly enough, this revolutionary food product had a humble beginning.

The year was 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. Owner Teressa Bellissimo was faced with feeding her son and his friends a late snack. Having an excess of chicken wings on hand, she fried up the wings, dipped them in a buttered spicy Chile sauce, and served them with celery and blue cheese dressing as a dipping sauce to cut the heat. The wings were an instant hit.

Today the wing is still idolized as a miracle restaurant meal. Restaurant concepts have been built on the wing and wing alone. Men across the nation escape the work week grind by finding the local "wing house" to indulge.

One of the restaurants that has been built solely on wings is Buffalo Wild Wings.

It was my first visit to Buffalo Wild Wings - a place I have been itching to go to for quite sometime. My interest began when I started hearing people refer to it as BW3. A name that I'm not sure anyone really understands the reasoning behind. It doesn't make much sense as there are only two Ws. My wife's theory is B Wild (wings, grill, bar) 3. However my friend Adam states that the name is based off of the three founders last names. Wikipedia writes that the nick name comes from the original restaurant name which was Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck.

They may want to consider changing the name to BWFF for Buffalo Wild Fast Food. The atmosphere isn't horribly awful, and it is more of a "family" restaurant than I had imagined. They have an outstanding selection of beer and it would be a great place to watch a football game. Their signature "offering" is all of their special sauces. In order to keep the Wings and Beer War accurate and correct we made a decision to order the most popular boneless wings at every location and we always will order the smallest portion to measure on price and portion size.

We got two orders of 8 wings - the Parmesan garlic and chipotle BBQ priced at $8.99. All was fine and dandy until the wings came out in a cardboard dish.......wait what? Hmm.....a cardboard dish and then the server handed me a plastic fork in a plastic wrapper. The blue cheese was in a plastic container with a lid. A few moments later I couldn't remember if I was in KFC or Buffalo Wild Wings.

The wings were good. Flavorful and a good portion size for the price. BUT as we started eating something else caught my attention......a sticker on the inside of the cardboard dish with "Parmesan garlic" written on it. My guesstimate is that this sticker is so the cook can see the dish of food, grab it out of the fridge and pop it in the microwave for 2 minutes before serving to the guests. Suddenly, $8.99 didn't seem so cheap.

Buffalo Wild Wings has designed a beautiful system. Decent, clean environment, good beverage selection, lots of TVs and fast food they charge a premium for. The entire system is based off of adding sauce to boring chicken wings. The food isn't quality, the service isn't outstanding, and yet they have managed to take this concept nationwide.

Bottom line - it's good but don't expect high quality. Buffalo Wild Wings truly is serving the scrap piece of chicken no one wanted, just coated in a sauce to drown out the poor food quality. If all you want is a cold beer and some wings with sauce on them BW3 is the place to go.

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