My, how far Buffalo has roamed.
Not the city. It's right where it always was, frozen in place on the shore of Lake Erie in upstate New York.
It's the sauce that's spreading.
Sure, Buffalo wings are hot. But here on the verge of Sunday's Super Bowl, what we really noticed are the Buffalo variations. These days, you can't shake a wing without hitting a Buffalo pizza, Buffalo-flavored snack or a new Buffalo recipe. Don't believe us? Check the café at the Whole Foods in Raleigh: Buffalo tofu. Vegan Buffalo tofu.
Who could have guessed that Buffalo sauce, that molten red mix of heat, vinegar and butter, would go so far? It started one fateful night in 1964 when Teressa Bellissimo tossed the sauce and wings together for late-night customers at Buffalo's Anchor Bar.
Once the rest of the nation figured out the formula - 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup pepper sauce, usually Frank's Original RedHot, which used to be called Louisiana Hot Sauce - Buffalo wings caught on and have been challenging guacamole for Super Bowl snacking supremacy since the 1980s.
The latest numbers show that 23 percent of viewers eat an estimated 1.25 billion wings during the game.
But lately, Buffalo has increased its range. Page through the food magazines: Buffalo chicken casserole in Eating Well, Buffalo chicken thighs in Cooking Light, slow-cooker Buffalo sandwiches in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food.
When "The Meatball Shop Cookbook" was released by a New York restaurant last fall, it included a recipe for one of its best-sellers, Mini Buffalo Chicken Balls.
The research company Datamonitor recorded 75 new products with "Buffalo" in the name in 2008 and '09. And they're still coming. New this year: Buffalo Chicken Rice Sides from Knorr and Blazin' Buffalo Blue Diamond Almonds.
On the snacks aisle, it's practically a herd, from Doritos Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch to Ruffles' Molten Hot Wings flavor.
The battle is really gearing up on the sauce aisle, where several feet of shelf space is now devoted to both wing sauces and hot sauces designed for making wing sauces. The newest entry is from Tabasco. The McIlhenny Co. released Buffalo-Style Hot Sauce nationwide in January after three years of development. It's a hot sauce, not a prepared wing sauce, which puts it in the same category with Frank's Original RedHot and Texas Pete.
"Buffalo has been a flavor trend, not just a wing thing," says McIlhenny vice president Tony Simmons. "It's way, way beyond wings.
"It does seem to hit a very important balance between flavor and heat for an enormous number of people."
If there is a Buffalo season, this would be it, he says.
"There's probably more hot sauce sold between Jan. 1 and the Super Bowl than any other time."
People do feel strongly about Buffalo flavors. When the Kettle Brand company, maker of Kettle Chips, held a 2006 campaign for new flavors, Buffalo Bleu was the winner. And when Campbell's put its Buffalo chicken dip recipe online, it got more than 300,000 unique visitors in three months. It now has its own website, www.buffalochickendip.com.
The weird and the purist
How weird can the Buffalo fever get? Last year, the NBC show "30 Rock" made a joke about a mythological Buffalo Chicken Shake.
A video quickly popped up on YouTube, from a blogger demonstrating how to make one.
All of this makes us wonder how actual Buffalo natives feel about it. Frank Pullano, an associate math professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, is a wing purist. He grew up in Fredonia, a small university town about 40 miles from Buffalo. "Ten-cent chicken wing night was a big night in Fredonia," he says.
For his yearly Super Bowl party, he's emphatic on the invitation: He makes the wings.
"I do not eat chicken wings down here. Because they're never as good. It's like Mom's meat loaf. I grew up with certain chicken wings."
Still, he's happy to see something so beloved emerge from Buffalo.
"Buffalo gets a bad rap. The rest of the country only sees clips of Buffalo when it snows. So this culinary delight known as Buffalo wings is a good thing.
"Except the milkshake. I can't get my mind around that."
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