vip in the city

Wingfest 2007

After our successful foray into the Japanese chicken wings last month, JG and SC thought that an expansion of the mission was in order. The call went out to the usual suspects, and we were on for Wingfest 2007 this Friday night.

SC and I had quite a time trying to calculate the appropriate number of Tebaya wings that would be required to serve 20-25 people. 6 apiece? 10 apiece? Wine, I know – standard for a dinner party is one bottle for every two guests… more if the night runs long, or if your friends are lushes – but chicken wings were a mystery to us both. Plus we had to consider the accompanying supplemental orders of juicy karaage and stomach-expanding potemochi, and one very large pot of JG’s famous cheese grits.

Unfortunately, with all the figuring, SC had failed to take into account the inevitable last-minute cancellations, which were in turn further compounded by one sudden and very nasty bout of bad weather. We ended up with a serious surfeit of chicken.

This is what a pile of 150 chicken wings looks like:

Potemochi (pan-fried glutinous potato flour cake):

Karaage (boneless chicken thighs marinated in ginger, garlic, japanese soy sauce, salt and pepper):

What to do but dig in?  We did, valiantly.

A couple hours (and several glasses of wine) later, the steadfast few remaining were rewarded with the mad spectacle of SC’s long-built up feat of eating. While SYB kept strict time, I watched my friend make astoundingly efficient work of ten chicken wings.  After an initial rough start (for which I felt partly to blame), she came close enough to the finish to earn a cool $50 from an impressed BI. Not near the pace of Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti, who earlier this month downed 4.1 pounds of chicken meat in 8 minutes, but a respectable showing nonetheless, considering that the challenge was undertaken on an already full stomach. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas had better watch her back.