Wild Wings 20th Anniversary AYCE Event Recap

Back in 2009 Rick Smicklas opened Wild Wings in Sunderland Ontario; a wing joint that focused on serving a bunch of flavours. 20 years later, there are over 80 locations all over Canada. On March 17th 2019, Wild Wings celebrated with an AYCE wing or boneless chicken event, and I had to go check it out. 

It was just last month that Wild Wing had an AYCE Bonless Chicken offering that I checked out and had a good time sampling different sauces. I convinced LJ for us to head out on St Patty's day for dinner to get our fill of chicken.

it was super sunny so they put the blinds down, but from outside it looks closed and the windows papered up

We went for an early supper, around 4:30pm,  so as to beat any lunch crowds (even though the deal was all day long). I skipped lunch because I wanted to be hungry, I mean HUNGRY when I went. We went to the location off of St Laurent, which was one of the first Wild Wings I had ever been to. We got there and the place wasn't full, but it was busy. The waitress let us choose where we sat, so we picked the front window area, which was good at first but then the sun came blaring in. Another staff member came in and put the blinds down to stop me from being blinded.

The rules were the same as the boneless AYCE:

$19.99 for AYCE per person

1st order of Wings or Boneless Chicken comes with celery, carrots, fries and dip.

Additional chicken comes in orders of 5 (without fries & veggies)

Dine-In only

With beverage purchase

No doggy-bags

None of the rules or anything was explained to us, but I already knew the gist. Our waitress was friendly and while our first order seemed to take forever (it didn't, we were just hungry), subsequent orders didn't take that long.

Our first round orders came with the fries, fake-fresh cut fries (they have skins on, but there is no way they are not from frozen - they are ok at best. Neither of us finished them). They also came with fresh veggies and the two of us went for the dill dip to go with them.

We both did 3 rounds of wings and sauces. I was surprised and super impressed with my wife, who went for the wings over the boneless, and for going three rounds! We did a big sampling and tried a variety of sauces.

We both got the traditional breaded bone-in wings, which came fried crispy, hot, and hearty enough to stand up to some pretty thick sauces. The wings aren't large - they sit in a small+ to a medium in length, but they are pretty meaty. The first round was about 8 or 9 wings, with each refill being 5 wings per order.


ROUND 1

RED HOT & BLUE

LJ's first order was Red Hot & Blue, blue cheese sauce and hot mixed together. She really enjoyed these wings and I gotta say, they were pretty good. I mean, it's hot sauce, which is good, and creamy blue cheese, which is good. What's not to love?

DRY SOUR CREAM & ONION

My first order was from the potato chip seasoned section. I love potato chip dry flavoured wings, usually dill or ketchup chip powder, but this time I decided to get Sour Cream & Onion. These came generously dusted, but unfortunately they were a little weak in flavour. LJ found them flavourless, but she prefers very bold flavours. I did taste the sour cream & onion powder, and it was good, but just not strong enough to be as enjoyed as it should be.

SMOKEY BBQ

I ordered the dry sour cream & onion knowing that I could expand my flavour sampling with a side of sauce on the side. There were a number of BBQ options I was mulling over, but ultimately went with simple Smokey BBQ. This was a good, bold, smokey BBQ as promised. It was more dark flavoured then sweet, and paired well with the crispy chicken, and could have been good with the chip flavour underneath, but the BBQ completely overwhelmed it.


ROUND 2

BUCKIN' BRONCO

LJ had 3 other sauces in mind but made a last minute switch to Buckin' Bronco; a medium sauce and dry lemon pepper seasoning. It sounded interesting, but was not as good in execution. LJ found it way to sour and couldn't finish one whole one. I found it sour (not as sour as she did) as the lemon pepper is quite puckering. I liked having one or two of these wings, but would not want a full order of them.

SNAKEBITE

I pondered a few different flavours - I didn't want a hot or a creamy or a dry or a BBQ. Snakebite seemed to be a middle ground, being a hot sauce and honey mustard mix. LJ also found this one too sour, and it was a bit. It was a bit too sweet - I would not have a full order; 5 was enough.


ROUND 3

SOME BEACH

LJ knew she wanted to stick with the combination she liked; creamy and spicy. Some Beach was exactly that. Creamy Caesar, creamy Dill, and Medium sauce. The creamy kinda gets mixed together here and medium could have been Hot instead, but this was a tasty wing.

HOT DILL PICKLE

I also wanted to end on a high note. This is a go-to of mine at Wild Wings. I like dill and I like hot. This is creamy and hot and dilly and good. It's just that simple.

Overall we had a good feast of wings. I could probably have gone one more round, but I would not have been happy afterward. For LJ, her first round of the Red Hot & Blue was her favourite. Hot Dill is still my tops.

Happy Anniversary Wild Wings! We had some good wings and a good time.

Wild Wing Restaurant
1265 Donald St, Ottawa ON (and other locations)
wildwingsrestaurants.com

Wild Wings AYCE Bonless Chicken Event

What is it with AYCE boneless events lately? Last month St Louis had it, and this month it was Wild Wings. 

First off, hats off to calling it AYCE Boneless Chicken and not Boneless Wings, because it is chicken and not wings. Unfortunately I didn't get to try these until almost the last day (today is that last day). I had seen their advertisements on social media like the photo above, but just couldn't get there sooner.

I've been to Wild Wings (not to be confused with the American chain Buffalo Wild Wings) many times before, but never to the location in Orleans. I was running errands and stopped in for lunch, where I was the first customer of the day.

The location, like all others, has a wild west cowboy theme. This location is spacious and clean. Eventually more customers came; some seniors to the right of me, some seniors to the right, and a dude who went to the bar.

I got to sit where ever I wanted and chose a booth with lots of window light. The tables all come pre-set with your condiment and cleanup caddy. I wasn't going to need a bone bucket, and because I ended up using a fork for my food, I didn't need the paper towel roll and the wetnaps as much, but it was appreciated.

My waitress was Ally and she was cool. Checked on me frequently, answered my questions. They serve Pepsi products, and when I needed a refill she was on it. She was great, and I'll get into that more later on.

The AYCE deal is clearly laid out:

• $19.99 for AYCE per person
• 1st order of Boneless Chicken comes with celery, carrots, fries and dip.
• Additional chicken comes in orders of 5 (without fries & veggies)
• Dine-In only
• With beverage purchase
• No doggy-bags

$20 for AYCE may not seem like a great deal on it's own, but considering a single order of Boneless Chicken is $15.95 and a double order is $27.50(!) as long as you get at least one refill, you are winning. 

After my meal I asked Ally what was the most she's seen someone order, and she had to think about it. She said I had done probably the best, but for most it was just a double order. She had a look on her face about that maybe me think there was more to that answer, and she said not very many people ordered it. It wasn't popular I asked, and she said not really. She said people were more interested in taking home their food (which you can't do under the AYCE) so they would order the Double order, Ally would point out how it's cheaper to do the AYCE, but they refused because they would rather take their meals home. Fascinating.

Wild Wing's is famous for it's wing sauces. Or should I say wing sauce combinations. They have 101 flavours, but in actuality, they have like 20 sauces and rubs that they then mix together to make a whole bunch of combinations. They also don't make their own sauces - all are commercial sauces like Frank's and Diana's (a fact they used to advertise proudly on their menus).

For me the point of the AYCE isn't to fill myself with as much chicken as possible, but to sample a bunch of flavours. Their listing is broken down into categories like Honey I'm Home (all the honey garlic combos) or Feeling Chippy (all the potato chip flavours). Trying to find classic flavours like hot, or medium can be a challenge, and figuring out all the combos isn't always easy as you have to really track down what the name of one is if you don't know already.

I placed my first order, and it didn't take long for me to get round one. Because it was pretty quiet in the place, I could hear the cooks tossing the crispy chunks in the sauce. Round one looked pretty good.

There were a pile of fries that came with the order. They looked like fresh fries with their skins still on, but they were clearly frozen. They were decent frozen fries, and were better when I added vinegar and salt and ketchup.

There were also fresh celery and carrot sticks (always appreciated with wings) and I had a choice of blue cheese, ranch, or dill dip. While blue cheese is good, I'm a sucker for dill. It's creamy, dilly, it's what you want in a dill dip. I'm pretty sure this is the same dill sauce they use on their wings too.

My first order of Boneless Chicken came with approx 9 pieces. Each order after this came in 5's.

These chunks of chicken were all different sizes. Most of them were small bites that were bigger than say a popcorn chicken, but not much more. There were a few larger chunks in there too. These were roundish chunks, not nuggets, but the size of nuggets. They weren't uniform sized or cut either.

The chicken was breaded, and when deep fried, created a touch crunchy shell. Many on my first order were overcooked and too crunchy. But I will take crunchy over not crispy. At least the crunchy holds up to the thick sauces well.

The meat was mostly tender pieces of white chicken. However, one in like 8 pieces were this weird, solid piece of chicken that didn't seem like chicken at all. If it were a pressed chicken product I would understand, but I'm pretty sure they use real chicken breast. These are a frozen product for sure, so I'm sure that is what caused the every so often crappy piece.

My pieces came very well sauced and/or dry rubbed. Round 1 was extremely saucy and had a lake of sauce. Round 2 came with a lot of dry seasoning. Round 3 had wet pieces (mostly) but no extra sauce, and Round 4 had both enough sauce and dry seasoning.

As I mentioned before, I'm all about the experimentation, but I also want to ensure I like what I'm having. I had 4 rounds and went with 2 of my favourite flavours, and 2 experimentation.

ROUND 1: SWEATIN' BULLETS

To start off I wanted something saucy, spicy, and BBQ-y. There are a lot of BBQ options, and I went for the extreme, Sweatin' Bullets. "Smokey BBQ + Xtra Hot + Spontaneous Combustion" sounded what I was looking for.

This sauce was very very very hot. Yes the BBQ aspect was pretty smokey and had a slight sweetness (but it was mostly a savory dark BBQ). Heat wise, these wings were actually killer. It was a peppery fire, a sharp pain that went after the tip of the tongue. The heat really stuck around even after having veggies & dip, fries and my drink. It actually overpowered the BBQ sauce. In my heart I really wanted a more BBQ heavy sauce, but my ego went for the spicy. So this sauce isn't bad, but I would go for a lesser heat more flavour sauce next time.

ROUND 2 - DRY KETCHUP

Ketchup chips is one of my favourites, and this is one of my favourite rubs at Wild Wings. I usually order this with a side of sauce (but I knew I had lots of sauce leftover from Round 1). Actually when I usually order this I ask for extra seasoning because its often not enough, but this time I didn't and they came loaded with dry ketchup seasoning.

It tastes like ketchup and it doesn't at the same time. It's like a sweet BBQ without the savoury, but also has a slightly sour vinegar kick to it. It was best when cutting a chunk in half, then dipping the exposed chicken into the seasoning. I also really enjoyed dunking my Sweatin' Bullets into it. Definitely would have again.

ROUND 3 - HOT DILL PICKLE

One of the most straight forward names on the whole menu - it's hot sauce and creamy dill dip. It's also one of my regular flavours when I come. I'm not usually a big creamy wing fan, but this is something I really like. What's not to like? It's creamy, cooling dilly ranch flavour, with some spicy hot sauce mixed in. How could you not like it? Well I guess if you don't like creamy wings or tangy dill I suppose.

Definitely will get again.

ROUND 4: DAISY DUKE

I almost didn't get this round. Round 3 I was feeling pretty full when Ally came to check on me. She asked if I wanted another round, and I said while I wanted to, I didn't think I could make it. "You got this, c'mon you can do it" she said. Then she sweetened the deal and said if I got it she would bring me a take-out container in case I didn't finish. Sold. That was pretty awesome and I loved the encouragement about 'having this'.

I went out of my comfort zone and got Daisy Duke: BBQ + Medium + Dry Mango Chipotle. Wow, that sounded really interesting. This was all over the place, and it looked great with a saucy glaze. It had 'heat', it had BBQ savoury/sweet, and the dry rub was also sweet, spicy, smokey. Really unique.

I think 5 pieces was just right for me - I wouldn't want a large order of these, but they were good for sampling.

Overall I had a good experience. Service was good, fast, and I was well taken care of.  The boneless chicken was mostly good - sometimes too crunchy, with a few weirdly hard pieces of chicken. They were all sauced/rubbed up nicely too. It's hard to choose between 101 flavours, but I went with some good ones, and have a better idea next time what to get.

Wild Wing
3712 Innes Road, Orleans ON
wildwingsrestaurants.com

Lord of the Wings Wedding & Wings: A 1 Year Anniversary Retrospective

Having the title of Lord of the Wings comes with certain expectations; that you will like spicy food, you will order chicken wings anytime possible ... and if your going to get married, you will have chicken wings at your wedding. Well, we did, and it was great.

1 Year ago, I married the love of my life after a very long courting period, and it was the happiest day of my life. It also involved a lot of chicken wings, but my bride-to-be knew what she was getting into, and she did everything to make my dreams come true (wing and otherwise).

RESEARCH

We knew we were going to integrate chicken wings into our wedding (no it was not the theme) but exactly how, we weren't sure. Ok that's not true, we knew for a long time that we would have a Chicken Wing Fountain. Wait, you've never heard of a chicken wing fountain? You know where you dip chicken wings into a fountain flowing with wing sauce - like a chocolate fountain - only 10 times more awesome!

When we booked our vendor, it was the most important question I had, if we could do this at our post-dinner buffet. The coordinator was blown away and had never heard of such a thing, but she was excited and said they would get on board to make it happen. We hit a little snag when she left a few months later on leave and a new coordinator said they could do the chicken, but the fountains we would have to look into ourselves.

I researched online and found NOTHING about chicken wing sauce fountains other than a few pictures, but no how-to's or instruction guides. So I took the plunge, bought 2 fountains online and went to a restaurant supply store to buy some jugs of hot sauce to test this concept out. I mean if people can do nacho cheese, why not wings?!

The test was a success!!!  I was using a President's Choice Buffalo Wing Sauce (something that would be tasty for all palates) which is a little thick, but it worked. I also got a BBQ sauce (for those that don't like 'hot') and it took some finessing with some vinegar to thin it out because it was a little too thick, but I finally got it to the consistency that it flowed from the top with ease.

Clean up was pretty easy - I expected this to be a massive mess - but as long as I drained the sauce (that was a bit messy) the equipment was disassembled and washed with ease.

I also got several 3.5 litre bottles of 3rd Degree hot sauce that would go as part of our give-aways at the end of the night. I designed some labels and with a short assembly line of fiancee and father-in-law-to-be, we got over 100 of these little bottles filled up.

WEDDING REHEARSAL DINNER

For our wedding rehearsal dinner for our wedding party, we had looked at many restaurants, caterers and even considered doing our own bbq (boy did we not have time to do that!) but to keep it to a reasonable price and availability it was really not working out. In the end, we booked the party room in my apartment building (which walks out to the garden/courtyard). It was a little chaotic with our group finding my building, then getting everyone in, but once the food arrived, everyone was good to start eating.

  For food, we went with Pig Out BBQ on Spadina Street in Toronto; they gave us a great deal, delivered the food and got us some great grub. One of the dishes was of course, smoked wings in a sweet smokey BBQ sauce. They were a big hit, but then, so was all of the food that night (pulled pork, ribs, salads, mac & cheese etc). There was so much food and some very happy, full tummies afterward. We were super happy with this vendor.

NIGHT BEFORE

Our rehearsal was on a Thursday night to make it less hectic the night before our Saturday wedding. For Friday dinner we went with one of our favourite Chinese restaurants from our undergrad, New Ho King. But I got something I had never had (or knew they had) before: General Tso chicken wings. My favourite General Tso chicken is from here, and the fact they had them on wings was amazing. I did a pick up and they were a bit cold by the time I ate them, but that sticky, sweet, spicy flavour was there and I couldn't believe I was having wings again!

THE WEDDING

The wedding went pretty smoothly with few hiccups and great weather. A beautiful ceremony, fun entertainment, and lots of food and lots of booze; everyone seemed to have a great time. It was good to see all of the planning, time, and money paying off for such a great party.

Our venue was the Great Hall in Hart House, a student centre at the University of Toronto (where we met) but think of the place as Harry Potter-esque rather than student centre. Before dinner there was an oyster bar, antipasto, and a bunch of fancy appetizers being served. For dinner, we had multiple courses including roasted butternut squash soup, buffalo mozzarella/tomato salad, squid ink pasta, and duo of beef & chicken entrees. There was lots to eat and people seemed quite happy with the meal (we didn't get much time to eat, but from what I tasted, it was very good). After that it was cake cutting and everyone had our wedding cake for desert.

As mentioned, on the tables were take-aways of our "Wedding Pyre Sauce" - some spicy 3rd Degree hot sauce that I still get compliments on to this day. Some used it that night, others saved it for home. Some even pirated extra bottles from other tables!


LATE NIGHT BITES

The dinner course went a bit longer in time than expected, so when people came out after dinner,speeches, and a bhangra dance performance, they found late night food stations set up with even more food; a candy table, a poutine bar, beef sliders, and cotton candy on a stick. But THE food station that stood by far was our chicken wing fountains.

The venue could not run this station (only provide chicken wings), so I hired one of my student staff from work to come, set up, sauce and serve at the fountains. Mike did a great job and even got the fountains to run better than I did in the test runs!

I was busy . . . talking to people, or getting pictures taken (who knows it was so busy), but as soon as I could I was out in the courtyard making sure the fountains were up and running!

When I talked to the venue, they said they could do the wings with no issue. My big request was that the wings be fried, not baked. I know baked wings are easier for catering, and I've had them before and they don't turn out the best. Well these fried wings were amazing. I could have eaten these crispy, salty wonders just on their own. I couldn't tell you how happy I was they turned out so well.

The fountains were a novelty and entertainment on their own. So many people commented how they had never seen anything like it and that it was so appropriate because of me. People came out saying they were stuffed from dinner, but that didn't stop the wings from all being eaten!

There were skewers and tongs for people to dip, but some couldn't wait and did hand dips! The two sauces worked well, but the Buffalo sauce was the more popular of the two. If I was to do it differently, I would maybe have done a ranch fountain instead of the BBQ.

I gotta say, I was very happy how these turned out. I also had to work very hard to not spill on my tux and I'm proud to say I stayed sauce free!


HONEYMOON

Sunday was a chill out day as well as some clean up, but then it was all night packing and getting ready for our honeymoon. Monday we were off early morning and flight bound for a beatiful resort in Costa Rica.

The resort was quite remote, so it was a long van ride through back country, but when we arrived, the place was paradise. We got to our honeymoon suite and we were starving. We were also exhausted, so we decided to order room service. Low and behold, what did I see on the menu? Buffalo chicken wings.

 The wings looked amazing. The cut of the chicken was weird (like the drummets had large chunks of the scappula meat on them) - the meat was a bit tough, but the sauce was a nice mild Buffalo sauce. What a way to start a vacation!

The resort also organized a romantic dinner on the beach later in the week. Guess what was on THAT menu? Buffalo wings. These weren't as good (or as Buffalo-ized) as my first meal, but hey, I wasn't expecting wings at all!

So after one year there have been a lot of changes in my life, but now I have my Lady of the Wings by my side. Looking back at all the photos, I remember what a great day we had and it couldn't have gone better. We couldn't have done it without our amazing family and friends, wedding coordinator, and some awesome vendors who helped make it such a special day for us.

I truly feel that I am so lucky.

Lord of the Wings