The History of the Buffalo Wing!
According to the book "Third Helpings" by Calvin Trillin, there are three stories about the creation of the Buffalo Wing. All
three stories take place in Buffalo, NY, which is why they are called Buffalo wings and not Baltimore wings.
In 1964, Buffalo's Anchor bar received a shipment of chicken wings by mistake. Cook Teressa Bellisimo needed to do something
with them, so she cut off the useless wing tip and chopped the remainder in half so that they were in straight sections and
easier to eat. Then she deep-fried them, covered them with a homemade hot sauce and borrowed some celery from the bar's
regular antipasto. Then she arranged them on a plate with some of the Anchor's house dressing, which, fatefully, was bleu
cheese. This improvised bar snack became an immediate hit.
This story also takes place at the Anchor Bar, but in this story, it was Friday night, when Catholics were still staying away
from meat on Fridays. The bartender asked his mom, Teressa Bellisimo, to make something special (and meaty) to pass around at
the stroke of midnight. The patrons loved her impromptu dish, and the wing took flight.
In the third story, the chicken wing had long been part of the city's black culture when a cook named John Young invented the
Buffalo wing as we know it by covering it with what he called his "mambo" sauce."
Within two decades the Buffalo wing had spread to bars and restaurants all over America. By 1995, Buffalo wings were a $400
million part of the restaurant industry.
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