Where were Buffalo wings invented? The answer is a specific bar on Main Street in Buffalo, New York, on a specific night in 1964. The Anchor Bar is the birthplace of the Buffalo wing, and the original recipe served there today is the same one Teressa Bellissimo improvised for a group of her son’s hungry friends. Anyone searching for the real Buffalo wings origin story ends up here, at the actual bar, not a chain restaurant that borrowed the name.
On March 4, 1964, Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar at the Anchor Bar on Main Street in Buffalo when a group of hungry friends arrived late. He asked his mother, Teressa, to make something. She deep-fried chicken wings, tossed them in her secret sauce, and changed American food history forever.
The Buffalo wing has since spread to every bar, restaurant, and sports venue in the country. Twenty-seven billion chicken wings are consumed in America every year, and every single one of them traces back to Teressa’s improvisational decision at the Anchor Bar on that Friday night in 1964.
Frank and Teressa Bellissimo had been operating the Anchor Bar since 1935. The original is still on Main Street in Buffalo. The city officially recognized the Anchor Bar’s role in culinary history with a city council proclamation designating July 29 as Chicken Wing Day…