National Chicken Wing Festival

One of the many things we adore about Italy is the sagra. A sagra is a local fair, usually a celebration of the bounties of the earth--meaning food, as in a preparation (sagra di torta di erbe) or a raw ingredient (sagra di pesce [fish]).

Attending a sagra is a way to get a taste of Italian country life. You order food to be cooked by locals with a passion for the local cuisine, then sit at communal tables to eat. Often there is music or some other sort of performance.

On the weekend we attended a sagra of a different sort - one where more than 30-tons of chicken wings were fried to a crisp, sauced, and served up to sweating fans.

The Buffalo, NY event stretches back to 1992, when Wing King Drew Cerza was inspired to start it by Bill Murray's junk food addicted character in "Osmosis Jones." Over the years, it's grown from a small competitive eating spectacle to a full-blown convention--hosting over 400,000 total people, generating over $125,000 for New York charities, and even serving as the site of a wedding.

God help me.

Buffalo Wing Festival organizers are fond of describing the spectrum of sauces as stretching from the mild to the suicidal, with dozens upon dozens of stands serving their specialties. The "Official Wing Sauce of the National Buffalo Wing Festival," Frank's RedHot, will be given away from a booth at the festival. There are also a variety of eating contests, including one that involves bobbing for chicken wings in a vat of blue cheese.

I am sad that I missed that display of excess.

Once you get inside ($ 5 entrance fee) food tickets are $1 each, with two tickets entitling you to 3 chicken wings. Soda and bottled water can be purchased for cash, as can beer.

We tried wings from a variety of vendors - discovering that a medium sauce at one booth was flaming hot at the next. We enjoyed the chicken wing aracini (an aracini is a fried rice ball stuffed with cheese - these were stuffed with bits of chicken wings). We also had some of the famous chicken wing mac and cheese.

If this wasn't enough Paul OD'd on peanut butter pie and ice cream.

How was it?

You could smell the grease as soon as you exited the highway. It was HOT. It was crowded. It was loud. There were people wearing huge hats shaped like chicken wings. It was brash.

 I was a wee bit shocked by the excess.

Sadly, the wings were mediocre - in fact, had we wanted to we could have had far better wings by going to Duffs. The worst wings we tried were from the Anchor Bar - BLECH

I can now say I've attended the National Chicken Wing Festival.

I'd far rather have been sitting around a communal table in a small Tuscan village toasting the local specialty under the stars.

Comments

[sandi @ the whistlestop cafe]

That hat is precious. I hope Paul got to bring one home.

I'll join you under the Tuscan stars!

[Barb Cabot]

That looked like fun. Gotta try it at least once. Now you can check that off the list. Love the hat.

[girasoli]

Did you drive down to Buffalo for this festival? How far is is from where you live? Too bad the wings weren't better. The hat is creative though.

[Eden]

Love the hat. I love chicken wings and did not even know they have a festival in their honor. Even if the wings were mediocre, the people watching would be half the fun.

[sandrac]

Ah, I do enjoy watching life's rich pagent unfold.....How did you keep from smacking that kid's hat right off his head? (Well, okay, I suppose there are laws about that!)

[JDeQ]

Sadly there were none for sale this year Sandi!

The festival was fun - the people watching in particular.

It is like so many things in life - wonderful to experience . . . once. LOL

Sandra - for a minute I thought Kendall had hi-jacked your keyboard . . . *smile*