A Chicken Wing Story: Recreating Chaps wing Sauce

As Lord of the Wings I get a bunch of e-mail. I get a lot of spam. I get a lot from people who confuse me with the chain Lord of the Wings, food trucks named Lord of the Wings, or even products and restaurants that I have reviewed. But I also get e-mails from folks trying to track down information about closed restaurants or how a particular place makes a sauce. Recently I received an e-mail from Steve H, who wanted to locate some Laredo Hot Sauce to help recreate his favourite wings from a now closed restaurant, Chaps. 

"Chaps in Burlington was my wing place for 30 years.(even though I live 45 minutes away in Paris).., and my 20 year old son Spencer had become a fan too....my heart was heavy when I saw they had retired and shut it down."

Chap's was a Western themed bar in Burlington Ontario, but they were well known for their wings. Seeing reviews online, people raved about their wings. I can't believe I had never heard about this place.

Looking at their menu, they have some very tasty sounding wings. I can see why a lot of people liked it there. But unfortunately this past May 2018, Chap's closed:

Not gonna lie. It's gonna be hard to say goodbye to Chaps Restaurant. We've been eating their wings for a looooong time. Thanks to all of their amazing staff, and best of luck to all of them ❤️❤️😢. #burlon #wings #sad

A post shared by Community of Burlington Life (@cob_life) on May 12, 2018 at 11:08am PDT

It sad when a favourite wing place closes, so I understood Steve's request:

"Hi Lord,

Given your title, you will hopefully relate to my dilemma:

My favourite wing place for the last 30 years was Chaps in Burlington. Loved their wings, Loved their Medium Sauce. Sadly, I found out that they recently closed for retirement without allowing me a final feast.....I am in withdrawal. Their medium sauce was 75% Select BBQ sauce (which I have found) and 25% Laredo hot sauce/wing sauce...the large jug , not the little hot sauce bottles. (A few years ago I bought a jug of each sauce from the bartender).

I googled Laredo sauce and found your 2008 posting about Costco. Do you know where I could find that sauce today?

Thanks

Steve"

Always wanting to help out a wing lover in need, I set about to try and track down Laredo sauce. Steve was referring to my 2008 review of the Laredo jug I had from Costco. Costco does not carry it anymore, but I was able to contact Upper Canada Food Group Ltd, who are the distributors of the sauce. They told me that they stopped selling the sauce to the public a few years ago, with only one place in Ontario still selling it  https://mvrwholesale.com/ in Toronto Ontario. The downside is that this Cash & Carry is not open to the public.

This didn't slow Steve down though! Over the Father's Day weekend, he and his family set out to recreate their favourite wing flavour:

"My wife Christine  spent Father’s Day making home made “boneless” wings, while Spencer and I experimented with the sauce....it was a great Father’s Day."

I love how they set out to experiment with different sauce mixtures to try and recreate the Chap's sauce. Those wing sauced boneless wings look mighty good no matter how close a clone this recipe was or not!

Steve is going to set out to try and get some of the Laredo from some chef friends that can shop at the MVR. I hope he is able to recreate the wings he once had. RIP Chaps.


If you have a wing problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find me, maybe you can hire the W-Team. Or me Lord of the Wings, and you can find me at lordofthewingsblog @ gmail.com - I'll do what I can to solve your #wingproblem