Buffalo Wild Wings Vs Wingstop: Which Chain's Wings Come Out On Top?

The champions: Wingstop and Buffalo Wild Wings. The weapon: wings! The battlefield: my stomach! I tried the wings out at B Quad-U not too long ago while rounding up every chicken wing on the fast-food planet, and I was not impressed. But time makes us all reflective, and perhaps a Buffalo Wild Wings Express was not the best way to experience the majesty of the Buffalo.

That got me thinking: perhaps a single data point is statistically insignificant? In that same writeup, Wingstop came up shockingly, daresay even defiantly high on the list. I have tried every active flavor in the Wingstop cosmos, and I did not expect their plain wings to land in the final five. And while I might not be the intrepid Tasting Table reporter tasked with ranking every sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings, I can compare what I've had at either chicken (and more) chain. So let's do that! How do the comparable flavors at America's favorite Buffalo-branded wing franchise compare to the ubiquitous stop for wings? We're about to find out, and we have nothing to lose except the slipperiness of our arterial linings.

For reference, it's Buffalo Wild Wings flavors to the left and Wingstop to the right, alphabetically as you like.

We have to establish a baseline, and I warn you right now, Buffalo Wild Wings has a ton of ground to make up. In our chicken wing challenge, it was one of the worst wings I wrangled. While Wingstop stunned by ending up a top-five finalist.

Nevertheless, I was willing to take Buffalo Wild Wings on anew. And it's true the freshly cooked kitchen served a finer wing than the awful one I'd had at Buffalo Wild Wings GO, the more fast-food, express edition of the place built around hanging out for hours. It had actual flavor! And was not completely dried out. We have passed the actual lowest bar, hurrah! And then some, because this was a normal wing, albeit not quite as tender as I'd have hoped, and certainly a little more dry. Ultimately, I could make a better wing, and I'm not sure I could say the same about Wingstop, so the smart money walks home with this installment. Put it this way: with what wings cost these days, I'd be leery of BWW for the value, whereas Wingstop is worth the expense beyond cooking at home.

Buffalo Wild Wings knows Buffalo sauce. And while it actually tastes a bit afield of the classic Buffalo sauce recipe, so does Wingstop's, and come to think of it, so does ours here at Tasting Table, which employs the now-common additions of apple cider vinegar for brightness and Worcestershire sauce for that good umami. If you really want authentic Anchor Bar Buffalo wings, toss Frank's red hot with melted margarine, or, if you like to live deliciously, clarified butter. If you want a neat spin, you're doing well at either restaurant.

So how about these wings? Well, Wingstop's aren't bad, landing smack in the middle of the chain's own offerings, but Buffalo Wild Wings are good enough to recommend as a pit stop all their own. You'd be missing out if you didn't mix flavors, but it fulfills the urge to burn your tongue slightly less than just the right amount of too much. (Come on, I love Frank's too, but you know Sriracha is the perfect level of heat and fermented complexity.)

The winner: Buffalo Wild Wings! The hometown hero shuffles off to Buffalo wearing the championship belt for this matchup. But no joke, if you're hungry for great buffalo wings in New York City, Scallywag's or Donovan's would still be my first destinations.

My co-taster and I disagreed on which was the better BBQ here, sweet or honey. We're not even going to pit honey BBQ against its closest competitor, because they're fundamentally different, and frankly, sending any sauce in to die against the unyielding sword of the champion Hot Honey Rub is unconscionable. It only wanted to make life tastier for everyone! Am I a monster, to pit it against the invulnerable king of all Wingstop sauces?

Anyway, sweet BBQ is good ... really good. Maybe even the best sauce I had at Buffalo Wild Wings? I'd put it on things that don't even like BBQ, like carrots or my WASP father. But buddy, it's no Sweet BBQ Blaze.

See, Wingstop offers a variety of BBQ flavors, and Sweet BBQ Blaze isn't even the green gallo's only smoky flavor. But it is the most direct analog of Buffalo Wild Wings' sweet BBQ sauce, and on that front, it is almost as daunting a battle as facing Hot Honey Rub. 

This is a top-five flavor at Wingstop, and while it stands in similar company at Buffalo Wild Wings, but you can only get Sweet BBQ Blaze intermittently at Wingstop, meaning it forfeits, or near enough to it, and Buffalo Wild Wings wins by default!

Man, this one was close. If anything could best the sweet BBQ for an in-house Buffalo Wild Wing kumite, it's the lemon pepper, which was also a top-three pick at Wingstop. It's so easy to overdo it with lemon, yet neither place got audacious. Do you know what it takes to put barbecue sauce in the corner? My God, I have to re-examine my entire existence in a lemon-based world.

I have to tell you, this is probably the single most decisive match-up in the meatspace. If Buffalo Wild Wings can do it, it's laying serious claim to the crown. I think we're looking at a "Rocky" situation here, where Buffalo Wild Wings goes down, but makes Wingstop give it everything it's got to keep the challenger down there. 

Real victory might mean proving you're not the unremarkable plain loser hanging out at Buffalo Wild Wings GO for the Tuesday night flights of fancy. With lemon pepper, Wingstop remains the undefeated Apollo Creed, but Buffalo Wild Wing proves that it deserves its place among the serious contenders.

As with lemon pepper, it's one of the best technical achievements at either place, given the potential to go overboard with either of the two main ingredients. However, I think at either restaurant, garlic parmesan is a nice-to-have and truly tastes good, so it's not going to tilt the tide of war.

Even so, we're pitting them head to head, and dang if Buffalo Wild Wings doesn't impress yet again. This feels a little more essential to a menu than the one offered at Wingstop, which I'd noted in my rankings as feeling more like the start of something than the final product, and which was also absolutely drenched in butter beyond even my unreasonable limits. I don't normally complain about enough butter to fill a lobster tank, but when it affects the crunchiness of the fried chicken, we've got to talk. Buffalo Wild Wings does at least as good of a job minus the crutch of a stick of butter, and despite presenting what could very easily have just felt like errant salad dressing. By doing as much or more with less, we've got ourselves an impressive TKO.

Winner: Buffalo Wild Wings. Again? Now I have to grow in my estimations.

Wingstop might have one major leg up on Buffalo for pure cooking quality of the chicken, but factoring in sauces shifts the balance of power in the chicken wing universe back towards Buffalo Wild Wings. Sort of. It's really hard to discount the base deliciousness of the meat when a superior sauce is simultaneously covering up the inferior, if serviceable, cook. Conversely, the Buffalo Wild Wing sauces, I have to admit, never committed the cardinal sin of sensory overload found on half the Wingstop menu. BWW instead hits its highest notes clear and solo. Maybe that would change with a full sauce rundown, but credit where credit is due: Buffalo Wild Wings pivoted my point of view, even if it didn't dribble toward the key. It all comes down to which you value more: moist and crackling meat, or a brilliant streak of flavor atop it. 

Of course, your real move would probably be to get a bundle of plain wings at Wingstop after swinging by BWW to purchase the individual sauces. Then you're eating the best of both worlds, even if you're not watching college basketball finals while you do it. But if that's how deep into the wing thing you want to dive, it's probably worth learning how to make, and sauce, the perfect fried chicken wings at home. It ain't hard! The point of these places is to save you the work and get chicken right now. If you're committed to combining, your life probably gets easier just making all those wings yourself.