April 09, 2008

Hunter blames gall stones on wings

Email from Ron:

Fellow wing hunters, we have had a casualty which I
attribute to the Great 2007 Chicken Wing Hunt.

Had my gall bladder taken out last Monday (3/31/08) due
to a large number of Gall Stones. Tests confirmed they
were almost 100% cholesterol! I think there was one stone
for every wing I ate. Was pretty much an emergency surgery.
I went in early Monday morning and was home by noon the
next day.

I'm doing fine and just got back to work today. What fun.
The low fat diet has begun. Good thing beer is low fat.

Cheers!




Friends of the hunt in the media

Associate Producer (and road-rally champ) Alex Roy on Dave Letterman.

Associate Producer Drew "Wing King" Cerza on The View.

Chef Armand, author of Wings Across America, writes in Dish duJour magazine about the National Buffalo Wing Festival, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

January 10, 2008

Innovation or Abomination?

Once wings were sold in buckets. Then wingmakers switched to styrofoam clam-shell cartons. And to tins.

That was the extent of innovation I had seen in 25 years of eating wings.

Then I went to the national wing festival and found a number of devices designed to make eating wings easier. My favorite was the Snackdaddy, a round serving dish that looks like a Michigan rummy tray. Compartments for holding wings ring the perimeter (like penny compartments in a rummy tray). A compartment in the center holds the blue cheese dressing (like the kitty in a rummy tray).

(The Snackdaddy has a fatal flaw, in my opinion: it brings the wing AWAY from the eater, towards the blue cheese (meaning the eater has to bring the wing the same distance back again to his/her mouth). The better design would be having the wings in the center and the dressing in the outer ring.)

What to make of the latest wing invention, the trong? http://www.trongs.com/. The trong is a staple-remover-shaped device that allows you to grab (and eat) wings without getting your hands saucey.

It's impressive that a couple of wing-eaters extrapolated from a drunken conversation to what appears to be a semi-viable business. It shows commitment bordering on fanaticism. I also appreciate the trongs transformer-like design.

However, I see two serious problems: 1. cleaning a wing is not easy; it requires the dexterity of one's fingers (in direct contact with the wing) 2. people ENJOY eating wings with their hands. That's part of the wing's charm. Just as few people want to eat pizza with a fork, and no one wants to eat popcorn with a spoon, I don't think many people will want to use the throng. (I have to admit I kind of want to try it, but not enough to order one).

Wing-dispensing innovations are like new wing sauces. Forty years ago butchers threw wings away. Now you can get them in a 100 flavors and eat them without getting your fingers dirty. But what does it amount to? Does a honey-mustard wing taste better than a classic Buffalo wing? No way.

November 28, 2007

Editing is worse for you than wing-hunting

Apologies for a recent lack of news. I am holed up in upstate New York editing. (So far I've logged 170 hours of tape and put together a rough cut of 1/5 of it.)

Oddly enough, I've noticed that editing a wing-hunting film is worse for one's health than wing-hunting. I consumed 3,000 wing calories a day on the hunt. I burned off most of these calories hunting, driving and rallying the troops from early morning to past midnight. I gained just five pounds in 16 days, 5-10 pounds less than estimated. More unexpected than a lack of weight gain was that I was alert and energetic for most of the trip.

Now I sit in an office chair, working at a computer and eating wings a mere 1-2 times a week. I haven't gained weight. But I haven't lost any either. And no matter how often I drag myself out jogging, I cannot seem to shake off a bone-deep sluggishness that has set in.

I think the lesson is that it is better to eat wings and be active than to sit on one's ass in front of a computer monitor or TV eating vegetables and dip and drinking tea.

On a personal note, I recently postponed my wedding to wing hunter Lucie Mayerova, from July 5 to an indefinite date sometime in August or September.  The U.S. government takes longer to process fiancee visas than we expected.

October 18, 2007

Producer Alex Roy breaks trans-continental driving record

Congratulations to associate producer Alexander Roy, who announced this week he set the non-stop driving LA-New York speed record with a time of 31 hours and four minutes.

Roy, a wing buff, road rally champ and car rental executive, describes his cross-country run in his new book, Driver, released yesterday by Harper Collins.

More on Roy in this NY Times article.

October 17, 2007

Beer can make wings taste hotter

I was logging footage last night when I came across a startling fact: beer-drinking can actually make wings taste hotter.

This is according to Mark Weiler (www.wyswings.com), whom hunt fans will remember as the wing fanatic that drove from Virginia to cook for us at his brother's house in Rochester.

"Alcohol - if you drink it before you eat - dilates the tissue in your mouth," Mark told one of our cameramen. "You can go to a place and have extra-hot wings one night and go the next night and have a beer or two first - a half a glass even - and the same wings will seem so much hotter."

Mark didn't elaborate. I would guesst that with further alcohol consumption there comes a point when the dulling of the brain's senses outweighs sensory gain experienced in the mouth, and the wings start tasting milder.

I don't know if my wing senses had been heightened or dulled when I tried the hottest sauce of my life, the Defcon zero (www.defconsauces.com), in Brooklyn on August 18. I had certainly had a few drinks. An extract-based sauce with a gazillion Scoville units and not sold to the general public, the Zero is too dangerous (or mabye just too painful) for the human stomach and unfit to be tried on a wing. Defcon's owners took a drop of the Zero from a nail-polish-sized vial and placed it on a straw. I put the straw in my mouth and sucked.

The agony - like a soldering iron to the lips - peaked at minute five and eased after about twelve minutes.

One way to mitigate hot sauce burn, I learned that night, is to suck on sugar. Another option is eating ice cream. And not for the temperature drop, Mark says. Dairy products have an enzyme that combats the burn of Capsaicin (the molecule that makes peppers hot).

"The dairy enzyme casene cools heat - so anything with dairy in it will help," Mark says. "A lot of people try bread, water, soda, but they don't do much."

October 09, 2007

Reynold's and Ric's winning hot sauce

I spoke to a company today about bottling a hot sauce developed by me and wing hunter Ric Kealoha.

The sauce's claims to fame are it 1. introduced a thousand Slavs to the joys of Buffalo wings and 2. won top prize at the 2007 National Buffalo Wing festival, an awkward footnote in the history of the Great Chicken Wing Hunt. Ric and I and five other hunters came to Buffalo to search for the world's best Buffalo wing. Not stake our own claim to the title. "We've been chasing our tail," declared hunter Ron Wieszczyk as Ric and I hoisted the silver trophy on stage.

Of course our sauce was declared ineligible for the hunt's top prize. We'll never know how Ric and I would have fared. Perhaps someday an enterprising young upstate New Yorker will repeat the hunt, and, finding me on a rocker chair in the Adirondacks surrounded by a garden of peppers, will taste my sauce and evaluate it for posterity.

In any case, it's gratifying to know our sauce may soon face an even tougher judge -- the marketplace and the invisible hand of millions of wing eaters.

October 01, 2007

Guest Blog: Reynolds the competitive cook

This week, Polish journalist Peter Kononczuk - my ex-roommate, good friend and sometimes nemesis - takes readers back to my pre-hunt days, to an informal cooking contest that took place in Prague, Czech Republic in 2006.

I worked hard to win the contest -- and thought I had. But the judges, including Peter, called it a draw. Judging by their mumbled answers to my questions, declaring a 'draw' was a Kindergarten class move designed to spare my opponent, who had been favored to win. I felt the frustration of an Olympic skater who has peformed a flawless routine only to watch as a panel of corrupt judges robs him of victory.

Why is this relevant to the hunt? Peter's point - I think - is that cooking is an inclusive activity and should not be turned into competitive sport, that normal people cook for pleasure, rather than for glory, and that I am a fanatic.

Peter's article:

"I'll be around at 9 pm," said Reynolds on the phone. "I need to practice. If you're going to try, go all the way."

My apartment in Prague was a 45-minute tram ride from where Reynolds lived. It was already dark and the streets were covered with snow. But Reynolds didn't have an oven in his apartment and the cooking contest was at the weekend.

There's a poem by Charles Bukowski that starts: "If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. Go all the way. It could mean not eating for three or four days..."

In Reynolds' case, the cooking competition meant testing out his recipes, and eating the results for supper, three or four days in advance. He wanted to win.

Earlier that week we had been drinking beer with Eva after work. She worked in the circulation department of the English-language newspaper where Reynolds and I were reporters. We were talking about food.

"It's a shame more men can't cook," said Eva.

"All the best chefs are men," Reynolds told her.

"I do not think I will ever find a man who can cook better than me," Eva said.

"You're talking to one right now," Reynolds told her, smiling.

"Why don't you two have a competition?" I said.

We drew up the rules: two contestants, each allowed one assistant. The task was three courses: a salad starter, a pasta dish and a dessert. I was to be a judge, along with two colleagues from work. One of them, an American girl, was Eva's friend. Reynolds was my friend. That was fair, we agreed.

"Eva's a good cook," I told Reynolds as he arrived at my apartment, brushing snow off his jacket. "You're going to have to come up with something special."

"Yep, when she gets married, Eva's husband's gonna be happy man," Reynolds said. "But I'm going to beat her."

Reynolds had phoned his mother in America to get a pie recipe. He switched on my oven, mashed up pieces of biscuit as a base and then put them in to bake. The filling was a sweet, cool mixture of cream and peanut butter. I produced two spoons. The pie tasted good.

The day of the contest, I finished worked early. When I arrived in Eva's downtown apartment, near Wenceslas Square, Reynolds was already busy frying garlic in the kitchen. He had roped in his girlfriend as his assistant. She scurried around as he told her what to do.

Eva was next door, in her parents' apartment. Her assistant, another reporter from our paper, was pouring himself a glass of wine. Eva was putting the finishing touches to her dessert, a dish of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, splashed with Grand Marnier.

The contestants were supposed to finish at eight o'clock. With five minutes to go, Reynolds was still stirring and chopping, tasting and prodding his pasta with a fork, all the time giving instructions to his girlfriend. He had left detritus all across Eva's kitchen. Pieces of lettuce and other unidentifiable vegetables were strewn across the table and floor. He had burned a big black stain into the bottom of a silver pot and partially melted a plastic ladle.

I wandered over next door to see how Eva was doing. She was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Her three courses stood ready in neat bowls.

"She could do this every day," I thought, looking at her. Eva was wearing a black cocktail dress. She had red lipstick on.

Reynolds finally emerged from his smoky kitchen and we all gathered in the living room. The finished dishes were placed in the centre of the table.

They stood there steaming, under portraits of Eva's 19th century ancestors. Choosing the winner took longer than anyone had expected. The jury huddled in Eva's kitchen, out of earshot of the two chefs. Both sets of pasta were good. I preferred Eva's salad. But Reynolds' peanut butter pie was a hit. The jury had a sweet tooth and the way the discussions were going, it it looked like Reynolds was going to win.

Eva had prepared her meal with casual grace, in half the time it took Reynolds and with no rehearsal. It seemed wrong for her to lose the contest, in her own apartment.

"There's only one solution," I told the jurors. We trooped back into the living room. I placed Reynolds on my left, Eva on my right. "You were both great," I told them. "So good that it was impossible to choose. The result is a draw."

Eva smiled. Reynolds looked at Eva, then at me. He said nothing.

On Monday at work, I could see Reynolds was not his usual self.

"So how did you vote?" he asked me.

"Can't tell you. Oath of secrecy."

"C'mon. Tell me."

"Look, people liked your meal," I said. "You should be happy."

"I'd have preferred to lose than to draw," replied Reynolds. "I committed myself. I spent a lot of time and money to find out if I'm better than Eva. Why couldn't the judges commit themselves and decide one way or another? So just tell me, how did you vote?"

I shook my head.

"Never mind," he said. "I'll find out sooner or later."

September 20, 2007

Friend of the wing hunt, Casey Paleos

Once upon a time, the hunt was the daydream of a frustrated financial journalist (me).

One visionary was there to help me make a promo film and badger me into quitting my job, returning home from Europe and putting all my chips on finding the perfect wing.

The hunt took its first uncertain step towards becoming reality in March 2007, when Casey Paleos, a long-lost college friend, flew to Rochester to spend a week with me (I was home on vacation) and an amateur crew ambushing upstate New Yorkers and asking them where their favorite wings could be found.

Casey_photo

Something in their dumbfounded faces inspired us and a vision for The Great Chicken Wing Hunt began to take shape.

Although the 10-minute film we made fell short of its purpose (impressing a grant committee, which gave us nothing; view the film here and here), I saw enough greatness in it to be convinced to abandon a comfortable job at Reuters news agency in Warsaw, Poland and take a crack at making my first feature film.

Were it not for Casey, that greatness would have been missing and I would still be writing about the Polish zloty (Casey also gave me an impassioned lecture about following one's dreams and promised to lend me five bucks if the hunt ruined my career).

Thor_in_helmut

One seminal moment during that first week came when Casey insisted that competitive eater and fellow wing hunter Ben "Mighty Thor" Beavers don his viking helmet and pound his mjolnir (hammer) as a way of introducing him to viewers. To my objection that it would look staged, Casey replied, "It's a man in a viking helmet!!!" and let out a booming laugh that ended the discussion.

We also have Casey to thank for a shot (visible in the trailer) of Ben pushing a giant spool and other absurdest touches, all of them filmed in the months leading up to the hunt.

Alas, Casey could not make it during our two-weeks of actual hunting. In his other life, Casey is the son of a Greek immigrant and thus obligated to spend every third August in the Western Hellenic isles. In his third life, he's a psychiatrist in Manhattan. We will miss his creative spark in our footage from the road.

More on Casey, in his own words:

Casey_mouth

Casey A. Paleos, MD, psychiatrist-in-training, mastermind 

Back in their college days, Casey gave Matt Reynolds his first starring role in a one-minute 16mm black-and-white student film entitled, "Matt Reynolds' Moves".  Bootleg copies of this film are now fetching upwards of $5,000 on eBay. 

His role in the Great Chicken Wing Hunt has been largely conceptual, helping to define and develop the film's themes and meaning. 

Today, Casey can be found roaming the passageways of New York City's famous Bellevue Hospital, on the right side of the padded walls, for the time being.  One day, Casey will be dead.

September 10, 2007

Message from Europe: Dinga finds world's worst wing

(more on Dinga at 'cast & crew')

- Dude, was stuck in Frankfurt airport yesterday and saw 'Buffalo wings' on the menu at a restaurant. Felt an obligation to try them. What a mistake. I think they put salsa on them. A strong candidate for world's worst wing. But I felt like a wing hunter again.