Nostalgia Cooked
July 28, 2026
No. 8

“Hands, please”

The Buffalo wing story doesn't start with a chef chasing fame, it starts with a mom named Teresa Bellissimo tossing wings in cayenne and butter for her son's hungry friends; the deep-fry trick that finally makes wings taste delicious instead of air-fryer sadness; and three things worth your time this week, including the San Francisco restaurant a friend just couldn't stop raving about.

Coffee, then read on.

- Chef Tim

I get asked all the time why this newsletter is called Nostalgia cooked. The answer isn't because I think the past was better. It's because memory is the ingredient that turns food into feeling.

My fascination with food starts with curiosity. Growing up in upstate New York, I was convinced there had to be more than what was on our dinner table every night. My mom is a wonderful cook, but I couldn't believe that the world stopped at what we happened to be eating at home. There had to be flavors I had never imagined, combinations no one around me had tried, techniques that could completely change the way food tasted.

So I started experimenting.

Some of those experiments were actually incredible. Peanut butter and mint milkshakes. Lamb marinated in Barq's Root Beer. Looking back, I knew even then I had a small knack for flavor creation. Eventually I realized I had taken myself as far as I could. If I really wanted to understand food, I needed to learn from people who knew more than I did. That's why I wanted to work in the best restaurants I could find. I wanted the discipline, the pressure, and the relentless pursuit of making food better. I wanted to understand why flavors worked together and how the best chefs in the world thought about cooking.

Ironically, the more I learned, the more I found myself returning to the foods I had once been so eager to leave behind. Every Thanksgiving, I still think about my mom's stuffing. When I was training to make what some would call the best cookies in the world, the cookies I looked forward to most were the ones she mailed to me from home. They weren't technically perfect. They didn't need to be. They tasted like home. That's when I started to understand what nostalgia really is.

It's a way of reconnecting with someone you used to be. The version of yourself that existed before careers, responsibilities, and all the things that slowly reshape us over time. A single bite can transport you back to a kitchen, a holiday, a family member, or a moment you haven't thought about in years. It feels less like remembering and more like time travel.

That's why I write this newsletter.

I love discovering new food, and I probably always will. But the dishes that stay with us are rarely the most complicated or the most expensive. They're the ones attached to the people we love and the moments that shaped us. Food fills our stomachs. Nostalgia fills something much harder to explain.

Before service, the whole crew huddles up and someone tells the story behind the food. Pull up a crate, you’re on the line tonight.

Every July 29, America celebrates National Chicken Wing Day. But not every chicken wing is a Buffalo Wing, and the difference tells one of the best stories in American food.

Chicken wings are nothing new. The earliest known published restaurant menu listing appears at Buffalo's Clarendon Hotel in 1857, proving Americans are enjoying wings more than a century before anyone coins the term "Buffalo Wing." Even then, wings remain one of the least desirable parts of the chicken. Most diners prefer breasts, thighs, and drumsticks, while wings are often destined for soup stock or sold for very little.

The first chapter of the modern story belongs to John Young. In the early 1960s, he opens Wings 'n Things in Buffalo, New York, and serves whole, breaded chicken wings coated in his signature mumbo sauce, a sweet, tangy, tomato-based recipe inspired by his time in Alabama. Young proves that chicken wings deserve a place at the center of the plate, and Buffalo quickly embraces them.

Then comes the version that changes America.

In 1964, the Anchor Bar begins serving unbreaded wings fried until crisp, tossed in a simple mixture of cayenne pepper hot sauce and butter, and accompanied by celery and blue cheese dressing. Teresa Bellissimo cooked wings for her son and his friends and thus the "hot" buffalo wing was born. Restaurants across the country copy this preparation, and before long, a Buffalo Wing no longer describes a wing from Buffalo. It describes a style of chicken wing recognized around the world.

Buffalo native Dick Winger is a man who tasted that first preparation of wing because he provided the hot sauce! And I think if there's one guy you're going to get hyped on wings from, it's Dick Winger. He spends decades promoting his hometown's signature food through festivals, competitions, and appearances. He doesn't invent the Buffalo Wing, but he helps cement Buffalo's reputation as the Wing Capital of America.

As football grows into America's favorite sport, Buffalo Wings become the unofficial food of game day. Sports bars, pizza shops, and neighborhood taverns all put their own spin on the classic. The once-overlooked wing becomes so popular that it is often one of the most expensive parts of the chicken during football season. America ate 1.3 billion wings this year just on Super Bowl Sunday. 

Like many great American dishes, the Buffalo Wing isn't the work of one person. The Clarendon Hotel gives us the earliest glimpse of chicken wings on a menu. John Young shows Buffalo that wings deserve to be the main attraction. The Anchor Bar creates the recipe that captures the country's imagination. Sometimes history isn't about who gets there first. It's about the idea everyone remembers.

Top Tip

For the best chicken wings, you have to pretend you are making proper French fries, which is my favorite way to tell my cooks to make them.

First you need a deep fryer unfortunately and those are getting harder and harder to find but the air fryer doesn’t really do it for me and something about burning hot plastc doesn’t do it for me.

Blanch the wings in oil at 275 degrees until cooked internal temp of 155 degrees. Then let completely cool in the fridge or freezer. Fry again at 375 degrees until crisped to your liking.

Coat with a mixture of honey, Frank’s Redhot sauce, and butter. Dip in ranch. Sorry, Buffalo.

Buffalo wings call for a crisp German pilsner. It's dry, refreshing, and has just enough bitterness to stand up to the hot sauce while cutting through all that crispy skin. Every sip resets your palate so each wing tastes as good as the first. If beer isn't your thing, a sparkling lemonade with plenty of fresh lemon does the same job beautifully. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear someone opening a bag of treats.

Buell's Booth
Slide in, grab a seat. Every week, one question and one comment straight from the counter. Feel free to shoot me questions anytime!

"Made your Caesar dressing recipe this weekend and it turned out incredible, but I'm nervous about serving raw egg yolks to my dinner guests. Should I be worried?"

Raw egg yolks are fine, people have been eating Caesar this way for a hundred years. Just skip it, or use pasteurized yolks, for anyone pregnant or immunocompromised. Everybody else, let them eat.

"Your July piece got me canning tomato sauce for the first time this weekend. Bought a water bath setup and everything. Sauce came out incredible but now I'm terrified I'm going to poison my family come January."

That fear means you're paying attention, and that's exactly what keeps canning safe. Follow a tested recipe, stick to the right acidity and processing time, don't freelance the ratios, and you're not rolling the dice, you're just following the rules that make it safe. Botulism only shows up when people cut corners. Stay inside the guidelines and that jar's good to go. Pop it open in January and tell me it wasn't worth it.

The Nostalgia Table

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