It’s American football playoff time. Nerves are frayed from opening kick-off to final whistle. Hoorahs and curses are shouted at TV screens in bars and in otherwise quiet, pastoral American homes. Beers are consumed – and so are chicken wings.

Chicken wings, those tiny, deep fried little morsels often of more bone and sauce than meat have become a staple in the diet of armchair quarterbacks and couch potatoes everywhere. They might not be healthy – they might not even qualify as food outside of North America – but they have their rightful place alongside watered-down lager beer and antacids in the American diet.

If prepared right with a fiery sauce, chicken wings can cause those consuming them to blow their tops as much as seeing their team punt on fourth and inches. And they should be served in copious quantities. Ukraine isn’t the land of 10-cent wings, but with all the chicken in this country it should be.

The Best Of team ventured out in search of the city’s best wings. Here’s what we found.

Chicken Little

After claiming first place last week in our best burger assessment, T.G.I. Friday’s this week lays dubious claim to last place in our best wing assignment. The portion, though well-sized, tasted weak. The sauce was thin, barely there and not fiery at all, allowing an odd taste to permeate our senses. While the standard blue cheese dipping sauce was fine, these wings certainly were not.

The chicken wings at O’Brien’s also left something to be desired. Similar to the Friday’s wings, the sauce was Spartan, though spicier, and the portion size adequate, but that’s about all the good that can be said. More sauce needed!

The Belle Vue wings were pricey, served by a guy who looked and acted like he’d just completed four years of hard labor, and really left us feeling lacking, especially heat wise. These were suicide wings?

We noted other disappointments:

At a Scottish friend’s recommendation, we decided to check out Shalena (Crazy) Mama. We concluded that the Crazy Mama wings, though quite tasty, were gone too quickly – there were only five of them on the plate. Five wings at Hr 38 for the serving worked out to more than $1 a piece. Ouch!

At River Palace, where we got the best service of any place in the city in our wing search, the Best Of team found the chicken wings to be remarkably tender – a sign of pre-cooking – and the portion size (8) was adequate, but the taste was wrong, more akin to seasoned, grilled chicken than BBQ or “suicide” flavors.

A similar, non-BBQ/non-suicide taste coated the Hairy Lemon wings, of which there were many crispy examples, but the taste and the high grease factor just didn’t do it for us.

And at Arizona BBQ, which has often been noted for having great chicken wings, we agreed with friends who said that their wings were among the best tasting around, and the portion size was high (10), but AZ fumbled on price; this lot priced out at about $1.50 per wing.

After such disappointments, we were wondering if any place could get wings right, just the way the Best Of team would naturally expect.

Fired Up

But the Best Of team did find some good wings. In fact, of the top three, it was hard to pick a winner, but we sweated it out and completed our search.

Two places just failed to make top spot. One of them was Golden Gate, which actually doesn’t deep-fry their wings, but health consciously grills them before topping them in the city’s most impressive hot wing sauce. Those who like their wings hot, as we do, will enjoy these suckers, but with only half a dozen on the half-plate (the wings working out to roughly a dollar each), diners will left feeling a bit hungry. Not quite the Best Of way.

The other place that fell just shy of the mark was Arena. Best Of teamers were served tangy, meaty wings that came on this cool, elongated platter with the classic carrot and celery sticks to dip in blue cheese sauce. On the downside, no option exist for those who want hot wings, and the price was the second-highest in our findings, the seven wings working out to nearly $2 each!

Lo and behold, though Viola’s Bierstube is by no means a sports bar (Fashion TV only becomes sport if the models are in swimsuits – at least that’s the argument Sports Illustrated makes), the Best Of team has concluded that Viola’s has the best wings in town. The Viola’s offering provided: generous serving size (nine wings) and price (Hr 39, or about $0.60 per wing); thick, meaty wings pieces with a nice, slightly hot sauce, and quick, friendly service.

Viola’s Bierstube

1A T. Shevchenka Blvd., 235-3751.

Open daily from 10 a.m. till 2 a.m.

Pavlo Terikhov

Kyivpost