Long Island wings: These restaurants are going beyond Buffalo

The year was 1964. Inside the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, leftover wings were slathered in hot sauce…

Hold on… that’s the origin story of Buffalo wings, aptly named for the city of their birth and which reach many glorious expressions across Long Island. And yet wings, a fixture of Southern cooking as well as bar menus and game nights across the land, can take flight in an array of forms, depending on culinary tradition: Warming jerk-seasoned wings; the smothered turkey wings of Southern cuisine; even wings done in an Italian style, with peppers and onions. 

 “People eat them all different ways. Some people eat them with silverware, others really dig in,”said chef Arie Pavlou of Bistro Ete in Water Mill, who serves supple confit duck wings with curry slaw.

Regardless of whether you use a fork or suck every last bit of sinew from the bone, there is a wing waiting for every urge to push beyond your comfort zone.  Just in time for the World Series, here are some global approaches to wings.

Smothered turkey wings at Lola’s Southern Cuisine

2717 Route 112, Medford

Chicken wings might be ubiquitous, but turkey wings are among the earliest American dishes — turkeys, as it were, being native to the Americas. In the South, turkey wings are a culinary staple; when Tiffany and Darrell Darwood opened Lola’s Southern Cuisine early in 2022 — melding family recipes and with Darrell Darwood’s cake-baking expertise —  fried chicken and wings were a given, but the braised turkey wings smothered in gravy  that were a Sunday special have now become a daily staple. “So many people were asking during the week, and we were selling out,” said Darrell Darwood of the decision to make them permanent.  Lola’s wings are marinated and then oven-baked until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, the meat parting easily from the bone. Finished in an rich, peppery onion gravy, they come with two sides; alongside collard greens and molten mac-and-cheese. $17.99 for a platter with two sides and cornbread. More info: 631-730-8526, lolascuisine.com

Chicken wings scarpariello at Gastronomy Kitchen by Cirella’s

230 Walt Whitman Rd., Huntington Station, in the Walt Whitman Mall

Some Italian-Americans whose lineage goes back to the southern part of the boot count a recipe for chicken scarpariello in their family. Italian for “shoemaker’s chicken,” the dish typically consists of chicken thighs in a blanket of sausage, peppers, and onions flavored with vinegar and hot peppers. It’s a dish that almost always performs better at home than in a restaurant and one that rarely is seen applied to chicken wings. Inside this bistro at the Walt Whitman Mall, the kitchen does just that, smothering breaded-then-fried wings and drumsticks with minced red bell peppers and caramelized onions. If you had any doubts about this mashup of styles, one bite will put those to rest. $16. More info: 631-350-1229, gastronomyrestaurant.com

Wings at Peri-Peri Guys

285 S. Broadway, Hicksville

Stained a bright yellow and sporting a lace of char, the wings from Peri-Peri Guys in Hicksville look so delectable you might tear into them innocently enough. Yet even if you’ve gone for the “mild” version (there are six sauces to choose from), these petite wings pack a forbidding wallop. After a beat, smoldering heat will bloom in your mouth and linger. The term “peri-peri” was probably the tip off. This chili pepper, originating in Mozambique, has a Scoville score in the four-alarm range. It’s also underpins the peri-peri sauce adapted by chef and owner Hafeez Raja, who developed a crush on the Portuguese-adapted African dish peri-peri chicken (a true global mashup) while growing up in Scotland, where it’s served via a chain called Nando’s. Raja still procures his chilies from Scotland and follows a time-tested method: He marinates the wings for 24 hours (“not an hour more, not an hour less,” said the chef) in a blend of chilies, garlic and lemon, then steam-cooks them and finishes the wings on a char-broiler. Six wings for $7.99, 10 for $14.99. More info: 516-470-0303, periperiguys.com

Original sweet-and-sour or soy-garlic wings at SpoonSticks

4348 Merrick Rd., Massapequa

South Koreans have long had a lock on particularly addictive fried chicken, where yangnyeom chicken features seasoning that include garlic, ginger, soy sauce and brown sugar. The version at SpoonSticks, a Korean-Japanese restaurant that opened in 2021, is called “original” —dredged in flour, fried and then slathered in a robust sweet-and-sour sauce spiked with gochujang. Chef Seungchul Oh also plates soy-garlic wings that blossom with umami flavor. Both are showered in sesame seeds and come with pickled radishes and gochujang-spiked mayo. Five pieces for $12. More info: 516-200-4755, spoonsticks.com

Duck wings confit at Bistro Ete

760 Montauk Hwy., Water Mill

This pentagon of confit duck wings — five overlapping drumsticks, arranged in a pattern reminiscent of a wreath — springs from a confluence of traditions, from the French culinary training of chef Arie Pavlou to jerk seasoning from the Caribbean and the Long Island duck the chef procures from Crescent Duck Farm. These legs are confited in duck fat before frying, then rolled in a barbecue sauce that thrums with warming jerk spices. “We go through so many its mind-boggling,” notes Pavlou of the earliest days of Bistro Ete, which he opened with his wife Liz in 2017. These fall away from the bone in the most alluring of ways, and get a tangy assist from curry slaw. Besides the wings, the chef uses every part of the duck from which these wings come, rom the duck stock that underpins the bistro’s French onion soup to smoked duck breast. Five for $22. More info: 631-500-9085 bistroete.com

Tandoori wings at Clay Oven

601 Veterans Memorial Hwy., Hauppauge

Chef Lubna Habibi’s tandoori chicken wings are a clever expression of her 30-plus years cooking Indian food. Marinated in yogurt and spices, oven-roasted and then charred on the grill, they are stained bright with turmeric and pulsing with tandoor spices of coriander, cumin and cayenne. The gentle heat lasts and lasts. Six pieces for $15. More info: 631-724-1600, theclayoven.dine.online