BRISTOL – If you want to talk chicken wings, you would be hard pressed to find a more enthusiastic conversation partner than William Rego.
Rego has been around the fowl forelimbs since he was 14 years old, when he started as a dishwasher at Cabral’s Gourmet Chicken in Bristol. The first day, Rego learned so much about the business that he had trouble falling asleep.
“I remember going home, I couldn’t sleep at night, because I had so much in my brain,” Rego said.
Wings are Cabral’s best-selling item. On a typical day, Rego will sell 250 orders, but on occasions like the Super Bowl or Fourth of July, he will easily clear 2,000.
Cooking them is a “method of madness,” Rego said.
Salt them too much, and you risk burning them; salt them too little, and the wings will not get that sumptuous golden-brown color and flavor. Put them in the wrong order and they may dry out. Baste them too early, and the butter will burn.
“Everything that you do from start to finish affects that wing,” Rego said.