Sixty Years Ago, Teressa Bellissimo Birthed The Idea Of Buffalo Wings In Upstate New York And Changed American Bar Food Forever
Did you know that Americans ate a record 1.42 billion buffalo wings during last year’s Super Bowl?
Since being introduced to the market nearly sixty years ago, the bar food has reigned supreme as Americans’ favorite finger food.
Who would have guessed that the delicacy was actually created by accident on a cold winter night in 1964?
Buffalo wings’ creator, Teressa Bellissimo, was born in Sicily in 1900 before she moved to Buffalo, New York.
Then, she and her husband, Frank, opened a bar near Lake Erie’s shores and named it the Anchor Bar in 1935.
The bar was doing great at the time, but nothing could have prepared the Bellissimos for what happened after March 4, 1964.
That evening, Teressa’s son Dominic had been tending the bar when some patrons visited for a late-night snack.
Teressa had been preparing food for the following day, and, at the time, she would often use chicken wings in soup.
But, Teressa had no soup to serve the patrons that night; in fact, she had nothing but the wings themselves.
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So, she decided to simply deep-fry the wings and toss them in her own homemade sauce. The rest was history.
“The guys liked them so much that the Bellissimos put them on the menu the next day,” reported the National Chicken Council.
“Served with celery slices and blue cheese sauce, ‘Buffalo Wings’ were an instant hit.”
The Anchor Bar eventually grew to sixteen locations across the country and in Canada. Now, the birthplace of the buffalo wing is even undergoing a franchise expansion.
The buffalo wing and sauce industry has also continued to grow as Americans cannot seem to get enough of spice-soaked chicken.
Major brands such as Perdue and Tyson offer the delicacy in grocery stores, while entire franchises such as Buffalo Wild Wings centered their entire business model around the bar food.
Plus, buffalo sauce has earned its place in countless other food recipes aside from wings. People have begun adding the sauce to popcorn, chips, mac and cheese, and even ice cream.
The nation clearly has an insatiable appetite for spice. And without Teressa Bellissimo, we may have never known the true delight of a perfectly cooked buffalo wing.
To learn more about the home of the original buffalo wing or visit the Anchor Bar, check out the restaurant’s website here.
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