Crispy fried chicken wings tossed in a tangy, buttery hot sauce and served with celery and blue cheese dressing. Invented in 1964 in a Buffalo, New York bar — now the defining American bar food.
The buffalo wing was invented on a Friday night in October 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, by Teressa Bellissimo, who ran the kitchen with her husband Frank. The story told by her son Dominic is this: late at night, a group of his friends arrived at the bar hungry, and Teressa grabbed the chicken wings that had arrived by mistake for a chicken stock order — then deepfried them and tossed them in a sauce of Frank's cayenne hot sauce and melted butter. She served them with celery and blue cheese dressing from the salad. The wings were never meant to be eaten as a main; they were considered worthless scraps. Now they are a $4 billion annual market. The original Anchor Bar sauce formula was guarded for decades — it is a simple ratio of Frank's RedHot sauce to butter, roughly 2:1 — and that simplicity is the point. Buffalo sauce is about heat plus richness, vinegar plus fat, a coating that is neither wet nor dry but somewhere in between. The blue cheese dressing is mandatory. The celery is there to cool your mouth between bites. Anyone who substitutes ranch dressing in Buffalo, New York risks being asked to leave.
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