A Little Bit About Me & Wings!
If you have followed along for any length of time with my posts it isn’t a big secret that my favorite types of food are the ones that lean more to a “savory” side instead of the “sugary” side. Also, my absolute favorite of all favorites are buffalo wings- and that is where that whole rumor about me a being a picky eater comes into play but FOR REAL. I am EXTREMELY picky when it comes to wings and I have about 3 places that I generally like their wings, and then that is IT. I don’t even really try new places for wings because of this. I also generally stick to your general buffalo flavor so that might be why I am SO picky!
So when I got a chance to review some Wings and some other yummy foods from East Coast Wings and Grill, I was pretty well beyond excited. I also knew that I would be able to share the food with David and my parents so it was kind of one of those reviews that wasn’t “just for me” especially considering I would be getting 100 wings ,2 things of chips and 2 orders of slaw!
A Little bit about East Coast Wings & Grill
First of all I had actually NEVER heard of East Coast Wings and Grill, although there are a few near where I live and I have actually been by them several times- I just guess in passing I didn’t ever notice…which isn’t saying a whole lot but David said he hadn’t even noticed before and neither one of us remembered the name. Come to find out they started out right here in N.C in 1995 as one restaurant and now they have about 35 (if I can count right according to their locations page!) They are primarily located here in N.C but they do have locations in Tx, Sc, NJ and Tn as well.
There is an extreme variety of items on the menu, and the most flavors of wings to choose from that I have ever saw before anywhere else!I think that there is something like 75 different flavors and 9 heat levels, which will give you about 675 different combinations. I was hopeful that even though my mom has NEVER ate a wing in her life , that if I got them mild enough that she would maybe try them..plus without knowing their heat scale very well I didn’t want to myself not be able to eat them- even though it has been said that I can eat fire before. I picked 5 different flavors- trying to hit something that I thought each one of us (my mom(hopefully) , my dad , David and myself would like, plus one to spare!)
When I went to pick up the food even though I knew it was what it was, I was SHOCKED at the magnitude of food they brought out for me! I think it was about 6 good size bags of food! I mean I didn’t realize how much it would all end up being! The containers of chips were way more huge than I thought as well as the slaw! It was VERY impressive! I know my mom was freaking out when we walked in with all the food- I know that she was anticipating it because she had took her fancy white table cloth off the table and everything! Also, because she is miss anti-wing she had her leftover food from the night before heated up- don’t worry there is a reason I keep mentioning that she doesn’t eat wings!
Wings & Flavors!
This is one of those reviews where it is easier for me to break it down by flavors & items and just go from there! First up We will start with the wings! I got 5 different flavors all together- it was really hard to narrow down the ones to get! We ended up with Regular Buffalo, Garlic, General Tsos,Chesapeake and Harvest Apple. I have to note from the beginning we were pretty well impressed with the size of the wings and amount of sauce on them.
Garlic– These were the ones I picked out for my dad because he is obsessed with Garlic- He really did end up liking them and I think that generally they went over really well. I didn’t find the Garlic flavor to be overpowering or anything and sometimes that does happen with those “pungent” types of flavors like garlic /onion type things.
Regular Buffalo– This one I kind of didn’t think from the beginning would be my favorite because of how picky I am with buffalo. I really like a tangy buffalo. The other thing with this one is that it was a dry rub- and I am a sauce person. I was right- this one wasn’t my favorite but there wasn’t anything wrong with it either! I would def. give it another try maybe with a more of a heat index type situation and see about getting it in a sauce!
General Tso’s was the flavor I picked with David in mind because he gets that at the Chinese place all of the time. It was described as having ginger, molasses, sesame, and crushed hot peppers. Even though it had hot peppers it was not an overpowering heat either. I Rather enjoyed this one myself!
Harvest Apple. Ok oddly enough I do not really like sweet stuff.. and sweet meat? no not so much but I do like apples and I like that this one was unique so I figured I would give it a go.. and guess what? this one was my personal favorite out of the ones we tried! I was pretty shocked myself! I think because it had a bit of a “tart” kind of thing to it! I think the balance of sweet and tart just kind of did me in on it!
Chesapeake Bay- I picked this especially from my love of Crab Chips. I also Know my mom likes crab chips and i was trying to entice her into at least trying ONE wing from the batch. She is really weird about not trying wings because she just has this instant thing that they are going to be HOT even though we have explained to her that there are flavors and heat levels. Either way,I convinced her to at least try this one which is described as a blend mustard, paprika, celery salt, bay leaf, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, mace, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger and she LOVED IT. She also ended up trying all of the other flavors INCLUDING buffalo!
Chips & Slaw & Extras!
My Favorite thing to eat with wings other than fries just happens to be CHIPS- especially homemade type of chips and so when I saw the chips that were included with these wings I was pretty excited! They were AWESOME and they had some sort of very yummy seasoning on them which made them even better. They weren’t burnt and they had some that were so fresh they were a little bit “soft” and those are my favorites. Oh and they were still warm which was even more awesome.
Slaw was the other side dish- now David won’t eat slaw for anything because he won’t eat cabbage- though I have heard he has ate slaw in the past when he went to a BBQ place on time but.. yeah! I didn’t get much of the slaw because my mom was like REALLY into it and so I just tried a little bit of it and then when we were done I left it with her. She and my dad agreed it was the best slaw that they had ever ate from somewhere “out” and that wasn’t this vinegar based one we used to get at a fish camp we used to have that we all loved/ it wasn’t made by mom! It wasn’t overly sweet or overly mayonaised and it was pretty fresh tasting like it should be!
Summing it up
My mom, dad and david and myself were really impressed with the food quality and quantity for this review and will def. be eating at East Coast Wings and Grill in the future. I am looking forward to trying some more wing flavors, maybe taking the spice up a notch and maybe even trying some of the other items and eating in the actual restaurant! I know the day that we picked the wings up they were having beer that was $3 draft so I would be interested in that too!I am also excited that we FINALLY got my mom to try wings after all these years! Go figure right?
