Today, a platter of spicy wings with celery sticks and a cup of blue cheese dressing is practically required for watching football. But not long ago, chicken wings were one of the least wanted parts of the bird. So how did they become an American favorite?
The short answer: the most famous story says Buffalo wings were first made in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, by co-owner Teressa Bellissimo. She deep-fried chicken wings and tossed them in cayenne hot sauce. But there are competing claims, and even the Anchor Bar's own family told the story in different ways.
From Soup Scraps to Snack
In the early 1960s, chicken wings were cheap and undesirable. They were usually thrown away or used to make stock or soup. Nobody was building a menu around them.
That made them a perfect blank canvas. A Buffalo wing, as we know it now, is an unbreaded wing section, either the drumette or the flat, that is deep-fried and coated in a sauce of vinegar-based cayenne hot sauce and melted butter. Each wing is usually cut into three parts, the drumette, the flat, and the tip, which is usually thrown out.
The Anchor Bar's Versions
Teressa ran the Anchor Bar with her husband, Frank. According to their son, Dominic, he was tending bar one Friday night when some friends showed up late. His mother wanted a quick snack for them, so she fried up chicken wings and tossed them in hot sauce.
Dominic later told a reporter for The New Yorker that people were buying plenty of drinks that night, and he wanted to do something nice for the mostly Catholic customers at midnight, when they could eat meat again after Friday.
Frank told it differently. He said the bar received a mistaken delivery of wings instead of the backs and necks it used for spaghetti sauce, and he asked Teressa to do something with them. Either way, the Anchor Bar story became the most famous one.
The Other Claim
Not everyone agrees the Anchor Bar was first. John Young, who moved to Buffalo from Alabama as a teenager in 1948, began serving whole chicken wings in 1961. His were breaded, deep-fried, and served in his own tomato-based mumbo sauce.
Young said a traveling boxer told him a restaurant in Washington, D.C., was doing great business with wings, so he decided to specialize. He also said the Anchor Bar didn't make Buffalo wings a regular menu item until 1974. In 2013, the National Buffalo Wing Festival inducted him into its Buffalo Wing Hall of Flame.
Meanwhile, a 1969 newspaper article about the Anchor Bar didn't mention wings at all, though a nearby competitor, Duff's, started selling Buffalo wings that same year.
How Wings Took Over America
In 1977, the city of Buffalo honored Frank Bellissimo and declared July 29 to be Chicken Wing Day. Through the 1970s and 1980s, wings spread across the country as a bar food and appetizer.
Chains followed. Buffalo Wild Wings was founded in 1982 and Hooters in 1983. After the Buffalo Bills made four Super Bowl appearances, Domino's added Buffalo wings to its national menu in 1994, and Pizza Hut followed the next year.
So whoever truly deserves the credit, one thing is certain: Buffalo turned a part of the chicken nobody wanted into a snack nobody can resist.
