Dirty Birds Serves The Best Buffalo Wings In San Diego

As legend has it, on the evening of March 4, 1964, Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar at the famed Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y. with his mother Teressa in the kitchen. When a group of his hungry friends showed up, Dominic asked Teressa to whip up some food for them, so she took some chicken wings, which were intended to go into the stockpot, and instead tossed them in the deep fryer. She concocted a simple butter and hot sauce-based sauce, mixed them together, and arguably the greatest bar food of all time was born.

While you might argue that it's impossible to judge a Buffalo wing because they're all the same (just deep-fried wings tossed in sauce, right?), that couldn't be further from the truth. A perfect Buffalo wing is crisp and not soggy in the least, completely coated in sauce but not bogged down by it, fresh from the fryer, crispy on the outside (with no flabby skin) while remaining juicy on the inside, and the sauce needs to have the right balance of spice to butter without being overly greasy. It's actually a lot harder than it appears to make a perfect Buffalo wing, but the bars and restaurants honored on our list have got it down to a science. 

From humble sports bars to one of the country's most well-known experimental restaurants, we tracked down the finest examples of the form, nationwide (we left out the big chains like Buffalo Wild Wings to give everyone their fair shake). The Buffalo wing is one of the most easily accessible, enjoyable, fun foods known to Americans, and is served just about everywhere that has a modest kitchen and a game on the TV and as it turns out, some of the very best in the country are served in San Diego.

Wings that are big, meaty, crispy on the outside, and juicy on the inside, and more than 20 house-made varieties of sauces to choose from? You can't go wrong at fun, lively, beachy sports bar Dirty Birds, but start out with the Classic Buffalo to get a sense of how pitch-perfect these are. To test their fryer skills, you can also order them "Naked," with no sauce at all. Don't miss out on the homemade blue cheese dip, though (you can also order your wings coated in half wing sauce, half blue cheese dip). They're so good, they came in at #12 on our list of the 25 best in America, and since Dirty Birds is the only eatery from San Diego to make the compilation, they can also boast that they serve the very best Buffalo wings in The City in Motion.