by Rebecca Hanlon
The Wing Co.
While The Wing Co. has been serving up a variety of crispy chicken wings for years, its most recent menu addition seems to be winning the hearts of wing lovers – whether they go for them spicy or not. The Gator Wings feature a Louisiana dry rub that’s typically used on alligator meat, says manager Markeem Overby.
“It’s a salty mixture that’s often used to smoke or grill the meat to help it become more tender,” he says. “What we like is that it truly brings you that sense of the South. You feel like you could be eating it on the bayou.”
While the dry rub isn’t too spicy on its own, Overby says, guests have the option to kick things up by combing the dry rub with The Wing Co.’s popular hot sauce.
The sauce itself can be served mild, medium, hot or XXX. Made in-house, the buffalo sauce is kept at the “hot” level until a guest orders it mild, medium or XXX. How cool the sauce become depends on how much butter is added to it to create the mild or medium flavor. To reach the XXX level, a pepper mixture that includes jalapenos, ghost peppers, and habanero is diced up and added to the hot sauce.
“It’s so hot we have to keep it in a jar all its own, set aside from everything else,” Overby says. “There’s little to no flavor in it other than straight up heat.”
Many people just like to try the XXX sauce before ordering it, Overby says, and he’s more than happy to give them a bit to taste. In most cases, people will order a 12-piece and split the order in half – getting six of a XXX flavor and six of a milder flavor to try to level it out.
“To be honest, even the hot sauce is too spicy for me,” Overby says. “But that’s where the milkshakes on the menu come in handy. Nothing cuts the heat quite like dairy.”