Buffalo Rising Online

Jun 15th 2007, 9:09am By Christa Glennie Seychew

For those of you that missed it last night, here's a quick recap of Drew “The Wing King” Cerza's national television debut on “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”.

Food Network's Bobby Flay challenged Drew Cerza, local Buffalonian and founder of the National Buffalo Wing Festival to a wing cook off. The half hour long show devoted much of its time to Cerza visiting local hot spots (Bisons' Dug Out, outside of the HSBC before a Sabres game, Gabe's Gate, etc.) talking about wings and Buffalo and, well... wings. Throughout the montage, they show Cerza championing wings as “America's Favorite Food”, and for those of you that might have found the repetition of that particular statement a little much, I just want you to know that it was because “America's Favorite Food” was the name of the “faux” program Cerza thought he was being featured on. Anyway, let's move on to the competition.

After Bobby Flay and a monstrous TV crew surprise Cerza at Anchor Bar, it looked like the Wing King was a little shell shocked, but he soon rallied. Flay's wing recipe included the major “no-no” of tossing the chicken in flour and ancho chile powder before adding the sauce. His sauce was made of chipotles, mustard, honey, red wine vinegar and butter. Cerza stepped away from the traditional, preparing wings with a New Orleans bent. Butter, honey, brown sugar, bourbon, barbecue sauce, chili sauce and ancho powder gave his wings a real spicy sweetness.

The judges were a representative from Duff's in Amherst and a college student from UB. I'm sure that they're nice guys, but Food Network could've done better than that, couldn't they have? Anyway, they had a difficult time picking a winner because the entries were so different. For a minute there, even I thought Drew would lose solely because the judges might interpret their job as picking the wing most true to form. After much deliberation, and multiple shots of the crowd talking about how crispy Flay's wings were, it's really no surprise that Cerza (and Buffalo) came out on top. The judges were swayed by the fact that Cerza's wings were cooked perfectly (not such an easy task), and that the flavor was unique and had depth.

Congratulations, Drew!