Wing Fling 2016

My father in law won tickets to the Wing Fling at the Expocentre and I ended up with them, lucky me. All you can eat wings from eleven restaurants in Topeka on a Saturday sounded perfect to me.

When I walked in, the person at the door handed me a cardboard drink carrier, like the ones you get at McDonald's. That way you can just sit your container of wings in the holder and it makes it easier to carry around with one hand. I thought it was a clever idea. The guy also handed me a red ticket for voting so I could vote for my favorite wings at the end.

Mike's Bar & Grill, BBQ wing

I hit three booths first, Henry T's, Mike's Bar and Grill and the Pallette Restaurant. I've been to Henry T's many times and had their wings and they're always good.  The wings that stood out to me the most was their Christmas wings. The sauce seemed to be like a chocolate cinnamon flavor. It was more of a dessert or sweet flavor, and it was good, but when I want to eat wings, I want savory. I did like the flavor, though and the wings were juicy.

Mike's Bar and Grill had my favorite barbecue flavored wings in the whole place. Although they had my favorite barbecue wing, they still weren't my favorite wings of the whole day. The sauce was sweet and tangy and I believe they make their sauce. I went back for another one, and it was the only wing I had seconds of.

The Palette Restaurant had chicken and waffles wings. Interesting and they were served with whipped cream. Maybe I would have liked them a little more if there hadn't been so much breading on it, but the flavor was good. There was just too much breading and it made it hard to get to the meat on the drumstick. My sister in law really liked it though and she said she would eat more of them. So, it just wasn't my preference because I haven't been eating much bread or breaded foods.

Next, we went to The Burger Stand and HHB BBQ booths. The Burger Stand had an interesting take on

The Burger Stand serving up
 their PB&J wings

peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter wing was my favorite of the two because it was like a Thai peanut sauce which was a little sweet but not too much. I love peanut sauce. The jelly, however, was not my favorite. It was sweet and extremely spicy. I tasted the sauce and knew immediately it was going to be spicy, but I still insisted on trying it. I could only take one bite and it was enough for me. I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to spicy foods so I was done.

My favorite wing of the entire day came from HHB BBQ. Their Strawbenero wing was the belle of the ball for me. I liked it because it was spicy, but not so spicy that it burnt a trail down my throat, but just enough that there was a kick. I thought it would be worse than that because the name implies habenero and those are spicy. I'm glad I still tried it despite my hesitation. It was also sweet and I could taste the strawberry so that's why the spicy wasn't so intense. I think what helped is that they were serving huge drumsticks that seemed to have a ton of meat on them. This wing stood out to me above the rest and everyone in my party agreed.  I could taste the smoke, the sauce and the chicken all together and it was just a well executed wing.

HHB BBQ's strawbenero wing

I tried all the other booths but really none of the other wings stood out to me. All of the wings were good, just nothing that I just need to tell people about. Abigail's won last year's Wing Fling but their wings were all breaded, and like I said before I'm not a big fan of heavily breaded wings so I wasn't a fan of the wings.

Overall, I enjoyed the Wing Fling and plan to return next year. I liked that it was all you can eat, although I couldn't have gone back through even if I'd wanted to, I was so full after hitting every booth. I also enjoyed being able to sample eleven restaurants at once and being able to compare wings side by side. If you like wings and eating as many of them as you want, I'd recommend getting tickets.

I'm not sure who won this year, but I believe there are various categories. Really, all the wings tasted great and I'm ready for next year.