First, I ate at The Hangar. The quality of the food from some of my favorite restaurants in town like Moti or Fresh Side suffers in the delivery process. My wings have always arrived hot and crispy, so I was interested to see if they were even better in-house.
Not surprisingly, the place was packed. My first impression of the place was of dissatisfaction — there seemed to be little rhyme or reason to the seating process. Like sheep, the incoming customers are expected to line up. There is no one to ask how long the wait will be, and no sign saying to “please seat yourself.” When my party finally approached the front of the line I asked a waitress how long the wait would be and was simply told, “First come, first served.” When we saw a table beginning to empty we made a dash for it, and were rudely told by a waitress with a pointing finger to “wait over there.”
By the time we finally sat down at our table I was both famished and quite irritated. However, the experience abruptly and lastingly took a turn for the better. The waitress assigned to our table was pleasant and extremely competent. She brought us all our drinks right away, as well as a pitcher of soda for free refills. I then set about deciding what to order.
I decided to try one type of sauce-less wing, and one type with sauce. I settled on a DC-10 (you can only get one type of flavor with a DC-3) of citrus chipotle BBQ and Cajun blackened. The citrus chipotle BBQ sauce was eerily reminiscent of the salmon with the same name at Val. Considering that it is one of the better things Val makes, it was nothing to complain about. The Cajun “blackened” chicken was not blackened like I had hoped it would be. Instead it was simply dusted with a spice mixture that tasted like a mix between BBQ chips and Old Bay. I also tried my friends Ranch-flavored wings that were similar — they were covered in what tasted like the spices on Cool Ranch Doritos.
I happily ate most of my wings, and then devoured the leftovers later that night. Both were very good, but fell far short of the Honey BBQ wings that I had come to know and love. The freshly battered and fried all white meat chicken alone is amazing, and so anything they put on it couldn’t possibly be bad. I would recommend that anyone with a hankering for wings just order them — you’re likely to get them delivered faster than you would at the restaurant, and there is no sacrifice in quality. The consensus amongst my friends seemed to be to stick to the classics; the Hangar makes the best boneless Honey BBQ wings around. Any other flavors are almost undoubtedly going to be good, probably just not as good.