Buffalo Wings: Modernism as Food

Initially I hoped to write something about why traddie communities attract unusual demographics (the very young, more males than usual, eccentrics and the like), but instead find myself obligated by a friend to write about—of all things—the Buffalo Wing.

I have been to the supposed invention point of a great many American staples. The burger came from a sandwich shop in New Haven called Louis' Lunch, where they will defenestrate you should you ask for ketchup. The "Buffalo wing" was born at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York—an industrial town without any sort of industry left. The food was not exceptional, but it was the only place where I have tasted that most manly of foods—the chicken wing—without wrongly, or rightly, thinking I must have consumed the stale remains of a Cornish hen covered in processed sugar. The meat clearly came from a fully grown chicken and the sauce was meant as a compliment. Why did the "wing" descend to the depths of poultry of the masses so quickly? It is culinary Novus Ordoism!

Yes, we have all moaned about the "Novus Ordo" at some point and "what they do in the Novus Ordo" blah blah blah.... as if it were a place. It is a state of mind that not only blends new fangled ideas of dubious orthodoxy and orthopraxis, but it retains the folkish elements of religion from its day. I think if I went to the nearest neo-con parish and presented the idea of moving adoration half an hour later and concatenating Vespers into it, they would toss me out faster than they would if I were a Society cleric.

So is the same with the Buffalo chicken wing: it retains its hearty origins as American comfort food like New York pizza and the burger, but became bastardized by the frozen food department and the likes of Buffalo Wild "Wings" until it became as the pizza under Domino's and the burger under McDonald's. The difference is that I can still find a good burger and a good pizza. I cannot find a good wing anywhere. Quomodo sedet sola civitas.