Pub on Penn: Wings are Just Chicken Fingers with Boners

       ***Note, this is a Sub-Review containing no information on Chicken Fingers***     

          If there is a healthier and more fulfilling way to fend off life’s stresses and depressions than eating as many chicken wings as possible while getting drunk on pitcher after pitcher of skunkily cheap beer then I don’t want to know about it. Wing Night at Pub on Penn is a disgusting display of gluttonous excess that plagues the Punk District of Cap Hill every Wednesday night. Large wooden planks are placed on top of pool tables in order to accommodate the ravenous overweight clientele who park themselves into the dive and order basket after basket of multiflavored wings.

             

           I’ve been attending wing night here for over a year now and have it down to a science. The trick is to get there extremely early after work and lie down across several chairs and tables until all of your lazy irresponsible friends show up and sit in the seats that you sacrificed your body and dignity to save. Then you must make sure to have a good working relationship with your waitress, because she’ll get really damn busy. I would wager that they handle at least 500 bones an hour, and that’s enough to put calluses on your hands if not properly lubed with sauce. If you are not vigilant with your waitress, you will be staring at a basket full of stripped wings as a wave of hungerless depression spreads through your body. The only way to combat this feeling is to force more wings and beer down your gullet, tricking your body into thinking that it actually WANTS you to put more substances inside of it.

               

            Since I’m from upstate New York, the birthplace of the chicken wing, I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on the topic. So as far as their wings go, the Pub on Penn will have as much luck with this review as a pre-oiled effeminate baby-faced 8 year old boy does at a NAMBLA party where the punch was spiked with MDMA. If I need to spell that out for you further, this will be a life scaring pedophilic rape of a review…

               

         Imagine an overgrown clump of bulbous slimy meat hanging off a deformed limb of a flightless bird that spent 2 minutes less than it should have in a deep fryer: and you have the wings at Pub on Penn. The mere fact that they actually fry their wings wins them a ton of points though, since this town seems to have a strict aversion to frying chicken wings. They come in a variety of flavors: Mild, Hot, BBQ, Asian, Spicy Garlic and Gator Rub. The mild and the hot are just your standard buffalo wing with the exception of getting the buffalo sauce right. The recipe for proper buffalo sauce is Franks Hot Sauce and melted butter; there is no excuse for screwing this up. The BBQ is a thick chunky mess of what appeared to be tomato paste with a splash of liquid smoke in it for a slight hint of flavor. The Spicy Garlic and the Asian sauce are both pretty decent, but the sweetness of corn syrupy Asian sauce gets old quickly. Finally, the Gator Wings, aka The Dry Rub, are only useful if you wish to maintain slimeless fingers. As we all know from our early innocent days of hooking up, dry rubs can be a very painful experience leaving you so sore that you question the very idea of the act. This is essentially the case with the Gator wings. The rub itself is bland that I would wager a guess that it is made out of red food coloring that was allowed to dry into a powder.

               

            You may be wondering why I subject myself to these mass produced, horribly flavored and notoriously undercooked chicken wings. The answer to that is simple: it’s $5 for all you can eat wings on a pretty sweet patio surrounded by pitchers of beer and great friends. The take away from this anal gape of a review is that though food is important, the quality of the experience ranks just as high. It was never my intention to be a run of the mill fine dining foodie blogger, but rather to bring you a review of the every-day-joe dive spots around town, with using chicken fingers as the foundation. Though I absolutely love and appreciate fine dining, I appreciate diarrheal dining just as much. If you are unable to appreciate the worst, then you are unable to understand why the best is the best. 


Don't forget to clean your fingers in the finger bowl after a particularly sloppy fingerbang!!!

 -Jason

Beer Can Chicken Corner:
         Pitchers of Bud, duh.
-Kevin