National Chicken Wing Day

When: July 29

National Chicken Wing Day on July 29 celebrates the bar food that became America's favorite game-day ritual — a dish invented in 1964 in Buffalo, New York that now moves 1.4 billion wings on Super Bowl Sunday alone.

Messy, sauced, and worth every finger

The Buffalo wing was invented on a Friday night in 1964 from chicken parts that nobody wanted — and became the signature food of American sports culture.

Before 1964, chicken wings were not a desirable food product. They were considered scrap — useful for stock, but too little meat to serve as an entree. Butchers sold them cheaply or gave them away. The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York changed that on a Friday night in October 1964, when owner Teressa Bellissimo received an oversized shipment of wings and needed to do something with them before the weekend. She split them at the joint, deep-fried them, tossed them in a sauce of Frank's RedHot and butter, and served them with celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing — accompaniments she had on hand. Her son and his friends ate them. They asked for more. The Buffalo wing was born from accident and excess. The spread was slow. For the first decade, Buffalo wings were primarily a local institution, eaten in bars around western New York. National awareness grew through the 1970s and 1980s as sportswriting and food journalism started covering Buffalo's bar culture. The chain restaurant Hooters,...