SAMMY's REC ROOM ~ Brantford ON

MARCH 2013

Back in March I rented a car and went to go visit my grandmothers in South Western Ontario. On this snowy winter day I stopped into Brantford Ontario for lunch and stopped at a place I had been told had great food and huge portions.

Brantford has a strong industrial history and Sammy's is located in a working class neighborhood from the mid-20th century.

I walked in and there were definitely a lot of locals who were repeat customers. It was a jovial atmosphere and quite busy at 11am. The place itself was a mishmash of decorations. I thought it was a bit odd with the movie posters and sports memorabilia. Then it hit me, this was Sammy's Rec Room. Like my own basement growing up as a teenager, this was all about putting up my favourite things and being a place where I could have fun and be comfortable.

I didn't catch her name, but my waitress was very attentive and helpful. She was not chipper nor was she fake, but she worked hard and made me feel looked after. I saw her and the other servers bringing out huge plates of food, and looking at the menu, the prices were more than reasonable. No, the food was cheap, and not in a way that compromised quality.

I ordered wings, and got a side of onion rings (which came at a discount price).

The onion rings are battered and deep fried. They were crispy and tasted just as they should.

On the side of the wings came veggies and blue cheese dip. This was a thick blue cheese dressing and went well with the crispy fresh veggies.

The wings come in orders of a pound, which for Sammy's is about 8 wings.

The wings are dusted, then deep fried and tossed in sauce. The wings were wet, but not floating in sauce.

The chicken was a mediun in length but very meaty. The skin started out crispy, but the wing sauce quickly reduced that structure.

There were a lot of sauces to choose from, but after quizzing my server, found out that many of the heats were just Frank's Hot Sauces. I wanted something that was a little more unique so I went with their Buffalo Cajun.

The sauce was very good. It was rich and buttery, but the one note of the Frank's was raised by the Cajun seasoning. This was a sauce I wanted to keep eating, and would dip my onion rings into. 

FINAL SCORE:  Sammy's serves some great wings. They were meaty, tender and the sauce was full of flavour on many levels. The wings lost their crispiness fairly quick, but the flavour never left. The onion rings were also good, and I would come back for sure.  7/10

SAMMY's REC ROOM
10 Mt Pleasant Street,  Brantford ON
sammys.ca

PS: had a great time with my Grandmothers, I wish I could see them more.

PINTY's Pub Wings ~ Buffalo & Caesar

FEB 2013

Back at the beginning of the year I was contacted by Claudia at Pinty's, the makers of Pinty's wings. She mentioned I hadn't reviewed Pinty's wings for a while, and generously wanted to send me some free coupons to review them. They were doing some Super Bowl marketing, and I appreciate when people send things to me for free, so said yes please. 

Not long after I received a package in the mail - it was even addressed to Lord of the Wings!

Inside was a pamphlet with their new branding of their wings as Pinty's "Pub & Grill."

Inside that was a bunch of coupons, info, NFL stuff.

There was also a letter about Pinty's and the NFL. I'll give you a minute to read it. I love the pantomime "eatertainment." Go on, read it.

Here is more of their collaboration with football, and if you keep looking, the CFL and NASCAR.


So I went out and used the coupons at the first place that I could find these new wings, which was as a Sobeys. I was happy for the coupon for a free box at 900g because these wings were over $15.99 for a box. I'm willing to admit these might be a more premium box of frozen wings to say your standard box, but that's still a pricy box of wings.

I took two boxes of wings, one of their Caesar wings and one of their Buffalo. Now I'm sad to say that I tried these wings before the Super Bowl and intended to have the review up in time, but, well this blog has been neglected for a while and I'm sorry for that to Pinty's, to you the readers, and to the blog itself. But better late than never right?

CAESAR

Chicken wings with a Caesar drink in mind. I like this out of the box thinking on a chicken wing flavour. Now a Caeser, if you are not familiar, is a cocktail that is basically a Bloody Mary, but made with Clamato instead of tomato juice.

What's great about these wings is that they give different instructions on how you can enjoy these wings. Tossed in sauce or rimmed with salt and dipped ... that's a great idea.

Here's how the box came - full of wings, sauces, rimming agents . . .

The wings are breaded, and pretty big. There aren't many in the package (about 15 ) but these are big for frozen wings. I put them on parchment paper and baked them in the oven, but they give instructions for deep frying and BBQ'ing as well.

BUFFALO

Sometimes you have to go with a classic. Now I do have an issue with these being called Buffalo, especially because they were being baked, I could fry them and thus make that a moot point. 

 Inside the Buffalo there were not only two types of hot sauce, but blue cheese dressing as well. These wings are all about choice.

Again, they give instructions on different ways to enjoy the wings.

Do note, there is quite the lengthy ingredient list on these wings and the sauces in them.

The Buffalo wings are less seasoned (as in, not at all) compared to the Caesar wings.

I put both wings together to bake - Caesar on the left, Buffalo on the right.

Because the sauces are frozen, I put them in a bowl of warm water to thaw while the wings cooked.

After 30 minutes the wings were ready and actually a bit crisp.

Here is the final product. Looks good right? Lets see how we got there:

With the Caesar wings, I tossed them in the packet of Caesar Rim, what would normally go on the glass of the cocktail.

This is a celery/salty mix and I decided to keep this dry, and use the Caesar Sauce as a dip on the side.

The wings were crispy, and very very salty. Very salty. A little overwhelming on their own. I only used 1 of 2 packets and only used half the wings, but I think one packet is more than enough for the whole box. If it wasn't so salty, these would have been pretty decent on their own.

The Caesar sauce was very tomato-ey and if this is going to be a Caesar, that makes sense. It was a little marinara-ey for my liking, but it did taste Caeser like. The batter on this really wanted to fall off too, which was unfortunate. My only other criticism was that this sauce was too salty as well.

Combining the sauce and the rimmed tossed wings made everything really salty. This was my overarching experience with the Caesar wings.

The Buffalo wings came with two sauces: Medium and Hot, with Medium being a larger bag. The medium tasted like other bottled generic 'Buffalo' sauces, and the Hot, which was actually hot. I mixed the two together.

Buffalo wings have to be tossed in the sauce, so they were.

Those almost look like wings from a pub eh?

Then I added the blue cheese sauce as a thick drizzling.

The Buffalo sauce was (guess what I'm going to say next . . .) salty. But it was a decent buttery hot sauce mixture, and again I appreciated the heat of the hot sauce. The blue cheese sauce was creamy, and salty (but as a blue cheese should be). The combination was ok. Kind of crispy, kind of oily. The chicken was nothing special. No breading, but as a Buffalo it shouldn't.

These were two very interesting wings. Both were pretty big, they turned out crispy, as the sauces had a lot of flavours. There are a lot of options on how to cook and how to serve and eat these wings. I liked the creativity that went into these products.

I have to say my biggest beef with the wings was the high salt content, or at least flavour. It was just not necessary. The Buffalo wings were ok. The flavour was generic, but I feel like they actually put effort into the wing. I was very impressed with the Caesar wings because of the creativity. I haven't seen anyone else do this type of wing, the variations you can eat them, and while they would never be an everyday wing for me, they definitely add to the pantheon of wing flavours.

Would I get them again? Yes, but only on sale. I'm interested in the other new flavours they have, but have yet to try them. Thank's Pinty's for letting me try these.

ORIGINALS ~ Toronto ON

FEB 2013

The second meeting of the unofficial Chicken Wing Club, which consisted of Jasmik and Sameer and myself, decided it was time to get some wings. Sameer had his car, so we decided to spread out and try somewhere a little farther than usual. 

Sameer was gracious enough to drive us up to Originals in the Leaside area of Toronto. I had heard they had a wing night on Thursdays, so that's what cemented our choice for wings that night.

The bar was a lot nicer inside than I expected. I feel like it was an old bar that had gone through a bit of a make-over. Very simple, but don't be mistaken, its still a sports type bar. It just looks nice.

The crowd was mixed, with a lot of local older guys, but families, young people etc. Our waitress was Tanya, who was attentive and friendly. We did have a small issue with being served the wrong set of wings, which were taken away and a little while later the right ones came along. She did bring me Dr Pepper, which is not served at a lot of pubs, and I think that's great.

Once we had our wings and sides, it didn't take long for the three of us to chow down.

We ordered 4 orders of wings, and they generally came 2 orders to a plate.

Fries were an additional $1.99. They were ok - a little crispy but otherwise very forgettable.

Veggies and dip with ranch dip. Pretty standard.

Wings come in an order of a pound, which is about 8-9 wings that are naked and deep fried, then tossed in sauce.

The wings were a very decent size - large in length, and an appropriate mediumness in meat. The skin was crispy but became less so depending on the sauce.

We were doing a bunch of sharing, so we chose out 4 different orders of wings. Above we have Suicide because we all enjoy some heat. The Creamy Garlic Parmesan balanced that out.

We also tried some Spicy Thai and the dry Cajun rubbed wings.

GARLIC PARMESAN

If you like creamy wings, this is the way to go. This is a very indulgent wing, with the creamy, cheesy sauce that makes even me feel guilty about eating it. While there is a garlic flavour, its the creamy Parmesan that really stands out.

SPICY THAI

This sauce was slightly sweet and slightly salty with a bit of heat. But it is mostly sweet. It was tossed in just the right amount of sauce to make it sticky, but not overpowering.

SUICIDE

Suicide, was not really suicide. Really more of a hot. Classic cayenne based sauce.

CAJUN DUSTED

This was a dry rubbed based flavour - a mix of Cajun seasoning that was tossed in the freshly fried wings. Crispy, but full of flavour.

We all had our different opinions of the wings - this is how the other two ranked them:

Sameer: 1) Gar-Par 2) Cajun 3) Suicide 4) Thai  

Jamsik: 1) Thai 2) Gar-Par 3) Cajun 4) Hot/Suicide

FINAL SCORE:  I didn't expect a lot out of Original's wings, but they were surprisingly good. They were large without being mutant, the skin was crispy and they were just wet enough to prevent soggyness. The sauces were good. The vibe was a bit weird, but with 4 lbs of wings in our bellies, we were satisfied.

Originals
1660 Bayview Ave, Toronto ON
originalsbar.com