(NEXSTAR) – Buffalo Wild Wings is, technically, a restaurant chain specializing in the most popular regional delicacy ever to come from Buffalo, New York. But its original menu — and its earlier name — really hammered home its connection to New York’s Queen City.
The restaurant that would come to be known as Buffalo Wild Wings was founded in the early ‘80s by Jim Disbrow and Scott Lowery, who, according to the company, had just “moved to Ohio from Buffalo, New York.” (Lowery, speaking with the Dayton Daily News in July, said that both of them had lived in Buffalo for a time, but Lowery was living in Ohio and Disbrow in Pittsburgh when they formulated the idea for a wing restaurant.)
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As the story goes, Disbrow visited Lowery in Ohio one weekend and — after a night of drinking — went looking for something to eat. The two men challenged themselves to find a place that served Buffalo-style chicken wings, and when they couldn’t, they started tossing around the idea of opening just such an eatery themselves.
Within a few years, they had acquired two additional partners and enough capital to open their own chicken wing restaurant. They also settled on a location in Columbus, Ohio, near the Ohio State University campus…