The best chicken wings in Las Vegas? Only you can make that call. Wings are as subjective as any other favorite food, so eat and argue to your heart’s content. But come mid-June, there’ll be another serious contender in town—Anchor Bar.
“There is a consensus on one thing and one thing only: We invented the Buffalo chicken wing,” says Tony Figurelli, whose Epicurean Strategic Partners is the company behind bringing the upstate New York institution to the Grand Canal Shoppes food court at Venetian. “There are people out there that will tell you other wings are better and some will say Anchor Bar is the best. My feeling has always been that if it’s not the best, the story makes it the best.”
Anchor Bar originally opened in Buffalo in 1935, and in the 1960s, owner Teressa Bellissimo deep-fried some chicken wings and doused them with the spicy combo of melted butter and Frank’s RedHot sauce. A legendary bar snack was born.
The Vegas version of Anchor Bar will sling more than wings, but chicken will be the focus. The only significant non-chicken dish will be the similarly beloved beef on weck: roast beef piled high on a crusty kummelweck roll. Cocktails and craft beers will be on tap, too, because you can’t have wings without beer. That’s another point we can all agree on.