There Is Wind Beneath Those Wings

Wings had a great image until chickens came along. The wings of eagles. The wings of fighter planes. The wings of Icarus. All of them glorious.

Chicken wings are not glorious. I don't know anybody who has ever roasted a chicken who didn't wish they weren't there.

The other day, I got a shipment of Buffalo chicken wings. I was not pleased. I'd been kind to someone, and their gift to me was two huge frozen packages of chicken wings from Buffalo, one version labeled "hot" and the other "BBQ." I didn't know what to do with them.

You might not believe this, but I'd never eaten a Buffalo chicken wing and had no interest in breaking my record. I'd been in Buffalo a few times back when the city had an NBA basketball team and I was a sportswriter, but nobody in Buffalo was interested in Buffalo chicken wings in those days.

The wings came from a place called La Nova, which is apparently a pizzeria. Further insult. I couldn't even get wings from a place where the primary business is wings. In the enclosed promotional material, the owner called himself "The Wing King," but that didn't impress me. Everybody in Buffalo seems to have a wing identity, and such self-proclaimed titles are meaningless. In this world, you can call yourself just about anything and get away with it. I'm thinking of calling myself the Prince of Bel-Air.

I cooked the wings the way the La Nova suggested—22 minutes at 475 degrees. Seemed nuts. I was certain they'd come out shriveled and dry. I served them to two pals, a food-magazine editor and a cook, with nonvintage Delamotte Brut Rose Champagne. I knew the Champagne would be good, and it was.

We all went nuts over the wings. The chef preferred the spicy ones. She thought the heat was artfully added and enhanced the chicken flavor rather than overwhelming it. The editor preferred the BBQ, and found the sweetness "appropriate to a foodstuff of that particular size." (Food editors tend to talk that way.)

I found it astonishing that the wings could be both crunchy and moist, harmed not at all by reheating. A miracle. Reheating chicken is usually a bad idea.

I served the traditional accompaniment of blue cheese dressing on the side, not sloshed over the top. I didn't particularly care for it, legendary though it might be. The cook said she thought the dressing added an addictive component. In fact, she decided it was the combination of creaminess and hotness that had brought about the chicken-wing craze.

I learned a few things while researching the history of Buffalo chicken wings, which were indeed invented in Buffalo, apparently about 1964. If you go to Buffalo and want to fit in (and who doesn't?), never call them "Buffalo wings." They're just "wings."

I never found out what the people of Buffalo do with the remainder of the chicken after they've cooked the wings, the only part they seem to like. I guess it has to remain one of those culinary mysteries, like what the people of Paris do with the rest of the frog after they've eaten the legs.