DENNY's - OTTAWA ON

I don't know if I need to explain Denny's, or "Canada's Diner" (aka "America's Diner") since it's a huge chain that is spread across the world. I know it as a very American chain based on the old style of American diner that specializes in breakfast food, especially for the Grand Slam Breakfast (2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 bacon strips, and 2 sausage links). I'm not big on breakfast foods, but I like Denny's for a few reasons. It's reasonably priced, it's open 24 hours, and the food is decent. I actually really like the burgers here, as well as the skillets, and the nachos. I've often gotten just their appetizer sampler and they have a decent chicken finger, and I've always wonder (and lament) why they didn't have wings. Well ...

On New Years Eve my wife and her father and I had driven for over 4 hours from Ottawa to Whitby Ontario, we wanted to get something to eat and we knew a lot of places were closed, so we happily pulled into Denny's that we knew would be open. When we were there, flipping through the ever changing menu, I looked down, and there it was ... chicken wings! They had added chicken wings to the menu.

Flash forward to being back in Ottawa and I had to kill some time while waiting for some work to get done on my car. I was hungry, and felt it was a perfect time to check out the wings at Denny's.

I was at the Denny's on Clyde and Baseline in Ottawa. It's a location surrounded by strip mall and shares the building with a vegetarian Asian restaurant. It's always busy when I go in. It's relatively clean, the staff is usually friendly, and the food is good. I came in and my waitress Lesley was friendly and quick. She brought me my favourite beverage at Denny's, a cola with a cherry shot in it. You can get a vanilla shot too, but I'm all about the cherry. Love it.

I checked out the whole menu, and found that the appetizers are now at the back, but that's where the wings were. I was actually pretty excited that they brought this to their menu.

I ordered the wings (with no indication of the amount or number of wings) but I knew I wanted something to go with them. I was feeling something contrasty, so not fried fries or onion rings, but a salad sounded right. Caesar salad specifically. Kinda healthy, right?

I got the side Caesar salad ($2.99) which turned out to be a very good portion that was loaded up. I wonder what the large size was like? The salad was dressed well (not dripping wet with Caesar dressing and not dry either), then topped with lots of shredded Parmesan and bacon bits. The dressing was creamy but slightly runny, and had a nice slightly garlic flavour. All around, the salad tasted fresh and for a diner Caesar, it was good. So the salad held up, how would the wings?

There was already cutlery and napkins on the plate, but Lesley also brought me a bone plate and two moist towlettes for the anticipation of a saucy finger mess.

As mentioned before, the menu doesn't describe how many wings come in an order - either by weight or just number. My order there were 8 wings.

When the plate came out, I was excited by the look and colour of the wings. But then I was not so excited because I noticed the size of the wings. They were small. Why were they small? I wanted large, expected medium, and got small. At $1.50 a wing, well, these were not worth $1.50 a wing at this size. 

They are small in length and height, and the meat factor is relative to their size. The wings are breaded, and fried, so there is a nice crunchy batter. They are fried nicely so that the skin is crispy, but the meat is super tender and the bones pull out really easily.

You can get the wings plain (why?) Buffalo and Sweet & Tangy BBQ. I went with Buffalo sauce, and they wings came pretty saucy. Every wing was completely coated in sauce, as it should be.

The sauce was a classic commercial Buffalo sauce - a mild hot sauce with a fakey butter flavour. It's not a craft homemade sauce, but it gets the job done.

FINAL SCORE:

I'm always excited when wings show up when they are not expected. But I was so disappointed in how small these wings were and for the price of them. It almost ruined the experience, but looking past that, the small wings were crispy, tender, and tasty. My Caesar salad was also good. Maybe this was just a small batch and normally the new shipment of wings could be bigger, but at this price point, these wings weren't good enough that I would get them again to see. Sad and I will stick to the burgers and cherry shots in cola. 7/15

Denny's
1380 Clyde Ave, Ottawa ON
dennys.ca