THE FOURTH AND LAST VERSION OF THE LEGEND

The fourth version of the legend of Buffalo Wings is the one my father tell's around a big plate of buffalo Wings.

He said it was reported by Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker magazine in 1980. Trillin reported on an African-American named John Young who said he developed a special "mambo sauce." a hot chile sauce.Chicken wings in mambo sauce became the specialty at his Buffalo restaurant in the mid-sixties. He registered the name of his restaurant, John Young's Wings 'n Things, at the county courthouse before leaving Buffalo in 1970. "If the Anchor Bar was selling chicken wings nobody in Buffalo knew about it then," according to Young. Trillin checked with a local poultry distributor and found that both John Young and Frank Bellissimo were buying a lot of chicken wings in the middle sixties but no sales receipts were saved. The wings Young sold, however, were prepared a little differently. They were not cut in half (the tip is removed first usually in Buffalo wings) and were served breaded with the sauce covering them rather than being tossed in the sauce. In 1980 they were still being served that way in John Young's Wings 'n Things (he had returned to Buffalo by then) and in a restaurant owned by his brother, Bird Land.