Lord of the Wings

In search of the city’s tastiest Super Bowl wings, TONY calls in the big-gun judges: football players with the all-female New York Sharks

ccording to Buffalo-wing expert Anna “Tonka” Tate, we must take two precautions before we eat the Super Bowl staple. First check for hairs, then, smell the meat. This isn’t exactly the kind of routine we want to go through at game time – Buffalo wings are meant to be inhaled, not inspected – but we’re not going to argue with the woman. At 5′ 11″ and 285 pounds, Tonka, an offensive lineman on the New York Sharks female football team, isn’t someone you want to mess with, as any player in the Independent Women’s Football League will confirm. Her motto, in life and on the field, is “Move, bitch. Get out of the way.”

Wings are just part of the game-day experience for football fans, but for players like Tonka and her teammates, the chicken parts are practically a religion. To hear the Sharks talk wings, you’d think the women had invented them. Dipping a wing in batter is a fumble, a heavy hand with the vinegar is a penalty, and charging a price that has a number to the left of the decimal point is a slap in the face. Their criteria for winning wings: Make it chicken, make it hotter than hell, and make it messy. Anne Perissi, a rookie Shark, says the more napkins you go through, the better the wing.

For TONY‘s first-ever Wing Bowl, we gave the Sharks (Tonka, defensive end Rose Addison, staff member Star Wilson and Perissi) eight batches of wings and asked them to rate the entire bunch. They doled out up to seven possible “touchdown” points each in the areas of appearance, texture and taste – just in time for the big game by that other football league. If the Sharks ate big at the taste-off, they talked even bigger, shouting out insults that would make a grown chef cry. We cleaned up some of the language, but otherwise, you’re getting their honest, no-holds-barred opinions. If you’ve got issues with the commentary, take it up with them yourselves.

Teams	Scouting Report	Pre-game analysis	Play-by-Play	Score
Hooters 211 W 56th St between Broadway and Seventh Ave	Enough with the breasts; we’re just interested in wings. We ordered the mild version battered and fried, and the hotter ones naked (as it should be).	At first glance, the Sharks are worried. With little meat and lot of bone, the wings resemble legs from a can-can line.	They agree the wings are “like butter.” Which isn’t a good thing. “Butter is not what wings are supposed to taste like.”	6. No better than Banquet wings from the grocery-stroe freezer case.
Biscuit 367 Flatbush Ave between Seventh Ave and Sterling Pl, Prospect Hts, Brooklyn	The “firecracker” wings are smothered in a sauce made with chipolte, simple syrup and lemon juice, and served with a buttermilk-cheddar dip.	The team’s eys light up at the sight of these. “They look like KFC wings. And those are good.”	Decent flavor, but not spicy enough to warrant the name. “It’s more like a barbecue sauce, sweet with a spicy kick-back.”	18. High marks for layers of flavor and the deep-red color.
Amy Ruth’s 113 W 116 St between Lenox and Seventh Aves	This Harlem soul-food spot is famous for its fried chicken, so we expect big things from the wings – even if they are $1 a pop (with a minimum order of 48).	Price is no object…yet. The wings look like the meatiest of the bunch.	The wings are tasty enough – slightly salty with a lot of tang – but they miss on texture. They’re called “spongy,” “dried out” and “crispless.”	7. It’s the economy stupid. Wings aren’t supposed to cost $1.
Blue Smoke 116 E 27th St between Park Ave South and Lexington Ave	These meager-looking wings are brined, smoked, deep-fried and smothered in a dark, rich, molasses-y sauce – and, being Danny Meyer wings, they’re served with designer wet-naps.	Good first impression. No hairs, and the meat smells promising.	The process of smoking wings is dismissed as “lame,” despite the decent flavor.	13. The wings taste fine, but no one wants to pay $9.50 for a dozen wings just because they spent time in a high-end smoker.
Le Zinc 139 Duane St between Church St and West Broadway	Football as we know it isn’t popular in France, so we’ll excuse Le Zinc’s blatant disregard for the form: Their “wings” are from a duck – and served with a sweet-and-hot bean sauce.	Our judges are wary of touching the duck wing, noting that it “looks liek something I might have stepped in on my way here.”	Is it chicken? Is it beef? After learning that it’s duck, the ladies decide these are an abomination, no matter what they taste like.	7. If the wing ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Social 795 Eight Ave between 48th and 49th Sts.	This new venue serves a simple, down-to-earth version with a bright orange sauce speckled with spices.	The girls are impressed with the vibrant color of the sauce and the texture of the skin.	The promising-looking wings turn out to be a bit salty but are otherwise leaders of the pack.	20. Purists all, the Sharks appreciate simple, traditional wings.
Veg-City Diner 55 W 14th St between Fifth and Sixth Aves	Sensing the uproar that would ensue, we try to pass off these oversize vegetarian “wings” (made of breaded soy) as the real thing.	At first, the Sharks are fooled – and impressed with the aroma, saying that these smell hot enough to open your pores.	Insults range from “tastes like by-products” to “worse than McDonald’s nuggets.”	0. The judges say that if anyone gives them these wings again, they’ll slap them right back.
Atomic wings 528 Ninth Ave between 39th and 40th Sts.	These fluorescent-orange entries from New York’s prolific wing joint come in six degrees of heat, from mild to suicidal. We give the team medium-strength.	Although the flaming color is promising, our judges worry that medium won’t cut it. No wings should ever be less than dangerously spicy, they say.	It’s unanimous: The flavor’s excellent, but the medium wings are, as Addison says, “weak enough to give to my two-year-old.”	21. A winner, so long as you take a cue from thename and order the atomic-strength heat.

by David Tamarkin