I like my wings glistening.
As a man spoiled by Buffalo Wild Wings, it is often difficult to try out new wing places. But going to a place where 50% of the name is Wings and the other 50% is Hoagies seems like a recipe for success. So even if Hoagies and Wings isn’t the most creatively named restaurant, it certainly makes clear what you will be offered. To be fair, they do offer some burgers and sides, but other than that, the menu is pretty much limited to the name.
When I went with my buddy, he recounted his experience of attempting the Suicide wings. These are the spiciest they have to offer and apparently it was not an enjoyable experience for him. Although my recent consumption of the hottest wings at Hooters didn’t kill me, I wanted to avoid suicide and ordered 6 Hot wings and 6 Mambo (spicy BBQ) wings ($12.99). As I was placing my order, my idiot friend rudely peer pressured me and it went kind of like this:
Me: I’d like six Hot and six Mambo, please.
Idiot Friend: Oh you aren’t getting the Suicide?
Me: I don’t think so.
Idiot Friend: Alright.
Me: Ok fine I’ll get the Suicide.
Whatever, it felt like peer pressure to me. So it was time to see if the straightforward name of the restaurant carried over into the sauce names and I was ready for some untimely, yet self-imposed death. I still held onto six Mambo wings in the hope that they could give my mouth some sort of buffer.
These just might kill you.
When the wings were ready, they looked beautiful and shiny. The Suicide didn’t singe my nostrils, so I thought I was in for another weak sauce and assumed my friend was a wuss. Yet, I figured if the Suicide was as hot as he said, I wanted to get them out of the way first, so I grabbed a wing and bit in. Not so bad.
Oh wait. Dear God. Fire! And not just my tongue, but mostly the back of my throat. Somehow these wings sent their potency to the back of my throat, preventing me from speaking to anyone more than five inches from my face. It seemed these wings had been created to prevent any eater from warning any other unfortunate eater. I got the rest of that first wing down and was already tearing up. I grabbed at a Mambo wing in the hopes that it could give me some buffer, but my mouth was so burned that anything not called water or ice burned it as well. Realizing these could offer me no buffer, I just went full throttle at the Suicide wings. Slowly I devoured every last one, killing about four trees worth of napkins and drinking about two small lakes worth of water.
And this was all that remained.
Finally, I was done with the burning and hoped I could still enjoy my Mambos. No such luck. Each bite burned and I even had my friend try one to test whether it was really spicy or I had just committed taste bud suicide. Apparently it was the latter, and although I ate the rest of those Mambos, I deemed myself unfit to give them a fair review.
Mouth burning aside, Hoagies and Wings served up some big, juicy and crispy wings. I would definitely never try the Suicide again, but I wouldn’t mind another visit with a slightly weaker sauce or a slightly stronger mouth.
Well, its not really 50% of the name. If you are going by words, then it is 33.333% of the name, if you are going by characters it varies further…just sayin!