Eating tavern-style wings without the tavern

Wings at Washington Tavern in Albany, NY (that’s Zena’s beer, not mine)

Our friend Daniel over at FussyLITTLEblog maintains that tavern-style chicken wings are a different experience than wings consumed in a generic setting or ordered to-go, and has organized several local tasting tours to prove this theory. Troy, Schenectady and downtown Albany have already been dealt with so this past weekend we descended on the Pine Hills neighborhood of New York’s capital. I knew Pine Hills was a place because I had previously taken a self-guided walking tour using an app developed by local historian Akum Norder; without that perspective one would have found a pleasant neighborhood with college students living in rather chaotic circumstances.

Spending a couple of hours in an old-school upstate tavern drinking beer and eating wings sounds like a fine idea, but that’s not what this tour was about. A number of rules had been put in place to make the experience as un-tavernlike as possible. We would order just one item, a basket of medium hot wings cooked extra crispy, then depart quickly so we could hit five places overall in a couple of hours. To increase the merriment, we were required to walk from tavern to tavern. The establishments were not close together; to traverse the entire route proposed for my team would have entailed about 4 miles in the sun. (We were smart enough to cheat, and collected our car after the first two places.) Yes, you could have beer if you wanted but five beers in two hours combined with long walks may have had some undesirable side effects.

To put a cherry on it, our first stop on the tour wasn’t even a tavern but a burger joint, Crave. (The places had been chosen by popular vote.) Their wings were okay but served with ranch dressing and without veggies, two fatal errors. As a bonus, our order at this and the next place took half an hour to hit the table, probably because this was the first fried food order of the day and the fryer was still heating up. (Did I mention that the tour started at high noon, not at a more reasonable hour like 5 pm?) Then on to Washington Tavern which was the eventual winner (for my group; the overall results haven’t been posted at this writing) even though we had to listen to an alarm beeping during our long wait for the food (something was wrong with the restaurant’s telephone system, and a Verizon tech was scurrying around trying to fix it).

The third place, Juniors, was packed with folks enjoying a delicious brunch which was off-limits to us, because we were having under-sauced wings instead. This barely edged out Crave at the bottom of the list. The final two places, Graney’s and Fountain, were both fine but by this time we were tired of wings and really wanted a beer.

Much like last year’s tour of seasonal stands where we went to ice cream places and ordered a burger instead, or running the Bay to Breakers backwards (or in the opposite direction to the rest of the throng, like the team that calls itself the Salmon because salmon swim upstream, get it?), the quixotic rules of the Pine Hills Tavern Wings Tour made us proud to have completed it at all. But it did indeed produce some musing on best practices for serving wings, all of which were in evidence at Washington Tavern:

*There has to be vegetables, otherwise you can’t pretend this is healthy and appropriate food. (One of our party, Zena of Albany Dish, did a nice job of rating our carrots and celery for freshness.)
*There has to be blue cheese sauce (mayo with some blue cheese in it) for dipping, NOT ranch dressing. (Juniors tried to game us by putting a lump of blue cheese in their ranch dressing, but we saw through this ploy.)
*It’s a plus if the place does something interesting with the wing sauce vs the standard melted butter and Frank’s Red Hot. (Washington Tavern’s wing sauce had hints of sweetness and cayenne.)
*Napkins and wet naps must be provided in generous quantities. (Only Washington Tavern did this, and we filled our pockets with wet naps for the rest of the tour.)
*The veggies should be served in the same basket as the wings, not separately. This means there cannot be too much wing sauce, otherwise the veggies will be swimming in it which would be very unappetizing.

As to the wings themselves, it’s pretty hard to screw up these tender, fat laden morsels (though to quibble, the wings at Crave had an off taste maybe due to a specialty chicken [the place is known for sustainably sourced ingredients] and Graney’s wings were too small). But just like burgers, I realized the accoutrements are what define a good tavern style wing. Washington Tavern hit all the marks with a pleasant environment (other than the beeping), friendly service (even though we had the long wait) and a beautiful presentation at the table. They even provided the best value, serving up a dozen wings for a Hamilton when everybody else gave us ten. I can’t wait to go back and order wings and a beer and just sit there enjoying them.