Wing joint's fare wildly unimpressive: Service better now, sauce variety great, but food is just OK

Oct 30, 2009 (The Honolulu Advertiser - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- BWLD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- To say that Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar is a sports bar above all else is almost too obvious an observation to even be considered an observation. But it's also the only justification there is for just about everything lamentable about the restaurant.

And just about everything about the restaurant is lamentable.

But it's a sports bar, not a restaurant. And so, lament away, lovers of good food. It won't matter in the end.

The food is just OK.

And what of it? Who really expects good food at a sports bar?

The atmosphere is sterile and lacks sophistication.

So? It's a sports bar, for Pete Rose's sake! Don't go for the ambience. Go for the high-def flat-screens.

It's a sports bar. End of discussion.

Buffalo Wild Wings, a national chain with more than 550 locations in 38 states, came to town in July. After an early visit, we reported that, logistically, the place had some improving to do. Complaints of two-hour-long waits for food and an inattentive staff were heard all around town, but now there's no sign of bad service. On four separate visits over the past month, the service was fast, friendly and efficient, even when the place was packed.

Though I knew it would be popular as a sports bar (and it is), I never held much hope that Buffalo Wild Wings would become a favorite casual dining spot. But I did want to like the chicken wings. If only to save myself from ever again having to say, "Hooters sounds good."

And if there's anything a sports bar could -- and should -- get right, it's chicken wings. Especially if your name is Buffalo Wild Wings.

I wanted good, Buffalo-style wings. I was even OK with the "wild" part. I prefer the traditional Buffalo sauce -- spicy and heavy on the vinegar -- but I can see the appeal in having 14 different sauces to choose from.

Buffalo Wild Wings' main marketing strategy is to perpetuate the popularity of Buffalo-style chicken wings, while offering its patrons the option to divert from the traditional Buffalo wing sauce and have their wings covered in something milder, spicier, sweeter, cheesier or smokier.

I'm all for options. I even support inauthenticity, if it's done right. Go ahead and slather those "Buffalo" wings in teriyaki sauce. With one stipulation: the wings and the sauce must taste great.

At Buffalo Wild Wings, neither the wings, nor the sauces (all 14 of them) taste great.

Some of the sauces, like its version of the traditional Buffalo sauce and the spicy garlic sauce, are satisfactory. But there's no sauce good enough to make up for chicken whose skin is soggy, chewy and pale.

So the wings ($7.49 for six) were a disappointment. But Buffalo Wild Wings, like any good chain restaurant, offers a fairly long menu of other bar food, and so, knowing I'd never go just for the wings, I turned my sights on the burgers, hoping to find one that I might crave on UH game days.

When a menu includes a burger that comes with both beef and pork, there's really no reason to look any further. The Big Jack Daddy burger ($12.49) is a giant mountain of meat and bread -- a beef patty topped with jack cheddar cheese, kalua pork, extra-thick fried onion rings, and covered in Buffalo Wild Wings' signature honey barbecue sauce.

It's a mouthful -- or, more accurately, a long series of mouthfuls -- of a whole pile of stuff that is just that: a pile of stuff. Every flavor gets lost in the other flavors, and it's all disappointingly punctuated by an over-cooked beef patty. All burgers come medium-well, according to the restaurant policy printed on the menu, and a medium-well patty is the very definition of a bad burger.

Not that a pink center would have saved the Big Jack Daddy.

Also sadly unsalvageable were the ribs ($17.49 for a full rack) -- or the McRibs, as they came to be known at our table. Though given the option, I'd take the McRibs.

The wings -- the reason I had hoped would make me a fan of this place -- had been a letdown. Instead of satisfying a taste for good Buffalo wings, they had just intensified the craving.

I was on a mission now.

I was going to find what I came for -- something that tastes like Buffalo wings. I almost found it in the Buffalo Chicken Wild Flatbread ($9.99). The flatbread is topped with chunks of chicken, blue cheese, then drizzled with Buffalo sauce. The pizzalike dish, which also comes in honey barbecue chicken and parmesan garlic chicken varieties, is the closest thing on the menu to achieving that classic Buffalo-wing-and-blue-cheese flavor. But I'd still rather get it from actual wings.

Of course, none of this matters. Buffalo Wild Wings is a sports bar, and as long as its 15 televisions are tuned to some game or another, the food won't matter. And I'm OK with that. If I want good wings, I'll go to Dirty Lickins', Buffalo Boys or, yes, even Hooters.

Reach Kawehi Haug at khaug@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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