Some foods have a clouded history. Take pizza. Who in-vented it?
No such issue with Buffalo wings. Teressa Bellissimo invented them at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1964. As the story goes–and Anchor Bar general manager Ivano Tuscani has told it plenty of times–Bellissimo’s son Dominic was tending bar one Friday night and asked Mom for something a little different to serve his friends.
There were some chicken wings Bellissimo was going to use for soup stock. Inspiration struck. Instead, she deep-fried the wings and covered them in a Cayenne pepper sauce she whipped up, the recipe now top secret. She sent them out to the bar with a side of celery and bleu cheese dressing to cool down the spice.
At first Dominic’s friends were taken aback.
“They were like, `What the heck are these?'” Tuscani says.
But they ate them and loved them, and the Anchor Bar had an instant hit. In a few years, Buffalo’s culinary claim to fame spread to the rest of the country, and a favorite new bar food was born.
Casual. Messy.
Eaten with fingers. Doused with beer.
