Food Wars

Recently, the Travel Channel debuted a new show called Food Wars. During the course of an episode of the show, host Camille Ford (who is quite telegenic, it must be said; par for the course for this sort of show, I suppose) travels to a city having a cuisine that's a local specialty and two top-rated establishments serving that specialty. She visits each establishment, speaks with its owner and learns about its history and its method of preparing the cuisine. She also speaks to some of the most passionate fans of each establishment. The owners meet, and the terms of a taste test are agreed upon: the location, as well as the specific item to be judged (e.g., for the episode about fried chicken, the leg was selected). Then a blind taste test is conducted with five panelists trying the selected item: a designated "super fan" of each establishment, as well as three local personalities. The panelists vote, and a winner is determined. It's great TV, except for the fact that I always end up craving whatever it is they're eating by the end of the episode. In short, I'm not sure whether I want Camille Ford's job or whether I want to marry her.

Anyway, so the first episode of Food Wars was filmed in the bustling metropolis of Buffalo, New York, where, as we all know, the local specialty is wings. I can say, without hesitation, that I love wings. I could eat them all the time if they weren't fried and coated in delicious, spicy, buttery sauce, but if they weren't fried and the sauce weren't buttery, they wouldn't be nearly so good. (Trust me, I've tried.) It's quite the dilemma.

Moving on, Buffalo is, of course, the home of the wing. The wing, as we know it, originated at the Anchor Bar; the story of its creation is told better elsewhere, so I won't attempt to rehash it here. A few years ago, not long after college, my friend Mike was living and working in Buffalo, and during the course of a weekend trip to visit him, I was able try the wings at both the Anchor Bar and at Duff's, the other establishment featured on Food Wars. (For some reason, while their franchise locations in Toronto have a website, the original Buffalo location doesn't, so I'm sending you to Yelp instead.) Before that trip, I had heard of the Anchor Bar as the place where wings were created, but wasn't familiar with Duff's; fortunately, Mike, living in the area, knew that both were worth trying. To shorten the story a bit: since that weekend, I've gone to Duff's every time I've been back to Buffalo, but haven't been back to the Anchor Bar, so I was quite pleased to see that Duff's was declared the winner on the Buffalo episode of Food Wars.

Since the premiere, Food Wars has also done episodes in Chicago (Chicago-style beef sandwiches; I wonder whether maybe they had too hard a time narrowing it down to two places serving Chicago-style pizza or Chicago-style hot dogs, both of which would sooner come to my mind), Pittsburg (the one in Kansas, not the one in Pennsylvania, for fried chicken), and Lockhart, Texas (for barbecue). I don't have much familiarity with any of the places they went, though one of the places in the Texas episode, Kreuz Market (pronounced like the word "rights" with a K on the front of it) is the inspiration for Hill Country, one of my favorite BBQ restaurants here in New York. I do know they've got an upcoming episode in Detroit to eat at coney islands, which I hope airs soon since I'm going to be in Detroit in a few weeks. Definitely a show worth keeping an eye on.