Doug's Blog

I stopped by The Butcher Block again today on my way home to try their house and spicy mustard chicken wings. The wings were a little scrawnier than the Incredible Hulk wings (which looked like they had graduated from the Barry Bonds school of doping), but I suppose you would want to save the largest pieces of meat for an appetizer named after a mutant green monster.

Today’s wings were still plenty juicy though, not the dry fare that many of us settle for. And a few more facts about The Butcher Block’s wings from bartender Ben:

• all 29 sauces are made in house,
• there are some off-menu flavors if you want the chef to get creative,
• chef and master butcher Filippo Caffari cuts up enough chickens to serve up 300 wings a day,
• Chef Caffari apparently hates chicken wings, but they help pay the bills.

By the way, a plate of 12 wings at The Butcher Block will cost you $10, but you can split the order between two flavors.

First up were the house wings, which were my favorite of the two, with a rich, sweet honey flavor. That’s pretty much it for these, not too much complexity.

Next were the spicy mustard, which I thought I’d prefer to the house wings because I generally prefer spicy wings over sweet. Turns out a common theme in The Butcher Block’s wings (at least the three flavors I’ve tried so far) is sweetness. The spicy mustard were no different with a little bit of heat (hardly what I would call spicy) making way to sugar.

The sauce was plenty sticky (stickier than the house sauce) which made the sweetness less of a surprise, and the whole mustard seeds in the sauce were a nice touch.

The wings went with a Redhook Long Hammer IPA from Washington.

After the wings, bartender Ben suggested the cannoli, which is apparently one of Chef Caffari’s great works. I certainly don’t have a lot of cannoli experience, but I’m sure this one was awesome. And the maple and orange tones of the Osborne Tawny Port went perfectly with it.