Quick Answer
Who invented buffalo wings?The most widely accepted origin story attributes buffalo wings to Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, in 1964. The story goes that she deep-fried chicken wings (then considered a cheap, unwanted part) and coated them in a sauce of Frank's RedHot cayenne sauce and butter, serving them with celery and blue cheese dressing. The dish became the bar's signature and eventually spread nationwide. The exact details of the story are disputed, but the Anchor Bar's role in popularizing the dish is well-documented.
Buffalo wings weren't always a bar food staple. Before 1964, chicken wings were the least valued part of the bird — a byproduct that often ended up in stock pots or sold at minimal price for soup making. The story of how a single bar in western New York transformed a cheap cut into one of the most consumed foods in America is a genuinely interesting chapter in food history.
It's also a story with contested details, competing claims, and the usual fog of origin myths. This is what's documented, what's disputed, and what ultimately matters for understanding the food we now call a classic.
The 1964 Origin Story
The founding narrative, as told by the Bellissimo family and the Anchor Bar: In the fall of 1964, Teressa Bellissimo was working at the Anchor Bar at 1047 Main Street in Buffalo, New York, a restaurant and bar she ran with her husband Frank. The specifics vary depending on which account you read:
Version 1 (most commonly told): A case of chicken wings was accidentally delivered instead of the backs and necks usually used for spaghetti sauce. Teressa, unwilling to waste food, deep-fried the wings and tossed them in hot sauce and butter to feed her son Dominic and his friends who had showed up late looking for food.
Version 2 (also attributed to Teressa): A late-night crowd of hungry bar patrons needed feeding, and Teressa improvised with the chicken wings she had available.
Version 3 (the Bellissimo family's public official account): The invention was deliberate — Teressa developed the dish as a late-night bar snack designed to increase drinking. The spice and salt combination drives thirst.
The discrepancies don't undermine the core: by the mid-1960s, the Anchor Bar was serving deep-fried chicken wings in a sauce made from Frank's RedHot and butter, with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing. The dish was novel and immediately popular.
🔬 The Competing Claim
John Young, who ran a Buffalo restaurant called "John Young's Wings N Things" in the 1960s, claimed to have served breaded whole chicken wings in a "mambo sauce" (a sweet-spicy tomato-based sauce) before Teressa's version. Young maintained until his death that his wings predated and inspired the Anchor Bar version. Most food historians note that Young's dish was different enough — breaded, mambo sauce, whole wing — that both could be true without contradiction. The Anchor Bar's unbreaded, hot-sauce-and-butter, split wing preparation is the direct ancestor of what most people recognize as "buffalo wings" today.
The Anchor Bar Today
The Anchor Bar at 1047 Main Street, Buffalo, NY is still open and still serves buffalo wings. The restaurant has expanded into a small chain with locations in other New York cities and Canada. The original location is a pilgrimage site for wing enthusiasts — Frank Bellissimo's portrait hangs on the wall, and the bar's history is prominently displayed.
The original recipe used at the Anchor Bar is still based on Frank's RedHot and butter — essentially the classic homemade buffalo sauce formula at the traditional 2:1 ratio. The wings are deep-fried, split into drumettes and flats, tossed in the sauce, and served with celery and blue cheese dressing (always blue cheese, not ranch — this is Buffalo's position and they're not changing it).
In 1977, then-Mayor Stanley Makowski declared July 29 "Chicken Wing Day" in Buffalo. The city has maintained a strong identity around the dish ever since — "Buffalo wings" with the city name attached is a point of pride, not just nomenclature.
How Buffalo Wings Went National
The spread of buffalo wings from a single Buffalo bar to a nationally ubiquitous food happened in several waves:
1970s — Regional spread: Word of the Anchor Bar dish circulated through western New York and upstate, mostly through word of mouth. Bars in Buffalo and Rochester adopted the dish. It was still primarily a regional specialty.
1980 — The New York Times article: Jane Brody wrote a column about buffalo wings for the New York Times in 1980, introducing the dish to a national readership. This is often cited as the moment when wings stopped being a Buffalo secret.
1984 — Domino's and restaurant chains: Domino's Pizza added wings to their menu in 1984, making the format accessible to suburbs and cities far from Buffalo. Other chain restaurants followed throughout the late 1980s.
1990s — Wing chains and sports bar culture: Buffalo Wild Wings (originally BW-3) opened its first franchise in 1991. Wingstop opened in 1994. These chains built entire restaurant concepts around wings, normalizing them as a standalone meal rather than a bar snack.
Super Bowl phenomenon: The National Chicken Council has tracked Super Bowl wing consumption since the early 1990s. The Super Bowl is now the single largest consumption event for chicken wings in the United States — Americans consumed an estimated 1.4 billion wings during Super Bowl LVIII (2024). Wings and football became culturally inseparable by the mid-1990s.
The Economics of Wings
The economic story of buffalo wings is fascinating: a food that went from cheapest to most expensive cut on the bird within 60 years.
In 1964, chicken wings had almost no market value. They were frequently sold for pennies a pound, if at all — many processors discarded them or used them for stock. Teressa Bellissimo's use of them as bar food was partly practical: they were essentially free.
Today, wing prices fluctuate dramatically and have, in recent years, exceeded the price per pound of chicken breasts at retail. During COVID-19 supply chain disruptions (2020–2021), wing prices spiked to record levels. In 2021, Buffalo Wild Wings mentioned rising wing costs as a significant business challenge in their earnings calls — a remarkable situation for a cut that was considered waste material within living memory.
This price appreciation drove two trends: the rise of boneless wings (chicken breast strips sold as wings — the economics work better because breast meat is processed more efficiently) and increased interest in making wings at home rather than paying restaurant prices. The air fryer wing method and the oven wing method are direct responses to this economics shift.
How the Recipe Evolved
The core recipe — hot sauce, butter, fried wings — has remained consistent since 1964. What has evolved is the range of variations built around that core:
- Heat variations: Most wing restaurants now offer a heat spectrum from mild to "death." The Anchor Bar itself offers mild, medium, hot, and "suicidal." The original recipe was a single heat level (what we'd now call medium).
- Sauce flavors: The last 20 years have seen garlic parmesan, honey buffalo, teriyaki, lemon pepper (a Southern specialty), and dozens of other variations. Buffalo Wild Wings alone lists 26 sauces and seasonings.
- Cooking methods: Original preparation was deep-frying only. Baked, air-fried, smoked, and grilled variations all appeared as home cooking interest increased and restaurant equipment evolved.
- Ranch accompaniment: The original Anchor Bar recipe specified blue cheese. Ranch became the national default as wings spread to regions where blue cheese wasn't a common condiment. Buffalo, NY still uses blue cheese as a matter of civic principle.
Buffalo Wing Culture
Buffalo wings have developed genuine cultural rituals around them: the proper way to eat a flat (the three-bone flat eaten cartilage-first to extract maximum meat), the drumette vs. flat preference debate that has spawned thousands of arguments, "boneless vs. bone-in" as a genuine ideological divide in wing culture.
Buffalo, NY itself has maintained a fierce local identity around the dish. The National Buffalo Wing Festival has been held in Buffalo annually since 2002. The festival attracts professional wing-eating competitors (a genuinely serious sport — Joey Chestnut's record is 276 wings in 30 minutes), amateur cooking competitions for sauce categories, and tens of thousands of attendees.
The food's identity as distinctly American — a regional bar food turned national event food — has made it a subject of academic study, food writing, and even civic pride beyond Buffalo. The James Beard Foundation has recognized both the cultural significance of the dish and the Anchor Bar's historical role. It's a rare example of a single restaurant, a single family, and a single dish creating a lasting category in American food culture.