Buffalo Chicken Wings

Buffalo chicken wings are divided into two pieces (the wingtips discarded), fried and coated with a mild, oil-based hot sauce, and served with blue cheese dressing and celery sticks. They were invented by Teressa Bellissimo on 30 October 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, and became famous though a 1980 New Yorker magazine story by Calvin Trillin. Trillin joked that no one even in Buffalo knew what to do with the celery sticks and blue cheese dressing. The only variation in the recipe or presentation since 1964 is that Bellissimo broiled the wings for some period before switching to a simple deep-fry. Trillin’s article also mentions the influence on Buffalo wing cuisine of African American cook John Young, who was well known in Buffalo in the 1960s for breaded whole wings fried and served with a spicy “mambo sauce.”