Pop quiz: What are the only five-letter sovereign nations that contain two Is? If you and five of your best trivia-playing friends can’t come up with India and Haiti, you probably don’t want to be at The Irish Times in Palms on Tuesday nights. You see, every Tuesday is Trivia Night and begins sometime between 9 and 9:30, but were it simply a bar with trivia it would not be worthy of meat-blogging. Fortunately that is not the case, because every Tuesday also means $5 buffalo wings. And while they have a full kitchen and a decent bar food selection, there is really no other option in my mind.
Ordering must be done at the bar and The Irish Times is notoriously slow to take bar orders. I’ve never seen more than one bartender, yet that is almost part of the charm of the place. Yet, while it might take some time to order, the food comes out pretty fast and I quickly found myself staring down a plate of sexy, glistening wings. They were accompanied by those nasty wing-groupies known as carrots and celery, which are like the ugly girls that pretty women keep around to feel better about themselves. They’re harmless in that they don’t impact the flavor of the wings and there is always a friend willing to take them down, but they are wholly unnecessary.
Vegetables aside, the wings were quite good. The sauce was exactly what I expect from bar wings. Nothing fancy, nothing creative and nothing disappointing. It matched up nicely with the blue cheese dressing and my pint of Fat Tire. There was, however, one minor hitch. A few of the wings had spent a bit too long in the fryer and were chewier than necessary. Luckily, this hadn’t dried out the wings, but it definitely prevented them from toppling the Backstage as my favorite LA bar wings.
Yet while they may not be the best, I will certainly be returning to The Irish Times and ordering them again as I pit my trivia brains against the rest of the bar in a battle for eternal glory (and $30 off my bar tab).