Union Jack's Pub & Restaurant

January 16th, 2011

Union Jack's Pub & Restaurant
2750 Limekiln Pike
Glenside, PA 19038-2203
(215) 886-6014

For all the urging from friends, family, and readers of this blog that we visit Union Jack’s, we here at Wing Quest felt like we needed to do some investigating to see what all the hubbub was about.  It was one of the first suggestions we received, and everyone we talked to had really great things to say about it.  And while we try to maintain a skeptical eye to such accolades, we all had some heightened hopes for the place. 

Located on Limekiln Pike in Glenside (also sporting a location in Manayunk), Union Jack’s is something of a staple in the area’s wing community.  It’s a smaller bar, but offers plenty of seating, both at tables/booths and, of course, the bar.  One of the great things about Union Jack’s though, is you can order take-out as well.  In our time spent there, a couple people came in to pick up some pretty sizable orders of wings.  So if you’re not really in the mood to hang out and drink some beer from their impressive list of craft and micro brews, you can always call ahead and pick your food up to enjoy at home. 

Choosing to sit at the bar, we three Wing Questers noticed an old sign towards the back of the establishment.  It looked like something you would see at a fair or carnival, the color and font just oozing kitsch, and its letters spelling, “World’s Best Buffalo Wings”.  Our interest piqued, we grabbed some menus and got down to business.

Ordering wings turned out to be a lot more difficult than we had anticipated.  Offering not only the typical Mild, Medium, Hot, and BBQ wings, Union Jack’s also offers a Suicidal sauce.  Oh yeah, and if that wasn’t enough, for an extra $.25, you can order from one of their nine(!) specialty sauces which include: Honey-Carib, Cajun, Honey-BBQ, Thai-Sesame, Mexi-Jalapeno, Habanero, Rump Roaster, Tex-Mex, or Southern Country.  So with a repertoire of thirteen sauces to choose from, we felt woefully unprepared.  Still, we pressed on.  Ordering the Tex-Mex, Thai-Sesame, Southern Country, and Hot (as a control group), we felt we had a good variety to judge from.  But our super friendly server, made aware of our quest, refused to let us continue without trying their Suicidal sauce and offered us a side of it for our dipping pleasure.  We graciously accepted, and waited for our order…  And waited…  And waited a bit more…

Though it didn't take a ludicrous amount of time for us to get our wings, we felt that it took a bit longer than it should have considering the amount of people in the establishment at the time.  But, we’re not going to dock them points for that.  It's a restaurant and sometimes shit happens. No biggie. When our wings arrived, they arrived all at once and we immediately started to chow down.

Tex-Mex

All the baskets of wings came with thick chunks of celery (as opposed to those little slivers you normally get) and sides of bleu cheese sprinkled with paprika (fancy-town).  And both of these little accents were appreciated.  Since all of the wings came at the same time, let’s do this in reverse alphabetical order.  First up, the Thai-Sesame wings; these wings are what you would get if you ordered sesame chicken from any Chinese restaurant and stuck some bones in it for good measure. And we mean that in the nicest way.  The flavor was spot on and having it in wing form was a welcomed change.  Though this sort of wing is more of a niche item that you would probably better enjoy if you were in the mood for them, they were still tasty as hell.  Next up were the Tex-Mex wings.  This sauce was billed to us as a spicy BBQ, but when we tasted them, there wasn’t too much spice to be had.  The sauce still had a good smoky, southern BBQ flavor, but when you’re expecting your wings to bring the heat, they better bring it.  After those, we had the Southern Country wings.  These wings were coated in a butter and garlic sauce that, while delicious, had a poor sauce to wing ratio.

Thai-Sesame

Finally, we had the Hot wings, “Hot” being a bit of a misnomer.  These were more like Tangy wings, but for the sake of having to re-alphabetize the list, we won’t change the name.  We were all kind of disappointed with these wings until we combined them with the side of Suicidal sauce our server provided for us.  The Suicidal sauce was amazing and hands down the favorite of the night.  Unlike their ominous name, it wasn’t overly spicy, in fact, it was the perfect amount of spicy. We wound up putting it on our celery, bleu cheese, French fries, and even some of the other wings.  Yeah, it was really that good.   

Southern Country

So having sampled as many wings as we could, we came to the conclusion that while the sauces were all great, the wings were lacking a bit.  A lot of our order was cold by the time we got them, and we also had some crusty wings that appeared to have been in the fryer for quite some time.  But that one complaint aside, the bulk of our order had a great sauce to wing ratio, the bleu cheese was really creamy, and the hand cut French fries we ordered were pretty amazing too.  And while we may not agree with the proclamation of “World’s Best Buffalo Wings”, we could definitely concede to “Glenside’s Best”, and that ain’t half-bad, right?

"Hot"

Wing: 6.9

Sauce: 7.8

Price: 8

Overall: 7.9

Hotter.

Review by Tom Kaericher