Best Wings: Boss ChickNBeer
It comes across like the beginning of an old joke…”A guy walked into a restaurant…,” but Heather Doeberling, co-owner with Emily Moes of Boss ChickNBeer, will says she would not be serving their mainstay wings had it not been for a regular customer who told her he’d eat at her restaurant seven days a week if they were always on her menu.
Doeberling was up for the challenge — mediocre wings could not be part of the plan. “The wings have to be really well seasoned,” she says. “They shouldn’t need sauce. Sauce should be like the icing on the cake.”
Boss ChickNBeer began selling wings on a Wednesday. It sold 40 pounds. The following week it sold 80 pounds. By the third week, it sold 120 pounds.
Now she faced a problem: She was cooking on a tiny fryer. “I was selling out increasingly earlier. People were calling at 11 a.m. to order them for dinner. We knew we were onto something.”
While she won’t reveal her secret recipe, Doeberling acknowledges that the wings are brined in a special recipe for 12 hours, baked and seasoned and flash fried when ordered. “It takes 24 hours for us to get the wings ready for someone’s plate.”
Sauces are all made from scratch and include buffalo jalapeno with caramelized garlic, lemon dill ranch or gold (as in Nashville or Carolina gold, but Boss’ is Cleveland gold) with “a little heat, a little sweet and Cleveland Stadium Mustard.”
27321 Wolf Road, Bay Village, 440-455-9686
120 Front St., Berea,, 440-532-7660
7305 Broadview Road, Seven Hills, 216-264-8165
