Buffalo Wild Wings
Today I review:
Introduction
I like wings. I do. Not just the buffalo variety; you can dump all kinds of garbage on there and I'll still eat it. Cheese, barbecue sauce of fascinating origin. Other, smaller bits of chicken. You might not think this of me, as I am a dapper gentlemen who frequently shies away from finger foods, as they might interfere with my delicate manicure or turn my hand into an unshakeable bayou of condiments. You'd be right; it's why I favor the boneless variety, as I can use utensils to eat them rather than using my fingers or, if I prefer, simple inhaling them bones and all.
I was told this place might be good, and that was the first warning. Whenever a place is "maybe" good, you know you should just stay home and vomit into your own toilet. It means no one (you care about) has actually been there and everyone is crafting their opinion from half-heard conversations or bits of glittery hope. It means that you are basically going on a blind date with this restaurant. Which would be fine, normally. Adventure is great, new experience and all that, but when someone says a place "might" be good, it's sort of like if your matchmaker tells you to bring a towel on your blind date.
Atmosphere
Imagine a television, about the size of your head. Place it about three inches from the side of your right ear. Got it? Now imagine that this television is the shadow of a larger television, some unnoticed spawn that has crept away from the master televisions that rule the bar like cruel despots. These televisions float above their lesser progeny, dominating entire quadrants of your senses. You cannot look directly at the televisions, or you will go blind. I need you to understand that when I say Buffalo Wild Wings is like a dank pit controlled by a species of sentient televisions that want to rob you of vision, I am understating the issue.
Observe:
In Hadley most of these televisions are actually mockeries of the real thing; they are projection televisions cleverly pointed at blank spots on the walls surrounded by convincing black frames. I know this because I was seated entirely inside of one. Thankfully, none of these televisions are audible, or at least they were not when I went. However, I would that they were so that their thousand mewling advertisements could have spared my sanity from the Lovecraftian horror that assaulted my ears.
The music in this place is Hellish. Bring up a Gwen Stefani or Pink music video in You Tube. Turn up your computer's bass all the way. Then turn up the volume to max. If possible, ram one of your computer's speakers completely inside your rectum; the woofer, if applicable, would be especially appropriate. Now, if you can, turn your head so that it is as close to the remaining speaker(s) as humanly possible, and open your mouth directly on top of one of the amplifiers for full effect. I am exaggerating, but only slightly. Eating wings at this place is like eating wings inside of a top 40 club where the DJ is both deaf and blind.
Service
I will heartily acknowledge that serving people is difficult, and I will also acknowledge that my service at this particular restaurant is nuanced; I went once, at a particular time, with a particular hostess/waitress/manager.
I went at around 1PM on a Saturday. It was not busy. It was like eating inside an abandoned bus terminal, albeit the world's hippest/loudest/most media friendly bus terminal. There may have been someone else hidden inside one of the pixels within Television Prime, but I can't be sure. Regardless, I found the service adequate but not exceptional. The waitress had asked us if we had ever eaten at the restaurant before, after which there was a confused conversation about whether or not we needed her to explain the menu to us. As I could both see and read, it turns out her assistance was unnecessary, but I can't fault her for enacting her training, and politely, I might add.
Food
I have pretty high standards for buffalo wings, and not just from Wings Over Amherst or the Hanger or whatever you people insist on calling that place. I have had a lot of them over the years. I enjoy them. So this isn't something new.
We got the appetizer - or I should say, Tom got the appetizer - and we dug into that. I'll be honest; I don't remember exactly what it was, but I assume it was some combination of fries, nachoes, meat, tomatoes, and some mysterious white goo. I can't complain about it, so the worst I can do is call it boring, uninspired, but passable. It was alright. Forgettable.
But the wings. Oh god the wings. They show up inside of a cardboard trough that unceremoniously has the name of your order taped on the outside (if you're lucky). The appearance is not what one would call professional, and it resembles something you might buy from a Little League concession stand, which is to say, poisonous. The tray almost seems to spite you; you order boneless wings, you know, to reduce mess, and they put it inside this thing that is too small to hold the meager order of shit you wanted in the first place. Chicken will fall out. It is also magnetized to the floor.
Then, you actually look at the chicken. The way that they do their chicken is pretty simple: you order some amount of boneless or boned wings and then prepare to pay about five dollars more than you think you should. Then, you pick one of their "special sauces" to slather your chicken by-products in. These sauces are supposed to taste like the things they are named after, but their primary function is to make the chicken slide harmlessly down your esophagus and then immediately through your lower intestine. There's like fifteen fucking flavors, although about six of them are "hot". I tried to find a picture, but they're too low-res to make them out. Suffice to say, we got four different orders of wings, and no one was pleased with the quality of their sauce. I got "Parmesan Garlic", which I was sick of after three bites. I think it must have been a typo, though, as it was more like, "Terrible Sugar, Garlic, and Foot Radish."
The chicken itself is a travesty. KFC has higher quality chicken. See, the sauce thing is just a brilliant gimmick that allows them to buy frozen chicken nuggets in what I assume are giant unrefrigerated crates. They are mostly bread, grease and your chosen gastrointestinal lubricant. Deep inside, if you mine far beneath the crust and strike into its core, there is a substance that resembles chicken, but it is difficult to tell without lab equipment. It may be processed turkey, sawdust, or human marrow.
Conclusions
This place is terrible. Like, levels of awful that should not be observed outside of controlled environments. The only thing this place had going for it is that it didn't actually give me food poisoning, which is sort of a backhanded compliment, since it did do unholy things to my other faculties. The whole experience of being crushed into a bass woofer and then eating mystery meat off of a tray too small for a mouse to make a comfortable bed in (instead of, I don't know, a plate) is not one of the finest I've encountered. Stay away. Stay far away. If you like inhaling sauce through a straw, you'll like this place, but unless you love Pink so much that you're willing to reroute your favorite MP3s directly through your stomach lining, I would recommend getting your food to go.
Overall Score: 3/10
Introduction
I like wings. I do. Not just the buffalo variety; you can dump all kinds of garbage on there and I'll still eat it. Cheese, barbecue sauce of fascinating origin. Other, smaller bits of chicken. You might not think this of me, as I am a dapper gentlemen who frequently shies away from finger foods, as they might interfere with my delicate manicure or turn my hand into an unshakeable bayou of condiments. You'd be right; it's why I favor the boneless variety, as I can use utensils to eat them rather than using my fingers or, if I prefer, simple inhaling them bones and all.
I was told this place might be good, and that was the first warning. Whenever a place is "maybe" good, you know you should just stay home and vomit into your own toilet. It means no one (you care about) has actually been there and everyone is crafting their opinion from half-heard conversations or bits of glittery hope. It means that you are basically going on a blind date with this restaurant. Which would be fine, normally. Adventure is great, new experience and all that, but when someone says a place "might" be good, it's sort of like if your matchmaker tells you to bring a towel on your blind date.
Atmosphere
Imagine a television, about the size of your head. Place it about three inches from the side of your right ear. Got it? Now imagine that this television is the shadow of a larger television, some unnoticed spawn that has crept away from the master televisions that rule the bar like cruel despots. These televisions float above their lesser progeny, dominating entire quadrants of your senses. You cannot look directly at the televisions, or you will go blind. I need you to understand that when I say Buffalo Wild Wings is like a dank pit controlled by a species of sentient televisions that want to rob you of vision, I am understating the issue.
Observe:
In Hadley most of these televisions are actually mockeries of the real thing; they are projection televisions cleverly pointed at blank spots on the walls surrounded by convincing black frames. I know this because I was seated entirely inside of one. Thankfully, none of these televisions are audible, or at least they were not when I went. However, I would that they were so that their thousand mewling advertisements could have spared my sanity from the Lovecraftian horror that assaulted my ears.
The music in this place is Hellish. Bring up a Gwen Stefani or Pink music video in You Tube. Turn up your computer's bass all the way. Then turn up the volume to max. If possible, ram one of your computer's speakers completely inside your rectum; the woofer, if applicable, would be especially appropriate. Now, if you can, turn your head so that it is as close to the remaining speaker(s) as humanly possible, and open your mouth directly on top of one of the amplifiers for full effect. I am exaggerating, but only slightly. Eating wings at this place is like eating wings inside of a top 40 club where the DJ is both deaf and blind.
Service
I will heartily acknowledge that serving people is difficult, and I will also acknowledge that my service at this particular restaurant is nuanced; I went once, at a particular time, with a particular hostess/waitress/manager.
I went at around 1PM on a Saturday. It was not busy. It was like eating inside an abandoned bus terminal, albeit the world's hippest/loudest/most media friendly bus terminal. There may have been someone else hidden inside one of the pixels within Television Prime, but I can't be sure. Regardless, I found the service adequate but not exceptional. The waitress had asked us if we had ever eaten at the restaurant before, after which there was a confused conversation about whether or not we needed her to explain the menu to us. As I could both see and read, it turns out her assistance was unnecessary, but I can't fault her for enacting her training, and politely, I might add.
Food
I have pretty high standards for buffalo wings, and not just from Wings Over Amherst or the Hanger or whatever you people insist on calling that place. I have had a lot of them over the years. I enjoy them. So this isn't something new.
We got the appetizer - or I should say, Tom got the appetizer - and we dug into that. I'll be honest; I don't remember exactly what it was, but I assume it was some combination of fries, nachoes, meat, tomatoes, and some mysterious white goo. I can't complain about it, so the worst I can do is call it boring, uninspired, but passable. It was alright. Forgettable.
But the wings. Oh god the wings. They show up inside of a cardboard trough that unceremoniously has the name of your order taped on the outside (if you're lucky). The appearance is not what one would call professional, and it resembles something you might buy from a Little League concession stand, which is to say, poisonous. The tray almost seems to spite you; you order boneless wings, you know, to reduce mess, and they put it inside this thing that is too small to hold the meager order of shit you wanted in the first place. Chicken will fall out. It is also magnetized to the floor.
Then, you actually look at the chicken. The way that they do their chicken is pretty simple: you order some amount of boneless or boned wings and then prepare to pay about five dollars more than you think you should. Then, you pick one of their "special sauces" to slather your chicken by-products in. These sauces are supposed to taste like the things they are named after, but their primary function is to make the chicken slide harmlessly down your esophagus and then immediately through your lower intestine. There's like fifteen fucking flavors, although about six of them are "hot". I tried to find a picture, but they're too low-res to make them out. Suffice to say, we got four different orders of wings, and no one was pleased with the quality of their sauce. I got "Parmesan Garlic", which I was sick of after three bites. I think it must have been a typo, though, as it was more like, "Terrible Sugar, Garlic, and Foot Radish."
The chicken itself is a travesty. KFC has higher quality chicken. See, the sauce thing is just a brilliant gimmick that allows them to buy frozen chicken nuggets in what I assume are giant unrefrigerated crates. They are mostly bread, grease and your chosen gastrointestinal lubricant. Deep inside, if you mine far beneath the crust and strike into its core, there is a substance that resembles chicken, but it is difficult to tell without lab equipment. It may be processed turkey, sawdust, or human marrow.
Conclusions
This place is terrible. Like, levels of awful that should not be observed outside of controlled environments. The only thing this place had going for it is that it didn't actually give me food poisoning, which is sort of a backhanded compliment, since it did do unholy things to my other faculties. The whole experience of being crushed into a bass woofer and then eating mystery meat off of a tray too small for a mouse to make a comfortable bed in (instead of, I don't know, a plate) is not one of the finest I've encountered. Stay away. Stay far away. If you like inhaling sauce through a straw, you'll like this place, but unless you love Pink so much that you're willing to reroute your favorite MP3s directly through your stomach lining, I would recommend getting your food to go.
Overall Score: 3/10