Las Margaritas QQ

Ever had Las Margaritas 8-for-$9-beer-battered-unsauced-but-comes-with-bowl-of-hot-sauce-for-dipping-your-wings-into wings?  No? Good, save your money.

Risque Quickquest

So a couple weeks ago, Nick, myself and our old friend Graz went to Club Risque. It is a Cinco De Mayo tradition of ours to just get together at our favorite gentlemen's club. We decided to kill two birds with one stone and do a quickquest in between lapdances. It really did take me a long time to find the right words but here I go.


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So there ya go. By far my favorite QQ thus far and it will be HARD to top...heh.

Miller's Ale House

The building that currently exists as Miller’s Ale House, located on the BLVD in Northeast Philadelphia, is something of a Boulevard staple, but only in the sense that over the years, that same building has housed, in all its incarnations, many a failed restaurant. The fact that Miller’s has lasted for the few years it has is something to be admired, though it’s not necessarily something I’d chalk up to the actual merit of the establishment. Miller’s has the same hokey corporate feel shared by the likes of a TGI Fridays or Applebee’s. Kitschy shit on the walls, colorful menus, and snappy buzz names for their appetizers (see: Zingers). Not that any of the above make a restaurant inherently bad (Fado is a corporate franchise and they have some of the best wings we’ve eaten so far), but I mention these things to give a point of reference as to the kind of place we’re dealing with.


First off, Miller’s offers a good amount of sauces for their wings; there’s Mild, Hot, Mt. St. Helens, Honey Mustard, Sweet Thai Chili, Garlic, and BBQ. Their wings are priced at 10 for $8 or 20 for $14. Nick, feeling not as hungry as Sean and myself, ordered ten of the Garlic. Sean ordered twenty, but broke up his order in two and got ten Mt. St. Helens and ten Honey Mustard. I pulled a Sean, but got ten Mt St. Helens and ten Sweet Thai Chili.


When our orders arrived, Nick got his one plate of Garlic, I received two separate plates containing my orders respectively, and Sean got one big plate of wings. Somehow, our server was under the impression that Sean wanted his two sauces to be combined into one disgusting Frankenstein sauce, but managed to separate my order which was identical to his. So Sean now had the pleasure of reviewing a new specialty wing sauce, The Mt. St. Helen’s Honey Mustard Good Feeling Jamboree. Order them just like that if you’re man enough… Also, to our surprise, Miller’s wings are breaded; a big gross, albeit matter-of-opinion, no-no for us Wing Questers. The breading soaks up all the sauce, making for a soggy and altogether unpleasant texture for the wings. It just seems like an unnecessary culinary add-on to something that is already perfect in its simplicity.


Texture aside, the sauces themselves were pretty unimpressive. You could tell that some of the sauces were straight out of the bottle and not a whole lot of effort went into them. Nick’s Garlic wings were good as far as Garlic wings go and were the only wings that benefitted from the breading, as the bread soaked up all the butter and garlic (usually the sauce drips right off of the wings and there’s barely any flavor left). But, at the same time, the Garlic wings absorption of all the butter and spices made them too rich in flavor and difficult to consume all ten of them. The Mt. St. Helens sauce is touted as being “OMG hot” by our server, which intrigued me. However, these wings were more LOL than OMG. Get it? The Mt. St. Helens wings, though spicy, didn't have enough flavor within the spice to make them enjoyable, and we’ve definitely had hotter wings than these on the Quest so far.

MT. St. Helens

The Sweet Thai Chili wings were probably the best on the table, though the sauce seemed to be straight out of a store-bought bottle. The Sweet Thai shined through mainly because the sauce itself was so thick that the breaded wings couldn't absorb it, leaving the wings crispy. Sean’s sauce-combo’d wings were by far the worst. I don’t really feel the need to explain to you what a mixture of Honey Mustard and Hot sauce tastes like, let alone the effects of having to consume twenty wings coated in said sauce. My heart went out to Sean that night.

Thai Chili

Overall the wings were big, meaty, and cooked well despite the breading, which I’m sure, some people actually like. It’s the texture of the soggy breading and the lackluster sauces that killed Miller’s for us, not to mention the screw up with Sean’s wings. It’s interesting to me that Sean even said, before we entered Miller’s, that every time he’d been in there, his order got messed up, and he just happened to be the only one who had his ordered misinterpreted. I think it’s only fair that I mention his nickname for Miller’s Ale House; “Miller’s Fail House”. All things considered, I think it’s pretty fitting of our time there.

Sean says "Try the combo sauce, it's finger drippin' good!"

Wing: 5.3


Sauce: 5.5


Price: 6.5


Overall: 5.7


Review by Tom Kaericher

Sweeney's Saloon

The decision to go to Sweeney’s, located at the intersection of Buselton and Philmont in the far Northeast across from the Whiskey Tango, was a hasty one. We had some intel that led us to believe that Sweeney’s Saloon had vinegar and feta cheese wings, which we think sound pretty tasty. Upon arriving at Sweeney’s, seeing that the menu contained no such wing, then asking the bartender if they existed and being told that, no, they did not exist and never have, we were all kind of bummed out, but we decided to stay and try out their wings anyway.


Their menu touts their wings as being “Famous”, by whom we do not know, but they offer an impressive eight different sauces to choose from , including Hot & Honey, BBQ, Cajun, Mild, Garlic, Oriental, Honey BBQ, and Hot. Their prices, compared to other “Famous” wing joints we’ve been to, are really fair and encourage you to order more wings than you probably can handle. The pricing breaks down like this: a small order of six wings runs you $5.50, while the bump to double that order to twelve wings is only $1.25 more at $6.75, and caps off at $24.50 for fifty wings. If I wanted to, I could get 24 wings for $13.50. Not too shabby, right? So, being that the Sweeney’s quest consisted of just myself and Sean, we ordered two different flavors each, which the bartender taking our order allowed us to do in just one regular order at $6.75 (which a lot of places won’t let you do because they want your money). I ordered the Hot, like always, and the Garlic, in hopes that might be something more than just butter with chopped garlic on top, and Sean ordered the Hot & Honey as well as the Oriental.

Hot + Garlic

Our wings came out with a nice big tub of bleu cheese, celery, and carrots (nice touch). The hot sauce was the typical affair, and lo and behold, the garlic wings were just butter with chopped garlic on top. Would it be possible to add some spices to the garlic wings? Even some pepper and parmesan cheese would do the trick. Every bar that has garlic wings, listen up, plain old butter and chopped garlic is boring, it barely tastes like anything. Heed my words, please. Sean’s Hot & Honey wings were a nice mix of what their name implies and were pretty tasty. The oriental wings threw us both for a loop because they looked like every other Asian-inspired wings we’ve had in the past, but when we bit into them expecting to taste that sweet General Tso’s-esque type sweetness, we found none. The oriental sauce seemed to be based more on the soy sauce element, and I really enjoyed that change.

Hot & Honey + Oriental

In general, all the sauces we tried were good, but pretty stock or “meh” in their tastes. I’d say that what gives these wings their “it” factor is how they’re cooked, which is to say really well, or at least well enough to carry the various sauces and their respective shortcomings. The wings are of average build, and suit the bar setting nicely. These were solid bar wings at a great price and there’s nothing wrong with that. Plus, given the option of being at the Whiskey Tango or Sweeney’s, I’d take Sweeney’s any day.

Good Dog Bar

Good Dog Bar
224 South 15th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
(215) 985-9600

An awesome bar/restaurant located at 224 South 15 th Street, Good Dog spans three floors, has a spectacular draught list, and a food menu that is out of this world. Their Good Dog burger and fries are a contender for the best in the city, to say the least. Each of us Wing Questers have been to Good Dog multiple times, and each of us were already familiar with the quality of their food and drink, except for their wings. Needless to say, our hopes were high and we were more than willing to go down to Good Dog and do our next Quest there.


One thing about Good Dog is that it is usually pretty packed, and while it does have three floors, the building itself is slim, and only two of the floors are dedicated to dining. So waiting at least a half hour to get a table is an almost unavoidable part of the Good Dog experience. We didn’t really mind waiting all that much though as the third floor has a pool table which Nick and myself took full advantage of. When our table was ready, we sat down and ordered.


First things first, Good Dog only offers one kind of wing, the “Wings” wing. Yes, neither Hot nor BBQ, nor any other sort of indicator as to what you’re in store for when you order; just “Wings”. The wings are boasted as being “jumbo” and for the price tag of $11(!) for ten(!?!?), we gave Good Dog the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the wings would be really big. And when the wings finally did come out, celery and bleu cheese in tote, we took note of their size. On average, Good Dog’s jumbo wings are definitely larger than your average wing, but not by any crazy amount and I personally had the displeasure of having at least two wings in my order that were completely average sized and utterly unimpressive. But to be fair, the wings are really meaty and that's definitely a plus.


The wings come “smothered in Good Dog’s very own wing sauce” which is probably the weirdest sauce we’ve ever had to review. The vague nature of the wings just being called “wings” was made clear to us after the first bite. The sauce has a flavor that just can’t really be placed. The Good Dog “Wings” experience is as follows: first, a sort of sweet BBQ pummeled with tomato sauce, then a smoky, almost chipotle flavor, and finished off with a wee lil kick of heat. It wasn't an unpleasant experience, but none of us could really get into the sauce. It was almost like the sauce just didn’t know what it wanted to be, and the chef’s indecisiveness in crafting this sauce really bogged the wings down. But the light at the end of the tunnel, as there always is one, was the bleu cheese and celery. The bleu cheese had a thick, almost whipped, consistency and tasted super fresh which made for great dipping with the chunks of celery.

"Wings"

One thing we discussed last night after we had finished our meal was how bars and restaurants that have amazing food, always seem to treat wings as an afterthought, like “Eh, who gives a shit? They’re just wings.” Nick recently ran into this in his Quick Quest for Plush; great food otherwise, shitty wings. Our Good Dog experience was the same way, only it was made worse by the fact that these wings come at such a hefty price. And it makes me really angry that I had a couple wings that weren’t jumbo at all, but I still paid $1.10 for each wing. So with wings that are generally above average in size, a forgettable, amorphous sauce, and a ludicrous price tag attached to the whole thing, all of us here at Wing Quest would recommend getting anything else but the wings because Good Dog really does have some of the best food in the city otherwise.

Wing: 6.83
Sauce: 5.16
Price: 1.3


Overall: 4.4


Review by Tom Kaericher