Battle of Buffalo: Wing Slingers from Orland, Oak Forest and Tinley Face Off

The little bright red suckers are everywhere.

From simple Chicago-style stands, marked by the yellow Vienna Beef signs, to top shelf steak houses, a huge array of restaurants around the country have made their own take on deep-fried chicken wings and drumsticks, soused in peppery awesome…sauce.

A few faithful readers asked for wings, and we (gladly) obliged. We’ll be judging on crispiness of the outside, how spot-on the chicken is cooked (too much leaves it tough and dry, too little leaves it gummy and chewy) and taste of the sauce. Some places make breaded wings while others “go naked” so in the interest of letting the restaurants do their regular thing, we didn’t ask for a choice if we weren’t offered. Since it isn’t really wings without the bonus cool-off dipping sauce and celery, we’ll be judging those as well.

Now as much as we’d like to try all the wings in the area, we’d prefer to not walk around with a defibrillator all the time. This is merely a sample of the many tongue-singeing, made-for-beer flavor carriers.

Think I’m wrong? Know of a better place? Put your typed keys where your napkin-needing mouth is and let’s see what you have to say.

Tinley Park – J.W. Holstein’s Saloon

A few bars in Tinley boast wing nights, so with knowing absolutely nothing about their cuisine, we went with J.W. Holstein’s. Wednesday night is 25-cent wing night, and so there are journey begins.

The wings there are big. Really big. Big to the point where take the number of wings you usually order, and knock two off. Both the wings and the drumstick were cooked very close to perfect with a distinct crispy outside. A few bites here and there were chewy, but for the most part, the wings were well cooked.

The sauce had the vinegar tang with cayenne bite that is the buffalo sauce signature, with a few other heat sources I couldn’t place. I have never understood why people add butter to buffalo sauce when the leftover oil on the chicken from frying makes perfectly fine sauce-glue. That added butter makes wings taste and feel overly oily. Holstein’s wings do not succumb to such silliness. Their wings had just enough sauce to cause watery eyes after a few, but I didn’t feel like I needed a shower after each one. Just a wet nap.

Cooling tools: Holstein’s seemed to offer some kind of store-bought ranch. I didn’t ask, so I can’t say for sure. Decent, but nothing special. The bleu cheese sauce didn’t look so hot, so it was left alone after one taste.

One major flaw noted: no celery.

Thumbs Up: Cooked tender with crunch, right amount of spicy sauce
Thumbs Down: A few chewy spots in the meat, no celery, ho-hum ranch, blech bleu cheese

Oak Forest – Blarney Stone Pub

This pub known for its Chris Medina/American Idol viewing parties also boasts a mean wing. And there is real merit to such claims.

Blarney’s wings are also sizable and full of excellently cooked meat. A crunch could be heard with each bite, on both the wings and drumsticks. Inside, the meat was tender, moist and didn’t have a single tough, chewy spot in my batch. Their wings were just slightly heavier on the breading than I would’ve liked, but this was a minor note.

We have confirmation that their wing sauce is homemade, and it’s definitely for folks who like tang more than bite. Put a few wings down and you’ll feel a slight burn, but a tomato and vinegar taste overrides the heat. It’s a unique take, which I can appreciate even though I like the burn. Without sauce, it’s just a pile of chicken, and Blarney douses every inch of their wings in the thick sauce. Be ready with the napkins.

Cooling tools: Again, no celery (shakes head in disappointment). I even asked. The waitress was apologetic. The ranch was also decent, but underwhelming like Holstein’s. I didn’t find out if it was store-bought or homemade. The bleu cheese was definitely a step up from Holstein’s but also nothing special.

Thumbs Up: Superbly juicy and tender, great crunch, plentiful and unique wing sauce
Thumbs Down: A pinch too much breading, no celery, snooze-worthy ranch, boring bleu cheese

Orland Park – Rokwelz Bar Meets Grill

This restaurant and bar takes its food seriously enough to include pastas, steaks, shrimp and a roasted half chicken along with the bar fare standards. And it has the distinction of being the closest watering hole to Orland’s Sportsplex, so you can feel all that more guilty on the way home from dinner.

And you should, because their wings are massive as well. Rokwelz goes toe to toe with Blarney for nailing the cooking of both wings and drumsticks. Rok’s wings had serious crunch on the just-breaded-enough outside to give added texture without overshadowing the meat. The crunch stayed even after a couple wings sat for a little while. All tender. All juicy. No tough spots. Awesome.

The sauce is where Rok inches out a lead. I like heat. I like to weep a bit while eating wings. But heat is no substitute for flavor. Rokwelz’s wing sauce finds that great balance of cayenne heat, vinegar zip and a few other tastes going, all without the butter/oil overload mentioned earlier. While not as doused as Blarney, Rokwelz’s wings had more sauce on them than Holstein’s.

Cooling tools: And finally here’s where Rokwelz slides ahead in our wing showdown. Celery. Fresh, green, firm, crunchy, cooling celery. And their ranch had far more flavor than Blarney and Holstein’s combined. I also don’t know if theirs is store-bought or not, but it’s very flavorful. Their bleu cheese was far better, with noticeably big cheese chunks that often mark the separation between good bleu and blech.

Thumbs Up: Tender and juicy all the way through, great crunch even after sitting, right amount of spicy sauce, fresh celery, tasty ranch, solid bleu
Thumbs Down: Not enough room in my stomach for more

And the winner is…

Go ahead and say I’m biased because it’s Orland. But if you must, do so after you eat all three in a week’s time. I like heat, crunch, tender and juicily cooked, celery and a decent ranch. Rokwelz triumphed in all of these categories.

However, Blarney makes an excellent, also crunchy-while-tender-and-juicily-cooked wing with a unique take on wing sauce that likely works well for those who don’t quite appreciate tears of joy like some of us. With some celery, better cooling sauces and a hotter sauce option, a rematch could easily swing in Oak Forest’s favor.

Holstein’s also makes a superb sauced chicken. They too could benefit from celery and better cooling sauces as well. But they deserve a special mention for the 25-cent wings on Wednesdays. If they offer every Wednesday what they gave me, it’s a bonafide deal.

After our April battles between , this latest challenge has Orland in the lead 2 points to Oak Forest's and Tinley's 1 point each.