The Coupe de Wing Coop

Review

When I first decided to review this particular location, I thought I'd review this one separately from the other Wing Coop.  However, I don't know if it has to do with a difference in location, difference in chefs, or if they've made some significant changes all together recently, but my experience at this location was completely different than my experience at their other location.  During the entire meal we kept contrasting the two and came up with several significant changes.

Apart from this location being harder to find (it's behind a Blockbuster and isn't as easily seen from the main road as the other location), the store itself appears to be a bit bigger.  Like the other store, this one keeps to an extreme sports theme ideal for a wing environment.  Other than that and the names of the sauces, almost everything else is different.  This one feels a bit bigger than the other one (not huge, but bigger) -- I didn't feel nearly as claustrophobic in this one as the other one.  I felt that the customer service was better (it seems that they had a little more experience under their belts than the other location) and they let us try their sauces to help us make up our minds.

Left - Honey Habanero, Right - Raspberry Chipotle

This time we went with their raspberry chipotle, honey habanero, tiger teriyaki, and confucius.  We also mixed things up a bit by ordering some deep fried and others grilled.  We really enjoyed the deep fried wings -- they were cooked perfectly.  They had a crisp outer layer and the inside was well cooked. The grilled ones had a good flavor to them, but we prefer the crispy wing rather than the grilled.  However, because we like the flavor of the grilled we'll try to see if we can't combine both (deep fried first and then grilled).

The amount of sauce we had this time was excellent.  Our wings were well covered, dripping with sauce and there was still quite a bit in our container.  It seemed a lot thicker than last time as well.  The raspberry chipotle had a great flavor to it that the blue cheese nicely complimented.  Surprisingly, this had a sweetness to it that I wasn't expecting; it was by far our favorite today and the one we talked about on our drive back to work.  The honey habanero was good but not as good.  Last time we really enjoyed the confucious and were looking forward to it again today; however, this time it lacked taste.  Maybe our taste buds were fried from the spicy wings, but it tasted like a grilled chicken wing and not a confucious wing.  Perhaps ordering it grilled instead of fried caused the taste to differ than last time, but it lacked the ginger flavor (or any flavor) that we enjoyed.  As for the grilled tiger teriyaki, I really liked it -- but I also like teriyaki wings.  However, this isn't for everyone as the connotation of a buffalo wing is spice and not necessarily teriyaki.  But I thought it was good.

Although I did enjoy my last experience, I really enjoyed this one.  Like I said, I don't know if it's the location, the chef, or if a change has happened in general, but this was a really good set of wings.  I wonder if I can talk my coworkers into taking a longer lunch again to go there?  If it's the same crew as last time, I don't think it'll be too hard.

Cost and Big John Rating

$10.99 = 12 wings (without tax)

Service = 8

Quality = 9

Ambiance = 9

Taste = 8

Price Rating = 8.2

Big John Rating = 8.2

URLs