THE WING FACTORY - Mississauga ON

So I was in Mississauga the other week. Yes, if you have been noticing, I have been on the road lately and have been scrambling to finish all my reviews. But the good news is that means I have had the opportunity to sample more wings across the province. I was going to be having lunch and I did some research about wings in 'Sauga, and I came across Wing Factory.

I was a bit confused at first because the same address coming up for The Wingery, a small local chain that I have been to before (but didn't review) many years around. It turns out this location of the Wingery closed, but in it's ashed arose Wing Factory.

Now it seems to me that realistically, the folks at Wing Factory copied everything that The Wingery started in terms of the menu and the wings. But I haven't done enough sampling to say for sure. The Wing Factory is located in a strip mall nestled in between a pizza place and a convenience store.

Now this is a take-out place but they have gone all out inside to make this a restaurant experience. They have rustic/urban/fancy decor with two tables and TV's that one can watch a game and hang out. I really dug it. I debated getting my wings to go or staying in, but I opted to eat on the go.

Wings are obviously the focus here. There are 30 flavours of wings to choose from! Yes, you can get chicken burgers or salads or fries etc etc. but really, you really want the wings.

I went in and the Wing Dude at the counter was waiting for me and ready to answer all my questions. Checking out their website I knew going in there were a lot of sauces to choose from but several of the sauces had no descriptor. Wing Dude saw me scanning the menu and told me the best sellers are the Hot Honey BBQ (half Hot BBQ & half Honey Garlic) and Gutter Butter (their Buffalo style sauce). I asked about Colonel Frank (he said it was based on Frank's Xtra Hot) Factory Secret ( Colonel Frank & Caribbean Jerk, 'very flavourful and is a bit strong') Nightmare Alley ( 'One of our hot sauces, in top 3. Own recipe, has powders, cayenne, direct chili powder. It also has the Colonel Frank). There was quite a bit to choose from and in the end I went really simple (after making him give all those explanations!) with a Spicy BBQ and their Gutter Butter sauces.

Wing Dude went into the back and got everything prepared. He also asked me if I wanted Blue Cheese Dip, or something else? I said blue cheese but then asked what were my other options? He said there was also Ranch, Creamy Garic, Sour Cream and Dill. I was like, can I get 1 Blue Cheese and one Dill? He was like, yes you get two so we can mix. Awesome.

Shortly after I had my order. It came in a tall, not wide paper bag. At the top was lots of napkins and wetnaps (nice). Then there were two little boxes; I pulled them out and there was celery and carrot sticks and my two dips. The veggies were nice and fresh with a good snap on them. I tried the Dill dip and it was really dilly, like fresh dill taste. It was good, but just on the verge of being too watery. But then I had the blue cheese. It was so good. It was creamy, thick, and tasted so good. There were no chunks of actual blue cheese, but that's ok. It was so good I could drink it. Ok I did drink it. You would too; I'm not a monster.

Beneath those mini boxes were two larger boxes that I was very excited to break into.

 When I first entered Wing Factory, I saw the smallest order of wings was $8.49 for a 1/2 pound, and I asked the Wing Dude, how many wings roughly come in a 1/2 pound? He said 4 and he knew that that didn't sound like very much. He told me that their wings are much larger than average, and that the drummette alone can be the size of a drumstick.

He was right. One box had 4 wings and the other had 5, but man oh man were those wings HUGE. Jumbo. And to boot, the chicken was fresh and locally sourced. Wow. Did I mention these wings were giant? Length wise yes, but they were so meaty each one was heavy to lift. My pictures do not do them justice. I actually had a hard time holding some of them up with one hand.

The wings are also breaded and then deep fried. The breading is crumbly (in a good way) and held up to the sauces pretty well. The wings were also deep fried just right so that the skin/breading was crispy, but that the meat inside was cooked just right. This is really an art as when you have wings this meaty, to cook them enough you've got to fry them longer, which can lead to over-fried skin/breading, dried out meat, or over/under cooked meat. These were none of those things. The meat was on the verge of being tough though, but it didn't go over thankfully.

As for the sauce, the wings were very well sauced. Each wing was wet and sat in a small puddle of extra sauce.

In fact there was so much sauce that it was nearly impossible to eat cleanly. The walls of the box had so much sauce that my hands could not grab a wing without getting sauce on them to begin with. I'm cool with that, but neat freaks be warned.

With all the flavours to choose from, I went with two simple ones. I wanted to see if the basics were good, so I went with Gutter Butter and Spicy BBQ. Also, those are probably my favourite wing flavour profiles anyway.

GUTTER BUTTER

Wing Dude described this as their version of Buffalo sauce, and it tasted like everything you want Buffalo sauce to taste like.

It was rich and buttery, so that was awesome. But it also had a good bite to it. It had a sting and was actually hot. Spicy and buttery. It was just really really good.

SPICY BBQ

This was also really good. It was everything you want in a Spicy BBQ sauce. It had all the flavour, but it was also sticky, thick, not quite gooey, but oh so good.

There was a sweetness to it, but also had that dark savoriness. It had a hint of smoke. The texture, the flavour, oh this was a good sauce.

The wings were so good and I was very happy to get them. I was stuffed after lunch and went and napped afterward. Later when I met up with LJ she asked what I did for lunch and I told her about the wings. Her mouth watered at my tale. We continued on and had to decide what we were getting for supper. LJ said maybe we could get Wing Factory for dinner ...

Well, it was wing night, and after some convincing, I was in. We decided we get their Tuesday deal which is 3lbs of wings for $29.50 (normally $38) and we would chill in our hotel room and watch TV and eat wings. I called up and got the same Wing Dude as lunch. I asked if we could split the flavours and he said we could get 3 flavours. I asked if it came with veggies and he said no but you could add them for $2.99) and we also got some Mac & Cheese bites.

We went to The Wing Factory and I went in to pick up the order. It was Wing Dude #2, but I could hear the original Wing Dude in the back. Wing Dude #2 was like I'm just about to sauce your wings. He came out shortly with my big paper bag and we scooted back to begin our feast.

We got an order of Mac & Cheese Bites ($8.99) which didn't seem like a big order, but there was about 8 nugget sized pieces. They were cheesy and crispy, but I found they needed a dip for sure.

More veggie sticks (for health) and more blue cheese. This was great.

We went with 3 different flavours this time. We got Gutter Butter again, because it was awesome. We also went with Honey Mustard and Vampire Slayer. Ya!

VAMPIRE SLAYER

Cool name for some cool wings. These were the breaded wings tossed in a Dry Garlic Parmesan or DGP as they call it) and then thickly drizzled with Creamy Garlic sauce.

This was a great hybrid wing - part dry part wet. Now this did not put a stake through my heart; I was expecting a STRONG garlic flavour, but these weren't that strong. The Seasoning was nice, but mild, and the garlic sauce was nice and creamy, but again, mild. This was a nice wing but I wouldn't order it as my only choice - it was nice in our sampler box.

HONEY MUSTARD

This was exactly what you expect (or at least I expect) when you get Honey Mustard wing sauce. It tastes like honey and mustard.

The sauce is thick, it's honey sweet, with that slight mustard pungency. But it doesn't taste artificial like some HM sauces. I liked it but it was not LJ's fave.

FINAL SCORE:

I was super impressed with The Wing Factory. Fresh, local, jumbo chicken, breaded well and fried just right. The sauces are plentiful and flavourful. The wings were just outstanding. The chicken might be almost too big, but overall, you can tell these people really care about their wings. Well done Wing Factory, well done. Why can't you exist in my city?!  13/15

The Wing Factory
510 Driftcurrent Dr #10, Mississauga, ON
thewingfactory.ca