Buffalo Wing - History

History

There are five different legends about how Buffalo wings came to be.

• The first story is that Buffalo wings were first prepared at the Anchor Bar by Teressa Bellissimo, who owned the bar along with her husband Frank. Upon the unannounced, late-night arrival of their son, Dominic, with several of his friends from college, Teressa needed a fast and easy snack to present to her hungry guests. It was then that she came up with the idea of deep frying chicken wings (normally thrown away or reserved for stock) and tossing them in cayenne hot sauce.

• A second version is that there was a harsh snow storm in Buffalo. All the workers were gone, and the owners of the establishment were snowed in. While the wings of the chicken were normally thrown out, in order to keep from starving, Teressa deep fried chicken wings and served them as a dish.

• A third version, as told by Dominic Bellissimo (Frank and Teressa's son) to The New Yorker reporter Calvin Trillin in 1980, stated: "It was Friday night in the bar and since people were buying a lot of drinks he wanted to do something nice for them at midnight when the mostly Catholic patrons would be able to eat meat again." He stated that it was his mother, Teressa, who came up with the idea of chicken wings.

• The fourth version of the origin involved a mis-delivery of wings instead of backs and necks for making the bar's spaghetti sauce. Faced with this unexpected resource, Frank Bellissimo says that he asked Teressa to do something with them.

• The fifth version has nothing to do with the Bellissimos or the Anchor Bar. Calvin Trillin stated in his 1980 New Yorker article that a man named John Young also claimed credit for serving chicken wings in a special "mambo sauce". Chicken wings in mambo sauce became the specialty at his Buffalo restaurant in the mid-1960s. Young had registered the name of his restaurant, John Young's Wings 'n Things, at the county courthouse before leaving Buffalo in 1970.

• The sixth version claims that the Bellissimos did create the recipe but never used it in the restaurant. It also claims they had the recipe written down and it finally ended up in the hands of Duff's Famous Wings where they used it in their menu.

On the August 8, 2008 episode of Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen on PBS, Raichlen said that "the Buffalo wing was born at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York in 1964."

Marketing materials for Frank's RedHot claim that it was the hot sauce used in the Bellissimos' original recipe.