Went out to Chico’s BBQ (2490 Western Ave, Albany, NY) with some friends who told me that Chico’s had some awesome wings.
They are some pretty awesome wings. Smoked, and then either fried or served “Chico Style”. I got Chico style wings, which are smoked, tossed with hot sauce, and finished on the grill. Oh yas pls!
They skins had a very nice char to the outsides, and a pink coating of smoky proof on the meat inside. These were delicious. Oddly enough, they only do hot sauce though, so if you want Chico style wings, you’ll have to be okay with hot sauce. But the hot wasn’t really that hot. I got through them okay, and you guys know what a spice wuss I am.
The meat was very tender and moist – almost like breast meat, but in a really good way. The skins picked up a little crisping from the grill, and also had a nice chewiness from being smoked.
Either way, quite nice. The wings were quite sizeable as well, and I got a bunch of the wing portions in my order. I like the wing part with two bones over the drumette. I think it might be because there’s more skin, or maybe it’s just a tad moister. Either way, I was happy to see a large population of them. Orders of 10 are $7.99, quite fair for these smoky bad boys. I think they will be included in my “favorite wings in Albany” mental categorization from here on out.
The blue cheese sauce was fine, but paled in comparison to the glory of the smoky chicken wings. It had chunks of blue cheese, but really – we’re talking two competing flavors, so I tended to skip blue cheese dip and just savored the smoked chicken wings.
Now I need to give the fried variety a try, because there was audible crackling coming from those chicken wings with each bite. That’s definitely a good sound.
In true chicken wing lemming form, I ate 5 wings before asking for a to-go box. Hey, it was half of an order, okay? And I’m recovering from a stomach bug. Le sigh. I don’t get why I have such trouble eating wings when I order them out, but at least Albany John will get to sample some of their tastiness.
