These are the top wings in the Triangle, winner of our Super Bowl Chicken Wing Bracket
The Triangle’s top wing joint is barely a shack, but the wings that fly out of the fryers are known far and wide.
The winner of the News & Observer’s Triangle Chicken Wing Bracket is Heavenly Buffaloes, which collected more than 23,000 votes in the final round, beating out finalist My Way Tavern. The bracket, timed to declare a winner in time for the Super Bowl, started with 16 Triangle competitors.
“I would be over the moon if we won; it’s great to get this recognition,” Phelan said. “I believe we are the best wings no matter what a poll says. But in this time of chicken wings, where the price of wings and oil are out the roof, it means so much. We put a lot of work into our sauces and production.”
Heavenly Buffaloes opened in 2015, owned by Phelan and business partner Mark Dundas and built in a tiny shack on Markham Avenue, a half block from Duke University’s East Campus.
The wing joint was kind of born out of what Phelan’s first restaurant, Dain’s Place, didn’t have: chicken wings.
“The kitchen at Dain’s is just so small and we only have one small 50 pound fryer,” Phelan said. “I knew if we did wings they would be amazing, and we didn’t have room for that.”
But behind Dain’s Place, maybe 100 yards away was a tiny shack with a porch that had been a series of takeout restaurants. Phelan said he thought about that shack all the time.
“I had been eyeing that shack since the day I opened Dain’s Place,” Phelan said.
Heavenly Buffaloes
Phelan and Dundas, each sporting considerable beards, met at Dain’s Place, where Dundas was a regular. They became friends and racquetball partners and then a conversation about the dreams of a wing joint turned into a shared vision. Suddenly Durham’s most popular wing shack was born.
The shack started as 311 square feet, but before opening was expanded to 500.
Phelan has worked in restaurants his entire life and graduated from Purdue with a degree in restaurant management. Dudas, originally from Australia, has a background in corporate finance.
“We thought if we could sell 500 wings a day we were going to be good,” said Phelan, noting reality was closer to about two tons of wings per week. “We saw people come back three times that first day.”
Growing up in Allentown, about 90 minutes outside of Philadelphia, Phelan said stand-alone wing joints were common there, but not something he saw much of in the Triangle. The original shack kept the menu simple, just wings and waffle fries, and brownies for dessert, either spicy or plain. The drinks were large format beers, tall boys or 22 ouncers, but most orders were taken home.
Before Heavenly Buffaloes opened, Phelan said the opening team and friends would fry up 100 wings and try variations of sauces, testing numerous versions of “Hot” or “Honey BBQ” or even the spiciest “Burnie Zass-Off” until everyone agreed on a winner. All of the sauces were created by Phelan’s wife, Jennifer, built from scratch and embodying a level of heat or flavor, from the five-alarm Burnies to the milder garlic Parmesan.
Phelan said the dedication is a tribute to the beautiful simplicity of wings, of something crispy and flavorful and often shared with friends.
“What is there not to love about wings?” Phelan said. “It’s just forever been that thing, you get a pitcher of beer and a bunch of wings and friends and dig in.”
Phelan said Durham has developed its own relationship with the Heavenly Buffaloes menu, mixing sauces and creating their own flavors. One popular one is the Sweet Thai Coconut Chili mixed with Peri Peri.
“We don’t have it written on the menu but all of Durham seems to know it as the Thai-ler Peri,” Phelan said. “It’s awesome the combinations people have come up with.”
Over the course of the pandemic, through supply chain issues and production slow downs, the price of chicken wings have been one of the major spikes on restaurant menus. The price of wings and fry oil has more than doubled at times, Phelan said. Most restaurants have raised prices, but not doubled them, eating some of the profits of the past.
Heavenly Buffaloes added cheaper items like thighs to their menus as an alternative.
“The days of the 10 cent wing joints are over,” Phelan said. “It’s just not feasible for places to do that anymore.”
The Super Bowl is one of Heavenly Buffaloes’ biggest days of the year, and since 2017 it’s meant pre-orders only. Phelan said they tried to serve walk-ups one Super Bowl in addition to pre-orders, calling it the hardest restaurant shift he’s every worked.
“People would step up and order and I’d say it was going to be a two and a half hour wait, and they’d said, ‘OK.’” Phelan said. “Now it means if you don’t pre-order, you don’t get wings.”
Heavenly Buffaloes expanded for the first time in 2018, opening a Chapel Hill location on Franklin Street with a dining room and much more in-person seating. A Greensboro and second Durham location would follow, but Phelan said the original shack will always be a sentimental favorite.
“The shack is our baby,” Phelan said. “It’s a labor of love. ... Every time I have our wings I’m just floored and think, ‘This idea was so good.’”
My Way Tavern
In the chicken or the egg equation, My Way Tavern was a restaurant before it’s a wing joint.
“We wanted it to be a classic neighborhood tavern,” said owner Andrew Stafford. “We were head set on the quality of food and paid a tremendous amount of attention to doing it right. Many bars don’t give the food aspect the attention it deserves.”
Owners Andrew and Nikki Stafford opened the original My Way Tavern in Holly Springs in 2010, following it up six years later with a second location on St. Mary’s Street in Downtown Raleigh, just off the Glenwood corridor.
“Bars, especially sports bars, are friendly places; wings go hand in hand with that,” Stafford said. “It’s hard to have a big restaurant without wings at the top of your sights.”
My Way’s wings come in 11 different sauces and rubs. Stafford grows the Carolina Reaper peppers himself that go into the sweet and spicy “pineapple reaper” sauce. The “El Hefe,” My Way’s hottest Buffalo sauce, is named as a memorial to a former cook who died and passed down the recipe, using ghost and habanero peppers for the heat.
With two popular locations, Stafford said he was grateful for the support My Way found in the Chicken Wing Bracket.
“We have so many followers and two restaurants that combine for 15 plus years of experience,” Stafford said. “We’re pretty known at this point, not just for chicken wings, but for being a neighborhood draw. People will come in my themselves and quickly end up buddying up with someone they just met.”
Staff writer Lars Dolder contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 3:09 PM.
