History of Buffalo Wings

You’ll never guess where in New York the buffalo wing originated. Did you guess Buffalo? Okay, well then you can guess it. In 1964, Teressa Bellissimo concocted this dish at her family-owned establishment by the name of Anchor Bar. She decided to pair the delectable fried finger food with celery and blue cheese after a two-year gastronomy experiment in the kitchen wherein a sample of 5,000 taste testers confirmed that those three ingredients created the ultimate trifecta of complimentary flavors. Just kidding – she did it because that’s what she had available.

It is common for many food origin stories to be disputed amongst restaurants, regions, and even entire nations. For this one, there is indeed a dispute but it’s within the Bellissimo family. Teressa’s husband, Frank, claimed that the dish was a result of the bar accidentally receiving a shipment of wings (as opposed to some other chicken part) and they had to make use of what they were given. The other story comes from Teressa’s son, Dominic, who says Teressa made them as a midnight snack after he and his friends had gone out drinking. There is, of course, the chance that both stories are true.

Up until the mid-1980s, buffalo wings were mostly a regional New York food (luckily I was born in 1988 so a world without wings was before my time – whew). In 1993, the first ever Wing Bowl was held in Philadelphia. Though the first ever buffalo wing celebration occurred in its birthplace of northern New York and continues til this day.

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