Origin of Buffalo Wings

Also see Anchor Bars Buffalo Chicken Wing Recipe

An Attempt to Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing (This article brought Buffalo Wings to national attention.)
John Young Stakes His Claim to the Chicken Wing

From wikipedia: Buffalo, New York's now-famous Anchor Bar Restaurant's association with Buffalo wings originated in the 1960s after trademarking the recipe created by John Young.

On March 4, 1964, Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar. Late that evening, a group of Bellissimo's friends arrived at the bar. He asked his mother, Teressa, to prepare something for his friends to eat. With little food left, Teressa took some chicken wings, which were normally used for soups or thrown out, deep-fried them and put a spin on Young's original recipe using a mixture of Frank's RedHot sauce, butter, cayenne pepper and other ingredients on them. She brought out some cut celery and blue cheese for dipping as hors d'oeuvres. That began the Buffalo tradition started by John Young.

The wings were initially offered free of charge.

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According to one employee of the Anchor Bar’s, “It took a few years before Buffalo wings became popular. At first customers were not so hot on the idea of paying for chicken scraps.” Soon enough the the wings were becoming more popular than the regular Italian food on the menu. During the 70’s, the popularity of the Buffalo wings took off and spread across the city and then bars across the state of New York. It was in the 1980’s and 90’s that Buffalo wings gained nationally popularity in major restaurant chains and became a favorite snack to serve during the Superbowl.

A interesting tidbit I came across on the Origins of Buffalo Wings: Elizabeth from Upper Marlboro, MD claims that "Buffalo Wing history didn't begin with Ben and Theresa at the Anchor Bar on Main Street. The Buffalo Wing was originated by an old black gentleman (name unknown) who used to sell them out of a little hole in the wall in the Elmwood Avenue area near the Buffalo School of Music (Elmwood near Bryant). At some time during the late '70's he sold his recipe to the owner of the Anchor Bar. I know this because my parents used to buy them regularly when I was a kid."

From https://www.buffalorising.com/: "The Buffalo affection for chicken wings is not limited to the Bellissimo version, however. The first appearance of chicken wings in the Buffalo telephone book was courtesy of John M. Young (1935-1988). Young, an African-American entrepreneur, opened a restaurant in 1966 called “Wings & Things” at 1313 Jefferson Avenue. His wings were uncut, breaded, deep-fried, and served with his secret, tomato-based Mambo Sauce. They were sold ten for a dollar."

From https://heated.medium.com/: "John Young, who died in 1998, had said it was he who started off the whole wing thing in Buffalo, not Teressa Bellissimo of the Anchor Bar, which now has a location in New York City’s Times Square. And I think the story of John Young — who grew up with 13 siblings on a four-acre Alabama truck farm, worked with his father on a riverboat kitchen, and moved to Buffalo for work in the 1950s with plenty of other blacks during the Great Migration — definitely has some credence. John Young’s wings were similar but different: Like the others, they were fried and paired with a Day-Glo reddish sauce he called “mombo” (a sauce you’ll also see spelled mumbo, mambo, or mumble, depending on where you are), but they were served whole and fried Southern-style with a crispy “Golden Dip” batter.

In 1996, Young told Buffalo News food critic Janice Okun that he served fried wings without sauce at several Buffalo restaurants he’d run since 1961 — along with other soul foods like ribs and grits. After he heard about a fried wing place in Washington, D.C., from a traveling boxer, he added the sauce and named a new operation at Jefferson and Utica Streets John Young’s Wings and Things. “The day we opened, people fell out of the sky,” Young told Okun. “I was selling 10 wings — whole — for $1 then, and people were lined up around the corner like they were going to a rummage sale.”

Young didn’t give details, but we can be pretty sure mombo sauce was not totally his invention, though his recipe likely was. Since at least 1962 and maybe the late 1950s, there was a fried wing and “mambo” sauce place in Washington, D.C., which was also called Wings N Things, and so popular it inspired the 1965 album from Johnny Hodges and Wild Bill Davis called “Wings & Things.”

By most accounts, the D.C. Wings N Things was inspired by Argia B’s Mumbo Sauce, a barbecue sauce created by Argia B. Collins at his Chicago restaurants in the 1950s. He moved up to Chicago from Mississippi, where a mild tomato-based barbecue sauce is common. Collins’ customers at his many restaurants put it on everything he served, including fried chicken.

In fact, an Argia B’s-like sauce just called “mild sauce” has been served in South Chicago fried chicken joints since at least the 1960s. It’s more like barbecue sauce with a bit of sweetness, while D.C. mambo/ mumbo/mumble sauce has a little more sweet-and-sour going for it.

That’s not surprising, considering who now makes it: primarily Chinese “carryouts,” which took over the fried chicken business after the Washington, D.C., riots of 1968, which actually claimed the original Wings N Things. John Young’s sauce seems like it may have been somewhere in between all of these. (By the way, in both D.C. and Chicago, the fried wings served with it are often battered.) I have also found a 1963 ad for pit barbecue with mumbo sauce in what was titled the “negro section” of the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, which leads to me to think this sauce either existed in the South or made its way around the country thanks to Argia B.

As Miller says of John Young in his 2013 book “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time,” hot fish, or fried fish covered in hot sauce, was common in black-owned Southern establishments, so “a chicken wing drowning in hot sauce,” he wrote, “fits squarely within the soul food tradition.