Since You Asked — Wings Over Vegas

I’m a wings aficionado. It’s my favorite food by far. I once flew from New York City to Buffalo and back in one day, just to go to the Anchor Bar and have wings for lunch. Then I married a girl from Buffalo! Even before I did, I spent plenty of time there, so if you’re from Buffalo, I submit the following to establish my street cred:

• My favorite wings are Big Tree Inn, Buffalo Brew Pub, and Amherst Pizza and Ale House. 
• I prefer Anchor Bar to Duff’s.
• Bleu cheese. Period. Don’t even mention ranch.
• Wings shouldn’t be breaded or baked. Those might be wings, and they might be chicken, but they’re not wings.

Las Vegas has lots of great food, but sometimes you’re just looking for good wings. They’re there, but you have to know where to find them. Here are my reviews and recommendations.

Best Wings on the Strip

We’ve got two finalists in this category. The wings at Blondie’s in the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood are probably the best when they’re really good, but they’re inconsistent. I’d say 80% of the time I’ve gone there, they were worthy of the title, but sometimes they’re on the small side and mediocre for some reason. TAP at MGM Grand also has solid wings — big and meaty, though not as saucy as those at Blondie’s. Both sports bars are good places to watch games. In normal times, Blondie’s takes reservations for big events and NFL Sundays. TAP doesn’t, so you have to get there early and wait on line if you want to get a good chance at a seat. 

Best Wings Downtown

Triple 7 at Main Street Station. If you’re a big wings fan like me, these aren’t the best you’ve ever had, but if you’re downtown and have a hankering, they’re perfectly fine. Not huge, but fried nicely and they have some interesting flavors. Triple 7 is also a microbrewery, if you like onsite-brewed beer with your wings. It’s also a decent place to watch sports, with two drawbacks: 1) They don’t open until 11 a.m. on Sundays (or at least, they didn’t as of fairly recently), so you’ll have to find somewhere else to catch the first hour of the early NFL games, and 2) They don’t have the satellite package, so you can only see whatever games are locally televised on the Vegas station and/or the nationally televised network games.

Best Wings Anywhere in Vegas

Hands down, Naked City Pizza, which is inside Moon Doggie’s Bar on Arville west of the Strip. (Skip the Paradise Road location.) This one requires some effort; it’s not really walkable from anywhere, nor does it have a bus stop nearby, so you’ll need to rent a car or rely on Uber or Lyft. But if you’re looking for good and authentic, this is it.

The owners are from Buffalo and the place was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” so you know that they know what they’re doing. In addition to wings, you can find other Western New York favorites like pizza, chicken-finger subs, and beef on weck. (Pro tip: You might think that boneless wings are the same thing as chicken fingers. They’re not. If you don’t want the bones, order fingers from an authentic place like Naked City).

Moon Doggie’s is definitely a dive bar, but they’ve got sports on TV and bartop video poker, with a handful of tables if you’d rather spread out a bit.

Best Wings in a Pinch

Pre-pandemic, the Buffalo Wild Wings adjacent to Planet Hollywood on Harmon was open 24 hours. They’re not bad for a chain and have tons of different flavors. And Vegas is probably the only place in the world where you can get wings and beer at 6 a.m.!

Here I am at the old ESPN Zone at New York New York, happy as a … well, wing-lover.