The Winning Wings: Chowdown Showdown

Editor's Note: Welcome to "Chowdown Showdown," a weekly feature in which we take one type of food, try it at three H-F or Chicago Heights area restaurants and determine a winner. This week's food in focus is the beef sandwich.

mild wings were nicely fried, and there was a satisfying crispiness when I bit into them. The flavor of the chicken was excellent. The sauce was good, but lacked the acidic brightness that tends to cut through the other heavy flavors. The wings had a slight fattiness to them, but it wasn’t terribly unpleasant or distracting. 

These wings were the least artfully fried, offering moderate chicken flavor with essentially no crispiness to them. The wings themselves were of an average size and quality. The sauce, however, was the best by far. It had the perfect balance of heat and vinegary acidity, making the otherwise mediocre wings jump to life.

The fry quality of these wings was moderate. There was a slight crisp to them, but I would have liked a little more. The sauce was a bit lacking in acidity, but it had a nice smokiness to it. The quality of the wings was great. There was a great flavor and the size was very satisfying. The homemade blue cheese dipping sauce was fantastic. It maintained a certain refreshing lightness, with generous chunks of blue cheese adding a wonderful texture contrast.

THE WINNER:

seems to be in a class of its own on this challenge. While fry was closer to perfection and sauce was the boss, undoubtedly had the most well-balanced chicken wing. When it comes down to it, I want the whole package and Bogart's had it all. 

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