All About Dem Wangs

1381 Elvis Presley Blvd., Memphis, TN - (901) 946-1747

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Posted By Michael Stern on March 18, 2005 4:13 AM

The chicken wing is ubiquitous. Along with nachos, it is a once-regional specialty that has become an all American snack in venues that range from bars to baseball stadiums. Of course, chicken wings have been getting cooked and eaten for as long as the human race has been eating chickens, but the particular style we're talking about is that created in Buffalo, New York in the mid-20th century by Teresa Belissimo of the Anchor Bar: wings, divided into drumettes and bows, fried and then bathed in lip-tingling, buttery red hot sauce, accompanied by celery stalks and blue cheese dressing.

Memphis is especially mad for wings. They are on menus everywhere, and there are countless restaurants that make a specialty of them. We were drawn to this particular place by its motto, "Just Doin' Our Thang With Dem Wangs." Sure enough, the Wangs here are superb. They are jumbos, fried to a luxurious crisp and available simply seasoned (a beautiful thing) or bathed in several different degrees of hot sauce, the hottest of which is incendiary. There is a menu of other items, including fried and barbecued balogna (a Memphis favorite), sausage, and hamburgers, but everyone we saw during our visit got wings.

A lot of business is take-out; for eat-in customers, there are a handful of tables up front, where you are serenaded by a rhythmic sound coming from the kitchen: the thump of wings being tossed in their sauce. The wing chef tosses the wings along with strips of carrot and celery in the bowl with the sauce, so the veggies are bathed in whatever degree of heat you request. Sauce on the side is no-account stuff that comes in prepackaged plastic ramekins; but the wings themselves are well worth a visit.

Overall Rating

Wangs (5)

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