Buffalo wings were first served in Buffalo, New York, but who served them first is still argued. The Bellissimo family says Teressa Bellissimo fried the first batch at the Anchor Bar in 1964. John Young, a Black restaurateur on the city's East Side, said he was selling breaded wings in his own sauce by 1961 or 1962. Both claims rest mostly on memory, and the paper trail favors neither cleanly.
The late-night story from the Anchor Bar
The version most people know goes like this. On a Friday night, Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar at his parents' place, the Anchor Bar, when friends showed up hungry. His mother, Teressa, fried a pile of chicken wings and tossed them in a hot sauce. Dominic's own telling, given to Calvin Trillin for The New Yorker in 1980, added a detail: it was a Friday night, and he wanted to do something nice at midnight for the mostly Catholic patrons.
Wings were not a food then. They were the part left over when a chicken was cut up, and cooks usually threw them out or saved them for stock and soup.
A second version in circulation is less romantic. The wings arrived by mistake, in place of the backs and necks that went into the bar's spaghetti sauce, and Frank Bellissimo asked his wife to do something with them. Frank and Teressa owned the bar together, so the family accounts differ on who had the idea and why, though they agree on the street, the family and roughly the decade.
Who invented Buffalo wings, according to the 1960s record?
The paper evidence is thinner than the legend suggests. A local newspaper article about the Anchor Bar in 1969 does not mention wings at all. A competing Buffalo bar began selling them that same year. The press coverage that centered on the Bellissimos came later: a 1972 Buffalo Evening News feature, then Trillin's 1980 article.
Here are the main claims side by side.
| Claim | Who | Date given | What was served |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anchor Bar | Teressa and Frank Bellissimo, with son Dominic | 1964 | Fried wings, cut into pieces, tossed in hot sauce |
| Wings and Things | John Young | 1961 or 1962, license applied for in 1966 | Whole breaded wings in mumbo sauce |
| Older menus | Hotels and cookbooks | 1857, 1894 | Fried chicken wings, no hot sauce |
John Young and the mumbo sauce
John Young moved to Buffalo from Stockton, Alabama, in 1948, when he was 13. His restaurant, John Young's Wings 'n Things, stood at Jefferson Avenue and East Utica on the East Side, and by Visit Buffalo's account it was popular through the 1960s, until he left the city in 1970.
His wings were not the Anchor Bar's. He served them whole, not cut into drumettes and flats, breaded and fried, then covered in a tomato-based sauce he called mumbo or mambo. He told people he got the idea from a traveling boxer who described a Washington, D.C. restaurant doing good business with wings. History.com notes that a Black-owned place called Wings N' Things in D.C. was serving wings with mumbo sauce by the 1960s, and that the sauce has roots in Chicago.
Young was blunt about the numbers. In a 1981 Courier-Express article he said, "I was selling 5,000 pounds of chicken wings in 1962," and he claimed that Frank Bellissimo had eaten them. In a 1996 Buffalo News interview with Janice Okun, he said the Anchor Bar did not make wings a regular menu item until 1974. Trillin had interviewed him too, and Young disputed that the Anchor Bar came first. These are his claims, and no menu or receipt from 1962 has surfaced to confirm the figure.
Young moved to Illinois and came back about ten years later. He died in 1998. In 2013 the National Buffalo Wing Festival inducted him into its Hall of Flame, and local historian Cynthia Van Ness has said he deserves credit as the first to open a restaurant built around wings in Buffalo.
What a wing looked like in 1857
Neither family invented frying a chicken wing. History.com reports that the Clarendon Hotel in Buffalo printed "Chicken Wings, fried" on its menu on July 1, 1857, and that an 1894 Buffalo Commercial Advertiser carried a wing recipe. So the open question is narrower than the legend: who first sold wings as the main event, cut and sauced the way a bar customer now expects.
On that narrower question, accounts split along a line. The Bellissimos' version, fried and cut and tossed in hot sauce, is the one that became the standard. Young's version is the earlier claim and a different dish, closer to fried chicken with a sweet-sharp sauce. Which dish spread is a separate question from which came first.
How the Anchor Bar story won
Three things pushed the Bellissimo version ahead. The 1972 newspaper feature put the bar's name on the dish. Trillin's piece, dated August 25, 1980, retold Dominic's account to a national readership. And on July 29, 1977, the city of Buffalo issued a proclamation honoring Frank Bellissimo and declared it Chicken Wing Day, as the New York Times later noted.
Young left Buffalo in 1970 and did not return for about a decade, and the coverage from the 1970s and 1980s centered on the Bellissimos. He had registered the name John Young's Wings 'n Things at the county courthouse before leaving, but a name on a county record does not make a story.
Wings also changed in price. Once the discard of the chicken, they became scarce enough that restaurants began selling boneless pieces of breast meat as "boneless wings" around 2009, and shortages of wings were reported in 2013 and 2014. The cut that Teressa Bellissimo supposedly rescued from the stockpot had become the expensive one. A similar story of a cheap leftover turned into a menu staple runs through who invented nachos, and the chicken family has its own relatives in the history of chicken tenders and who invented chicken nuggets.
Dishes with a single named inventor and a tidy date are the exception, and the argument is a familiar one on the accidental inventions shelf of this site.
What happened to John Young's sauce
Young's daughter, Lina Brown Young, revived his original mambo sauce recipe and began bottling it in original and spicy versions, sold in Western New York stores. She also appears on Buffalo Bike Tours' "Wing Ride," which calls her father the "King of Wings." A mural with that title stands at Jefferson and Carlton Streets on the East Side.
Questions people ask
Why are they called Buffalo wings?
They are named for Buffalo, New York, where both main claimants served them in the 1960s. The Anchor Bar's version, fried wings cut into pieces and tossed in hot sauce, is the one that spread. The name carries the city, not the animal, and no part of the dish has anything to do with bison.
Did the Anchor Bar invent Buffalo wings in 1964?
The Bellissimo family says Teressa Bellissimo first made them that year. The evidence is the family's own accounts, including Dominic Bellissimo's 1980 interview with Calvin Trillin. A 1969 local article about the Anchor Bar does not mention wings, and John Young said the bar did not put wings on its menu regularly until 1974.
Who was John Young, the Buffalo wing pioneer?
John Young was a Buffalo restaurateur who moved from Stockton, Alabama, in 1948 and ran John Young's Wings 'n Things on the city's East Side in the 1960s. He served whole breaded wings in mumbo sauce, left in 1970, died in 1998, and was inducted into the National Buffalo Wing Festival's Hall of Flame in 2013.
When did Buffalo declare Chicken Wing Day?
The city of Buffalo declared Chicken Wing Day on July 29, 1977, in a proclamation honoring Anchor Bar co-owner Frank Bellissimo, as the New York Times later noted. That was three years before Calvin Trillin's New Yorker article.
Filed under Accidental Inventions
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