#lotwwintercatchup
"Come in and enjoy the most delicious wings you’ve ever had. Everyone loves our wings and this is why we’re known as having the best wings!"
Back in January I had to travel to Whitby and back one weekday. My business was concluded after lunch, so I decided I was going to stop for lunch. It was a Thursday and after doing a quick search of the web for "Thursday Wing Nights Whitby ON" I found that there was one place that fit the bill, Charley Ronicks.
I had never heard of this place before or even seen it before. I've been in the plaza before but never noticed it. All of the windows are frosted, which I find odd. It looks as if they are closed up or like a medical office. On the inside there's enough light coming in, but you can't see out. This place just doesn't seem that welcoming.
The inside looks like a chain pub/casual restaurant even though it's an independent establishment. The place is quite large on the inside with the restaurant kind of split into two sections; the bar side and the dining side. The bar side was quite busy, but the dining side was less so. I sat on the dining side and was given a two person booth. Some of the booths have flat screens right in them for sports events I guess.
On their website they state their specials, but I was happy to see them posted not only on wipe boards around the restaurant, but also at your table. Charley's has a LOT of wing specials - basically it sucks if you come on a Wednesday (unless wings are included in the apps, but I don't think they are). Just to be clear, the wing specials are:
- All Day
- With a beverage purchase - no free refills
- No doggy bags
- No take-out
- No Coupons
All fairly reasonable. When I asked my server (Tanya) about this, the only part she mentioned was that I had to get a drink with EACH order of wings (ie if I was ordering 2 pounds of wings, I needed to buy 2 drinks). I later read about the no doggy bags, and I'm glad I did.
Wings are pretty prominent on their menu too taking up 1 page and a bit of another. There are a lot of flavours to choose from (25!) and I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted. I had to ask my waitress what the dealio was with the flavours. She tried to explain but just lacked an ability to explain. For example, I asked about the Mexican Hot and she told me it was "... with Mexican spices". Ok. Then I asked about the heats, and she said "Buffalo was a bit more hot, but the medium is pretty hot". I don't understand their/her heat scale at all.
I ordered two pounds of wings, and while the special comes with fries, she said I could get onion rings. Normally I would not hesitate to switch my fries for onion rings but I was kind of craving fries. Then without missing a beat, she said she could do one order fries and one order of onion rings. Yes please! Thank you Tanya.
She brought me out my first drink (they have Coke products), as well as a bone bowl, napkins and a wetnap for clean up. Things were off to a good start.
Then after a small wait, my food came out. I was both excited and a little worried - this was going to be a lot more food than I think my stomach was going to handle ... and there were no doggy bags allowed!
Each order came with a large carrot stick and celery stick, but no dip. Normally you can get Blue Cheese, Ranch or even Dill, but not with the wing special. This sucks because I don't really care for eating the veggies without the dip.
The sides were very plentiful. The fries were battered (I don't doubt a frozen product). They were hot and crispy, but pretty meh. I definitely salted & ketch-upped these. The onion rings were pretty big rings, and they were crispy enough, but the inside onion was soft and when you took a small bite, the whole onion came out.
The wings come by the pound, and there were about 8 wings in a pound. They were split pretty evenly between the flats and drums.
The wings were large (when you only get 8 in an order, they have to be bigger). They were long, tall and fairly meaty.
The chicken wings come dusted, then deep fried, giving a crispy skin. That crispy skin held up to the sauce pretty well. They were relatively tender - not super tender, there was a little effort in pulling apart the bones, but not difficult either.
I went with two flavours. I really debated because I knew I wanted a hot/Buffalo type wing, but they also had 4 flavours of BBQ, and I do like a BBQ. Plus they have a dry rub of Roasted Garlic? Or Cajun Ranch? In the end, I went with the Buffalo as well as the Mexican Hot.
The wings came nicely sauced. Not a lot of overflow sauce on the Mexican Hot, but lots on the Buffalo. Each wing was coated well though. I like that.
BUFFALO
My first taste of the Buffalo was that it was good. It was not hot (a medium at best) in spice. I can tell it is a commercial Buffalo hot sauce (not homemade) because there is an artificial taste to it, but as far as artificial (as in not home made hot sauce and butter) Buffalo sauce goes, this was good. It was rich, kind of buttery. It was really good ... until it wasn't. By the end of my meal, it just became too much. I at least could alternate between flavours, but it just got so strong by my last wings I wasn't digging it as much.
MEXICAN HOT
This was a nicely spiced sauce. I've had the flavour of this in a suicide sauce before, no idea what it is, but it was not hot like a suicide. A little more peppery in flavour. If I didn't know it was Mexican Hot I would not necessarily associate these with Mexican (ie I could detect a 'Mexican' spice to it), but it is full of flavour spice.
Also salt. It's a very salty sauce. And like the Buffalo, by the time I got to my last wings, the flavour was just too much. This would have really have been aided with a creamy dip for sure.
FINAL SCORE:
So Charley Ronick's (no idea who this is if anyone real) really brought their wing game to plate. Lots of wing specials to start. Big wings, crispy wings, saucy wings. The flavours are big - nice spicy flavoured Mexican Hot and rich Buffalo wings - that started off really good, but were a bit much by the end. I had to eat them all because of the no doggy bag rule on specials, but I didn't really want to.
I would go back again to try some of those other flavours too. Too bad I'm not in Whitby that often to try more often. 11/15
Charley Ronick's Pub & Restaurant
3050 Garden Street, Whitby ON
charlieronicks.ca
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