Chicken wings are a culinary triumph. So why do chefs want to ruin them?
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Version 0 of 1. I am pregnant with twins, and so spend a lot of time thinking about chicken wings and the things that go with chicken wings, primarily: corn dogs, jalapeño poppers, breaded mozzarella sticks dragged through marinara sauce. (Celery sticks, not so much). The perfect wing should make you wince without being too vinegary; the sauce plentiful without slopping off the side. And while fiery is the point of the wing’s very existence, it should neither burn your mouth nor hit the colour chart at Cheeto-orange. I mention all this because, in our drive to needlessly complicate the simple things in life – phones, tap water, walking – wings are one of the few staples that have, to date, escaped meddling. First they came for the burgers, inserting a slab of foie gras in the middle and putting a $250 price tag on it. Then they came for the mac and cheese, stuffing lobster around the edges and drizzling truffle oil on top. Risotto, fried chicken, hot dogs, even onion rings – which, if you order them in the wrong place, come encased in an artisanal batter that looks and tastes like herb-sprinkled sandpaper – all have been tampered with to within an inch of their lives. When I was in London over the summer, the waiter at the pub around the corner from my dad’s house informed me that, no, they didn’t have vanilla ice cream, but they did have “gin and tonic infused sorbet”. As a marketing tool, it’s a device to justify charging huge mark-ups for traditionally cheap food and for chefs to show off what passes in the kitchen for a lively sense of humour. It’s the same philosophy that drives most whimsy in the marketplace: an adherence to misplaced notions of “cute”. Fast food-turned-haute cuisine shows up on the kinds of menus where the chef almost certainly considers what he’s doing to be “subversive”. Wings have been safe, so far. Perhaps because they really are at the bottom of the fast food chain and are so aggressively flavoured, they don’t lend themselves to the usual quick add-ons. I could be wrong, but wings sprinkled with black truffle shavings don’t sound like a hot seller. That may be about to change. Earlier this year, Zagat, the restaurant guide, devoted coverage to the nascent market of upscale wings in Washington DC’s restaurant scene. In Hollywood, chefs at the top hotels have been experimenting with wings for a couple of years. And this week The New York Times devoted a chunky article to the “meaning” of wings. A slavish adherence to sloppy food can, of course, be a form of inverse snobbery. In Britain many years ago, fish and chips moved from the chip shop to the restaurant menu, gained the prefix “beer-battered”, quadrupled in price and has remained there ever since in what now seems like a reasonable extension of a national favourite. (The battered sausage, on the other hand, remains stubbornly and exclusively fixed at the low-end, where it continues to be one of the best food stuffs available to man). Still, the whole point about this kind of food is that you’re not supposed to tart it up. It is by definition cheap and unhealthy – a guilty pleasure to satiate uncomplicated desires. In my experience, these things also just taste better when they haven’t been messed with. The early success of Nigella Lawson’s career was premised not on posh spins on low-end food, but on a posh person preparing it as nature intended. (Her first recipe book was full of things like unreconstructed fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and Coke-doused ham.) It is hard to keep your head when people all around are losing theirs. At this point, even Taco Bell is wavering. Earlier this year, the Mexican fast food chain announced plans to introduce an off-shoot of the franchise offering an upscale spin on their traditional menu, including lobster rolls, chili ketchup and “Guinness Stout and Premium Vanilla Ice Cream.” Stand strong, Buffalo Wild Wings! They’re coming for you next. |