Hot Ones NYC Grubhub Pop-Up Review: Bringing The Heat To Your Door
"Hot Ones" recently celebrated its 300th episode featuring John Mulaney. After eight years, the long-running YouTube show on First We Feast has had hundreds of Hollywood A-listers, celebrity chefs, and internet celebrities on camera to try a progression of 10 chicken wings, each doused in a hotter sauce than the last. If you've ever watched the star of your favorite TV show reach for the milk before Da' Bomb hits and thought you could handle that, now you might get a chance to try. As of June 29th, daring diners in New York City can try three of the hot sauces featured in recent seasons of "Hot Ones."
The First We Feast brand "Hot Ones" has teamed up with food delivery giant Grubhub to open a pop-up virtual restaurant in NYC. This isn't a dine-in location and is instead a ghost kitchen located in Manhattan that prepares and delivers a handful of exclusive, limited-time-only menu items. Residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan within the delivery range can order from a small menu of a couple of fried chicken options covered in one of three featured "Hot Ones" sauces.
When the promotion was announced there was no end date given to the pop-up, but we knew immediately that it was something we needed to try. We ordered a handful of items in order to sample each of the hot sauces served at the Hot Ones NYC virtual restaurant. Here's how it went.
How and where to order
If you are in New York City, you will need to download the Grubhub app (or log in via a web browser) to see if you are in the delivery radius of the "Hot Ones" restaurant. If you are, you will be able to order from a select menu that includes chicken wings, a chicken sandwich, fries, and a dessert.
For our taste test, we ordered one of each chicken item, each with a different sauce. We picked up the Los Calientes Rojo wings, Garlic Fresno boneless wings, and the Classic Chili Maple sandwich. Each of the entrees cost $13.99 for the sandwich or half a dozen wings. For an additional $10 you can upgrade to a full dozen wings.
The menu items we didn't try were the french fries ($7.49) and the featured dessert — an Apple Fritter topped with sweet milk. This pastry is available to add to your order for $8.99 in order to balance out all that heat with just a little bit of sweet.
These costs don't include taxes, extra fees, and tip. Overall, a meal from the "Hot Ones" app ends up being far from the cheapest option on Grubhub. So, the question remains, was it worth it to get a chance to sample these coveted premium hot sauces?
Hot Wings with Los Calientes Rojo sauce
We aren't going to mess around. Let's start with what most of you are here to read about — the Los Calientes Rojo sauce. While the other sauces on offer have appeared as first-tier "Hot Ones" sauces on the progression, the Rojo consistently shows up as No. 5 five on the progression of 10. That's pretty hot but, in context, it's a medium heat at just under 50,000 Scoville units — nowhere near the top two or three spiciest sauces featured on the show. Those would require a waiver.
We figured it made sense to pair up the traditional wings with the hottest sauce. Indeed it was, and the Los Calientes Rojo sauce is no joke. When you are first digging into the wing, however, the heat is pleasant and almost unnoticeable. It allows you to enjoy the tasty wing and its crispy skin — the quality of which we found to be a pleasant surprise. Of everything we ended up trying, the regular wings were by far cooked the best. And then the heat began to creep up.
It's a serious slow burn, but after a minute or two we really started to feel the heat from a single wing inside our mouth and on our lips. If you don't go out of your way to try spicy foods, you will definitely notice a significant spice here. We didn't find it to be unpleasant, though, just intense.
Chicken Sandwich Chili Maple sauce
As a vehicle for the Chili Maple hot sauce, we decided on the chicken sandwich. In addition to a crispy filet of chicken tossed in sauce, this sandwich is topped with mayo and pickles. Ours definitely seemed like it had an extra bit of sauce smothered on the top as well, and we aren't complaining about that since we ended up with a very strong sense of the flavor. And it's good.
Of all the "Hot Ones" sauces we tried, the in-house classic Chili Maple is the least hot but brought the most flavor. There was a great balance of sweet and spicy to this wing sauce that was noticeable even under all the mayonnaise. The chicken itself was a juicy piece of white meat and the bun was griddled on top to give an extra crunch. This was helpful since the crunch of the crispy chicken was once again lacking. We quite enjoyed this sandwich, we just wish the chicken had maintained its crispiness after being tossed in sauce.
After trying this, we suspect the Chili Maple sauce would go well with the traditional wings too. If we were to order from the pop-up again, this is definitely something we'd be excited to try.
Boneless Wings with Garlic Fresno sauce
Next, we dug into the boneless wings that were smothered in the Garlic Fresno hot sauce. This is one of the "Hot Ones" classic sauces, meaning it's an original recipe by the folks at First We Feast and "Hot Ones." The overall experience of this dish was not nearly as impressive as the other wings we tried.
The boneless wings themselves were nice, meaty chunks of white meat chicken but the breading lacked any crunch. The coating had definitely absorbed the Garlic Fresno sauce, but despite this, these were the least flavorful item we sampled. The sauce itself was nothing to write home about, providing a very mild garlic flavor with almost no discernable kick.
Overall, eating the boneless wings was fairly one-note in terms of flavor and texture. We will admit this comes down to the accidental pairing of what ended up being our least favorite sauce with the item that traveled the worst. Still, the other two hot sauces left a much bigger impression than the Garlic Fresno sauce.
Final verdict
As you can see from the photos, the branded packaging here was pretty on point. The "Hot Ones" bag the items came delivered in was high quality and most importantly kept the chicken warm, even coming from a different borough. This presentational quality is definitely a bit of what you are paying for at a virtual pop-up kitchen. There are better places to order fried chicken from in New York, but the "Hot Ones" food mostly hit the spot.
On the whole, the quality of the boneless chicken options was reminiscent of the equivalents at Buffalo Wilds Wings, although the "Hot Ones" sauces were definitely more complex in flavor. The true star of the menu was the bone-in wings. Our wings managed to stay crisp on the outside (and juicy on the inside) while also absorbing the flavor of the sauce nicely, and not failing to bring the heat.
If you're in the NYC area and planning on ordering from the "Hot Ones" Grubhub pop-up we recommend sticking to the traditional wings. If you're here for the heat, you won't be disappointed by the Los Calientes Rojo sauce. If you're not quite sure you want that intensity, go for the balanced Chili Maple sauce for a nice sweet and spicy wing.