Thursday, July 29th, is National Chicken Wing Day. The origin of this holiday has been credited to Stan
Makowski, who was the Mayor of Buffalo in 1977 when he declared July 29th as Chicken Wing Day.
Mayor Makowski credited the Anchor Bar and its owners as the first to serve up the Buffalo Wing as we
know it today. Although there are others who lay claim to being the first to serve chicken wings in their
establishments, it was Teressa Bellissimo of The Anchor Bar who was credited with being the first to
serve the spicy hot wings that we know today as the Buffalo Wing.

The Bellissimo family themselves have a couple of different versions of how the Buffalo Wing first came
about.

According to Teressa, her son Dominic came home from college, unexpectedly, with a bunch of his
friends. According to Teressa’s husband Frank, the restaurant had received a mis-delivery of wings that
were sitting in the kitchen. He had already asked Teressa to do something with them. Timing is
everything. Teressa concocted a cayenne pepper-based hot sauce, then deep fried the wings. Combining
the sauce with the cooked wings proved to be a very popular choice, as Dominic and his friends gobbled
them up in no time.

According to Dominic, in a 1980 New Yorker Magazine interview with Calvin Trillan, “It was Friday night
in the bar and since people were buying a lot of drinks, he wanted to do something nice for them at
midnight when the mostly Catholic patrons would be able to eat meat again.” He credited his mother
with coming up with the idea for the spicy hot wings. How better to build up a good thirst?
Perhaps it would not be fair to not mention John Young, who had started selling chicken wings in his
restaurant a year earlier than the Bellissimos. His version was a bit different than what was eventually
served up at The Anchor Bar. Young’s version used a whole wing, unlike the half-wing used at the
Anchor Bar and that is more commonly used today. He opened his restaurant “Wings and Things” in
1964, and also deep-fried his wings before cooking them in his special Mambo sauce.

But whether you want to credit The Anchor Bar as the home of the Buffalo Wing, as Mayor Makowski
did in 1977 when he created the day, or you want to give the credit to Wings and Things, virtually
everyone agrees that the modern Buffalo Wing did, in fact, originate in Buffalo.

To celebrate National Chicken Wing Day, you don’t have to limit yourself to just Buffalo Wings. You can
go online and select any popular recipe for Chicken Wings. Once you have made your choice, get in
touch with your Quaker Valley Foods Sales Specialist to get pricing and availability on any of the items
you will need.