I'm on a quest to find the best wings in America, and I'm traveling across the country state by state until I find them. On this leg of the quest, I'll be trying wings from all over the Pacific Northwest and the non-contiguous states. A lot of you have asked me if I'm going to go to Alaska and Hawaii.
Well, I'm currently on Oahu in Hawaii, so I hope that answers that question. But to kick this episode off, we're going to get some wings in Portland, Oregon. The most suggested restaurant in the state of Oregon by far was a place called Fire on the Mountain.
Fire on the Mountain first launched in 2005 and has been incredibly popular ever since. They've grown to three locations in Portland and two locations in Denver. I also got a decent number of people suggesting Fire on the Mountain. for Colorado and it is in fact the same chain but since it started in Portland I figured it would be much more fitting to have it represent Oregon. I went to the Burnside location which is not the original and that's partially because it was within walking distance from where my friend Josh lives and partially because the Burnside location location actually has the highest rating on Google Maps out of the three Portland locations.
But if you want to go to the original, you can search for Fire on the Mountain Interstate. At every wings place, I try to order a traditional buffalo style if they have one, plus one other crowd favorite or signature flavor. And at least once per episode, I'll order the hottest wings on the menu.
That doesn't necessarily help me rate the restaurant, that's more so for your entertainment. At Fire on the Mountain, I got an order of nine wings, which allowed me to get two different sauce flavors. So I got Buffalo Hot and Raspberry Habanero.
Someone called me out on pronouncing the that word as habanero in previous episodes, and they were totally right. As a result, I learned what a hyper-foreignism is. Josh got an order of 9 as well, and he split his between spicy peanut and a coffee dry rub, which was their rotating flavor of the month.
As a quick reminder, I rate wings on a scale of 1 to 10 across 5 different categories for a total score out of 50. On this scale, a C is average, not a 5 out of 10, and some people say that I rate too high, but keep in mind that I'm looking for the best wings in the country, so if I'm doing my research correctly, the results should be skewed towards the higher end. end. For appearance and first impression these wings looked pretty decent but personally I don't love when wings are absolutely drowning in the sauce.
Still solid though so I went 8.5. For meatiness and size I want to acknowledge here that Fire on the Mountain serves chicken that's raised without any hormones or antibiotics which is typically correlated with the size of the wing. I know there's some strong feelings out there on both sides of this debate but I'm just trying to rate them on how much meat I'm getting here.
I went 7.5, not the smallest wings by any measure but not super big either. I bit in and I was impressed with the texture. They had a good crisp on the outside and a good tenderness on the inside, which is exactly what I'm looking for, so I went 9.25.
Not quite perfect, but pretty dang close. For the sauce flavor, I felt like the buffalo was solid, but nothing mind-blowing. I really liked the raspberry habanero, but for some reason my mind kept associating it with cough syrup, which made for like a weird experience. I landed on 8.5.
Josh and I swapped a few wings so we could try the other flavors, and the peanut sauce was like a spicy version of what you'd get on a pad thai, and the coffee was good, but I wouldn't have been able to do it. tell you that it was coffee flavored if I didn't already know. For the overall experience category, I feel like that's my chance to course correct a little bit if I personally enjoyed the wings more than the score indicates. This is especially helpful if a place has really good wings that are docked points for their small size. For my overall experience of Fire on the Mountain, I went 8.5, which brings the total score to 42.25.
In the national rankings, that's just ahead of Cochix in Washington DC and just behind Ibar from Maryland and Local Q from South Carolina. Next up I'm headed to Seattle, Washington DC. for what might be the spiciest wings I've tried so far on this quest.
Before we get there though, I just want to say that I've been fortunate enough to travel more this year than I think I ever have in my life. Not just all over the United States trying wings, but all over the world as well. And when I was traveling abroad, I wish I had known about Aerolo, who's the sponsor of this video.
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All right, I got a bunch of great suggestions for this. state of Washington, but the most suggested wings place was Vindictive Wings in Seattle. So after spending a day in Olympic National Park, I made my way to the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle Seattle which is just down the street from Pike Place Market. Vindictive was started during the pandemic by some brothers from upstate New York and has only operated as a brick and mortar restaurant since May 2023. But in that short time they've quickly become super popular racking up a 4.5 star rating on Google.
I was also excited because they have something called the Reaper sauce. On the menu it says this sauce will hurt you twice. You've been warned. Having had a bunch of ultra hot wings by this point on this quest I knew exactly what they meant by that.
And at the time I thought that was pretty funny. I would not think it was funny. later that night.
Despite being so new, the restaurant definitely had the feel of a dive bar with exposed brick wall, dim lighting, a disco ball, and loud music. One of the TVs had a sumo match going on, which for some reason felt like it matched the vibe. I went ahead and ordered six of the hot buffalo, six of the lemon pepper wet, and six with the reaper sauce.
The bartender was like, have you ever had the reapers before? And when I told him no, he just raised his eyebrows and said, make sure you eat your other wings first so you can taste them. I was also informed that the guy sitting next to me at the bar had tried one single Reaper wing about 30 minutes earlier and had Not stopped talking about how bad it was the wings came out and these things looked great I went 9 out of 10 for appearance and first impression, but for meatiness and size I went 7.5 They say on their menu that their wings are smaller than frozen jumbo wings and that's how they like them I took a bite and the texture was phenomenal the buffalo I would say were nearly perfect and the lemon pepper wet also had a strong performance But we're just a little bit on the crispy side since it seems like they were slightly less wet than advertised.
I went 9.5. For the sauce flavor, the buffalo were really solid. This was the hot buffalo as opposed to the regular buffalo, but I didn't feel like they deserved four fire emojis on the menu. That's okay though because I was about to get humbled real quick when I bit into the reapers.
One thing that I really liked was that they put crushed black pepper on the buffalo wings, and when I asked them about it they said it was mostly to distinguish the hot buffalo from the regular buffalo, but I kind of feel like it added to the flavor and the experience. The lemon pepper wings were solid but not insane. insanely memorable.
I was thinking 9.25, but I wasn't out of the woods yet. I still had to try the Reapers. First of all, there were seven of these, not six like I ordered, and if there's ever a time you don't want them to give you extra wings, it's when you get the hottest wings on the menu.
But I didn't fly to the opposite side of the country to leave wings on the table, so my plan was to finish all seven. I dove in, and as always, it didn't hurt too bad right off the bat. It kind of takes a second to kick in. Even so, I could tell immediately that these things were strong. They just had kind of a particular taste to them.
For some reason, my hand- were shaking. I don't think I've ever had that happen before. And then boom, there it was. The pain kicked in before I could finish the second wing. I had some trouble getting the meat off the bones and I think that was a combination of my shaking hands and my open bite.
If you don't know what that is and are interested in orthodontia, you can look that up later. But I wasn't there to make excuses and I definitely wasn't going to take any shortcuts. Sometimes ultra hot wings hurt in different places and this one was hurting inside my chest. I was planning on going through all these without water but I just like subconsciously grabbed my cup of water without thinking.
And trust me, I was just like, I'm going to take this. I'm going to take this. I'm going to take this. I know that people are gonna say that water doesn't really help, but it does provide momentary relief and help wash down the meat itself. And in the words of Sean Evans, any port in a storm.
I feel like I hit a wall around wing number four, but I just had to push through. By this point I was sweating pretty good and my nose was running pretty steadily. I don't really remember much about the last three wings, just that I was in a lot of pain.
I somehow managed to finish and the bartender who raised his eyebrows at me earlier was like, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. I told him that I was only crying a little bit. Joke's on me though because the afterburn was terrible and the pain was far from being over. My nose just kept running more and more.
Eventually I ran out of water and the restaurant was closing soon anyways, so I figured it was probably a good time to leave. I paid my bill and made my way outside. I think breathing in the cool night air helped, but I'm honestly not too sure. I got back in my rental car and I was still struggling.
I tried to drink more water and then I had what I would describe as a dangerous cough. Kind of where you're worried that it might turn into more than just a cough. That's not good.
If you've seen the fast food gauntlet breakfast edition, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I've never tried this before, but I put in a stick of gum and that actually seemed to help a lot. The region between my nose and my top lip felt very raw. along with some parts of my chin.
I will say this, as bad as the pain was, the sauce was more flavorful and less like chemically than a lot of the ultra hot wings I've had in the past. My nose continued to run like a faucet for about 30 minutes afterwards. The pain in the mouth area wore off eventually and just to put a pin in the ratings for Vindictive, I went with a 9.5 for my overall experience.
All things considered, I really liked these wings. They were a little bit on the smaller side but still really good and I think more places should be sprinkling black pepper on their buffalo wings. That's a total score of 44.75 for Vindictive which is a new number five overall in the national rankings.
It's just behind Ching's in Memphis, Tennessee and ahead of the Dirty Buffalo in Norfolk, Virginia and Wayne's Wings in San Antonio, Texas. It's kind of an epilogue to the ballad of Reaper Sauce, when I got back to my hotel about an hour later, my stomach was feeling pretty bad and I started mentally preparing for, shall we say, a rough exit. Whenever that might run its course. What I was not prepared for though was what happened when I went to shower. My goal was to make sure that all the capsaicin or whatever the chemical in hot sauce is was totally off my face and hands before I went to bed.
But instead of washing it off, I somehow managed to spread that chemical around. So new areas of skin suddenly started burning. And yes, I did wash my hands multiple times before getting in the shower.
I'm sure there was some user error involved, but this was some of the strongest stuff I've come into contact with in recent memory. Fortunately, I didn't get it in my eyes or anywhere else that would require a hospital visit, but my figure fingertips literally felt like they were burning a full 3 hours later. I was just lying there in my hotel room thinking, how do I make this stop?
All that being said, I managed to fall asleep and that burning sensation was gone in the morning. But that was not what I thought they meant when they said this sauce will hurt you twice. That next morning I had a flight from Seattle to Honolulu and despite my best laid plans I ended up cutting it very close to catch that flight.
Unfortunately that's been a little bit of a pattern with me in airports recently. But luckily I made it and I was on my way. Just on a personal note, I had never been to Hawaii before, so this was a really cool experience.
I was only going to be there for about 36 hours, but I wanted to make the most of it. I know some people watching might be like, why would you come all the way to Hawaii for such a short period of time? And I guess I was I would say that I view this as more of a work trip where I'm choosing the cheapest airfare and lodging and transportation and just trying to minimize the time that I'm spending away from my wife and my dog and my community back home. The goal would be one day when we can afford it to come back with my wife to these places like Hawaii and Australia and Australia. actually sightsee and vacation together.
So even with this limited amount of time, one thing that you should know about me is that I love going to locations where they've filmed movies and tv shows. Even if it's a set on a studio tour, like getting to set foot in a world that you've only seen through the big screen is a form of magic to me. I'm a sucker for those Instagram accounts where they line up shots from movies with their real life locations, like film tourism or going to the movies.
So while I was in Hawaii, one of the first things I did was go straight to the beach from Lost. I know this doesn't have anything to do with wings, but I'm going to go to the beach. but humor me for a second here.
Lost is a favorite show of mine, so this was wild. I also went to the place where the others lived, which as it turns out is an active YMCA camp. They'll let you come check it out if you just call and ask permission first.
Okay, back to the wings. There's a spot that was included on several lists of the best wings in Hawaii, and it also won a voting contest hosted by Honolulu Magazine they called the Lord of the Wings. And that place is called Off the Wall. I have to say this place probably had the least wings place vibes out of all the restaurants I've been to so far on this quest. It was located in this sort of shopping center and it had outdoor seating, indoor seating, and then this patio that was outside the restaurant but inside the shopping center.
And that's where I sat. People kept walking past me on the way to their yoga class, which I'm assuming was in the same building. There was some sort of instrumental flamenco guitar music playing, which was very soothing. Based on the name and the wall of taps, I think Off the Wall is primarily a beer and wine place, but apparently they also have great wings. On the menu there's the option of barbecue, salt and vinegar, and chimichurri, but chimichurri is the one that they're most known for.
order of those. One interesting thing is that I don't think the menu said how many wings an order came with, but I flew here for these so I'm kind of in either way. Turns out it was 7. You pay 18 bucks for 7 wings, so kind of on the expensive side, but I won't let that affect the rating. For appearance and first impression, these smelled really good.
The chimichurri was obviously the prevailing smell, so garlic, parsley, oregano, olive oil, and it was garnished with sesame seeds and some slaw underneath. I went 9 out of 10. For meatiness and size, these were bigger than most wings that I've had, so I was thinking 8.5, but once I I bit in I was surprised at how much meat was on each wing so I landed on a 9 out of 10. The texture and tenderness rating was tricky because these were very tender and the meat was super juicy but they weren't really crispy on the outside at all. And I think that was probably by design. I don't think they fried these wings at all. So even though I was impressed by the tenderness in order to stay consistent in my rating scale I had to go 7.5.
When it comes to the sauce flavor these were very distinct from the other wings I've tried on this quest. They were really tasty and I'm not sure if this will make sense but you know how you can just keep eating buffalo wings? wings until you're full. I feel like with these I'm not sure I could put away that many.
Almost like there's a limit to how much chimichurri you can enjoy. I went 8.5. For overall experience I mean I really enjoyed these.
Again very different by no means a traditional buffalo wing. Maybe a slight deduction for how oily they were. I'd give it an 8.75 which brings the total score to 42.75 in the regional rankings that puts it just ahead of Fire on the Mountain and second to Vindictive Wings in Seattle. By the way this region is a combination of the Pacific Northwest and the non-contiguous states and I'm just going to call it the Pacific.
As I've mentioned before, some regions are easier to classify than others. Because this was such a unique style of wings, I decided to call in a bonus restaurant. As a reminder, only one restaurant for each state will be featured in the national rankings, but bonus restaurants are thrown in if I feel like a state doesn't have a clear favorite or if I need to do some more investigating.
Hawaii, as you may or may not know, is closer to Asia than much of the rest of the United States, and you can see that reflected in the cuisine, so I thought it would be a miss if I didn't sample some Korean style wings while I was there. A lot of people in the comments and on Reddit are big fans of a place called lawns, but since the vast majority of their locations are in California, it didn't feel like the right fit to represent Hawaii. There was however another place that was suggested in the comments called Good Chicken.
Phenomenal name, by the way. And despite all of Off The Wall's accolades, Good Chicken actually had a higher rating on Google. Much to my dismay, it was actually showing up as temporarily closed with no explanation.
But there was a second location in Waikiki that somehow had an even higher rating on Google. So I made my way in that direction and suddenly found myself in a very touristy area. We're talking Gucci, Louis Vuitton. Dior, and of course a Hard Rock Cafe.
Everything was very neatly manicured and there was so much white and gold lighting and just tourists everywhere. I mean myself included. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this place anymore, but I was slightly relieved to discover that Good Chicken was located inside a food court in the basement level of this mall that featured exclusively Asian restaurants. Honestly a really great concept for a food court. I wish I had something like this near me.
At Good Chicken you can't split flavors. You can only order them in increments of 10, so I asked what the most popular option was and she said definitely the the garlic chili, so I got an order of those. As a Korean chicken restaurant, they did not serve buffalo style wings, so that's why I didn't order buffalo.
For appearance and first impression, I loved the variation in color between the golden colored sauce, the red peppers, the yellow pepper flakes, and what I believe were green onions. They also smelled really good. I went 8.5.
These were really big wings, partially due to the breading, but still pretty hefty, so I went 9.25. For texture, they were typical of the Korean style with the extra crunch from the breading, and the inside was fairly tender, but there was definitely a chewy feel. at certain points.
Like it was a fight to get the chicken off the bone and not just because of my open bite. So I went 7.25. I really liked the garlic in the sauce in addition to the real chili pieces and the sauce itself was great but it was sitting a little heavy in my stomach by the end. Now to be fair I still hadn't had a bowel movement since the Reaper wings the night before in Seattle so that's more on me than on these wings. I went an even 8 for sauce flavor.
My overall experience was an 8.5 bringing good chicken to an overall score of 41.5. That brings up the rear for the region so far but don't get me wrong these were really good. really enjoyable.
Since they scored lower than Off the Wall, the chimichurri wings will continue to represent Hawaii in my national rankings. My flight out of Honolulu wasn't until the next evening, so the next day I went on a tour of this property called the Kualoa Ranch, where so many movies and tv shows have been filmed it's hard to count. I could talk about this tour for hours, but just to whet your appetite, I got to see some filming locations from Jurassic World, including the Gyroscope Station, as well as the Indominus Rex paddock.
At the time I was there, they were getting ready to film part of the live-action Moana movie, so I think The Rock was supposed to be there like a couple weeks later. Okay, after that, I went back to the airport to head to Alaska, but first I had a layover in San Francisco. And if you've watched previous installments of this quest, you know exactly how I spent that layover. Eventually I landed in Anchorage to try the best wings in Alaska.
I had also never been to Alaska before. Okay crazy thing about Alaska it is super far north so even though I landed around 11 p.m it was still light outside. Like it's almost midnight in these clips. I was I was working on a few things and I didn't go to sleep until like 1.15am and it still felt kind of dusky out.
I'm not 100% sure but I think even though the sun does go down it doesn't make it that far below the horizon so I don't think it gets completely dark at night in the summer, which is just wild to me. The next morning I made my way out to a wildlife conservation center where I got to see a whole bunch of animals and incredible views of these mountains. The weather was also incredible, I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was in the upper 70s and super sunny.
I wouldn't say that there was a runaway winner for the most recommended wings restaurant, restaurant in Alaska, but in my research it seemed like this place called Winkies was the one where the comment section and the online rankings were most in agreement. I also want to shout out The Chicken Coop and Hood Wings which also received a handful of recommendations. I was expecting this place Winkies to be downtown, but it was actually in this strip by a bunch of car dealerships.
But even so, everything just looks a little bit more majestic with those mountains in the background. Like this Taco Bell for example. I also didn't realize that this place was takeout only, but I figured I could eat the wings in my car.
They only offer flavors in increments of 10, so I ordered I ordered 20 wings so I could get two different ones. I got 10 hot buffalo and 10 mild original Cajun dry. They have it set up where you choose your flavor and then you choose your heat level for that flavor.
I put in my order and then I walked to that Taco Bell to get a Baja Blast. For appearance and first impression, the original Cajun dry looked really good, although slightly misleading because there was definitely more than just dry spices. Like they looked moist, but in a good way.
The buffalo I would say looked pretty average, more on the oily side than the creamy side, and they didn't necessarily look very crispy. This won't factor into my rating, but they gave me 11 of each instead of the 10 I ordered, which is a nice touch. For that first category I landed on 8.5.
Now for the size, they were fairly small wings. I'd say just slightly larger than the wings at Wing Supreme in Oklahoma City. I gave Wing Supreme a 6.75 for size, so I gave these an even 7. After biting in, I confirmed my suspicions that the buffalo weren't as crispy as I'd like to see from a fried wing.
I started with an 8.5, but the dry rub wings had a much better crisp, which is to be expected with non-sauced wings. So after trying both, I went back and made it an 8.75. The buffalo sauce was good, but the dry rub wings were a little bit more crispy.
solid, it was made using Frank's Red Hot which is fairly typical, nothing revolutionary, and at first I thought they didn't taste too hot and I figured that was because there was a level above hot that you could choose, but they actually ended up having a pretty powerful afterburn. This doesn't affect the flavor score, but the buffalo wings were super super messy, kind of drowning in the sauce. The Cajun had a good flavor, but there was almost like a fish or a crab flavor to it. And I wonder if that's because it was reminding me of Old Bay or if there was something else in there.
I don't know, I couldn't really put my finger on it. I went 8.75 for sauce flavor. My overall experience was consistent with the scores, so I went 8.75.
That gives Winkies a total score of 41.75 out of 50, which puts them in fourth place for the Pacific region behind Fire on the Mountain, but ahead of Good Chicken. Nationally, that's tied up with Mamas, Foghorns, and Q. Bistro. A solid performance, but with so many other great wing places in the mix, this falls kind of in the middle of the pack.
A huge congratulations to Vindictive Wings in Seattle on their runaway victory as regional champion for the Pacific. My flight home put me back in Virginia just in time for my dad's retirement party, and once I was back, I totaled up my receipts from this leg of the quest and made an equivalent donation to Feeding America. The plan is to do that for each of the remaining regions as well. Just as a heads up, there will be a slight break before the next installment of this quest, but I promise I'm coming down the home stretch regions will be the Rocky Mountains, the Plains, the Great Lakes, and last but not least, New York. If you've got recommendations for wings in any of those regions, make sure you drop them in the comments below, and I just want to say thanks in advance for your patience as I juggle this quest with a few other personal and professional projects.
projects on the horizon. If I could leave you with two things, it would be to one, please, please wash your hands thoroughly after touching the Reaper sauce at Vindictive Wings in Seattle. And two, just remember that even when it doesn't feel like it, it's going to be okay.
I'll see you soon.