The Hungry Monk

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Xavvi Posted in Chandler, Reviews | 3 Comments

He kind of looks like a creepy, rapist Friar Tuck

I recently read a review from some seemingly nice fellows about The Hungry Monk in Chandler. They extolled the virtues of its beer list, the convenience of its location with regard to proximity of other craft beer hotspots (specifically San Tan Brewery and Whole Foods) and mentioned they loved the wings…

Pause.

…the boneless wings.

I have to give credit to these guys though, The Brew Bros [Editor's Note: Why can't we have a catchy name like that? The Wing Warriors? The Imbibing Idiots? The Drink....Drinkers?], they seem pretty legit in their knowledge of craft beer. They’ve got interviews with San Tan Brewery and reviews of out-of-state breweries, whereas all we have to show for our dedication to the craft is getting drunk at a beer fest and getting drunker at a different beer fest. Then again, we also spent a lot of our time narrowing down the exact science that is the art form of the buffalo wing, so we’re not completely useless. And since The Hungry Monk has developed a reputation for both their craft beer list and their wings, what better place to expand our beer repertoire (read: drink more beer and act like we’re doing it for science)?

Keegan’s Grill & Taproom

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Tyler Posted in Chandler, Reviews | Leave a comment

Keegan’s Grill in Chandler (Photo credit: Google +)

You don’t always get what you expect. For example, I didn’t expect to be sick for 3 weeks. I didn’t expect to miss the Phoenix Invitational Brewers Festival because I was sick. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be two and a half months since our last review that was focused mostly on wings.

These types of things tend to happen when you least expect them and sometimes there is not much you can really do about it. In this case, I had been wingless for weeks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the doctor had told me I wasn’t sick I was just suffering with wing withdrawal. That would be if I had gone to a doctor, like a wimp. (Fine I went to the stupid doctor, shut up.)

As soon as we got a chance we picked a night we could go out and we picked a place that had a good reputation for wings. We picked another place randomly at first but the place didn’t have enough reviews saying the wings were good for us to visit it this time. We wanted something that sounded very reliable to deliver the wings we were craving. It had been long enough that we were not screwing around. So, based on some personal recommendations, and several good online reviews, we picked Keegans Grill & Taproom.

The Reef / Draft House on the Reef

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Xavvi Posted in Chandler, Reviews | 3 Comments

It’s quite ugly, until the gaudy neon outside lights up and makes it…still ugly.
Credit myspace.com (seriously)

UPDATE: Draft House on the Reef has now changed their name to just “The Reef”. Good call.

If I made up my own religion, wings would be the holy food. In lieu of a sabbath, we’d have the Sauce-bath as a day of reverence to worship the mighty buffalo wing and praise it for all it has bestowed upon us. The mighty chicken wing delivers us from anorexia, crisp from the oils of heaven and bathed in a sauce with the heat of hell itself to remind us of our sins as we eat of the body of Chicken-Christ our savor…err, savior.

Yes, if I started my own religion, buffalo wings would be the meatsiah, and the Draft House on the Reef may well be the rock upon which I build my church.

Draft House on the Reef had long been on our list of places to eat wings. So long, in fact, that we had it on the list before the “on the Reef” part existed. Back then it was just Draft House, and was known for its clientele, a mixture of chunky skanks wearing clothes three sizes too small for themselves and guys trying to gangbang (while reppin’ Chandler), and it was apparently an awful cacophony of underboob-cheese smell and Cool Water cologne. This all culminated in someone getting shot a couple of years back, which is sad but not unexpected when people who try too hard to act too hard get shot down too hard by women (that also try too hard) and thus have no chance to use their hard-ons, get hard feelings, do something hard-headed and end up doing hard time.

ATL Wings

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Xavvi Posted in Chandler, Reviews | 1 Comment

I assume the “ATL” stands for “Peace up, A-Town…Lown”

Have you ever turned on one of those techno or dubstep stations on Pandora, listened for a while, and then stopped paying attention until an hour later when it finally dawned on you that it wasn’t actually one hour long song, it was several similar songs with not much variation between them? What happens is you get lost in the repetitive and almost monotonous rhythms until something stands out to you, something different and not so full of wub-wubz and fax machine sounds. It’s a breath of fresh air because it’s in the same category, it has many of the same attributes, but it approaches the art form from a different viewpoint and ends up being far more memorable for how it does things than what it does.

Also, it wasn’t made by a guy that looks like a mop.

“wub wub wub wub wuuuuuuuub” – Skrillex

NYPD Pizza

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Xavvi Posted in Chandler, Reviews | 2 Comments

If it was SLCPD, we’d have been arrested on sight.
Photo Credit: gotime.com

We were called “wing snobs” very recently by someone who had read our Native New Yorker article and didn’t particularly agree with our stance on their breaded wings (our stance is “fuck breaded wings” in case you missed it). Never mind the fact that WE called ourselves wing snobs in that very article, this fellow saw it fit to demean us by saying we were pretentious about hot wings; that is, he thinks we as writers try to impress you as readers by acting like we’re better than we really are or that we act like we have more importance than we truly possess.

The thing is, just how snobby can one be while their hands and face are drenched in hot sauce and they’re ripping chicken meat from the bone with their teeth? How much could we hope to impress anyone out there when we’re basically killing ourselves with cholesterol and liquor and getting fatter by the week just to make this thing happen? While Tyler and I like to call ourselves Wing Snobs in a self-deprecating manner, the fact is that we’re still just average shitheads who like wings and beer, as I would imagine you all do…at least, I hope you like wings and beer. Otherwise, why are you reading this? Are you stalking me? Are you that guy that keeps taking pictures outside my window while I’m changing and mailing me the Polaroids with a lock of your hair and a note that says “Let’s have a tea party”? …I’m sorry, it’s been a weird week.

My point is that we’re not being pretentious, because that would indicate that we’re trying to impress you and it’s quite the opposite. It’s not that we’ve gotten the equivalent of a Harvard education in Buffalo Wings and we’re trying to talk down to you all while we teach you about them. It’s that we’ve trekked to the Hot Wing Nepal to seek Buffalo-enlightenment and come back spiritually awakened, and now we’re out to spread the good word about how much better your wing-life could be if you too followed the ways of the Spicy Chicken Buddha.

Teakwoods Tavern & Grill

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Tyler Posted in Chandler, Reviews | 1 Comment

By the time we visited Teakwoods we had been working on this blog for eight months. Eight months of clogging our arteries with deep-fried chicken wings covered in a combination of Buffalo sauce and butter and gradually drowning our livers with countless beers. Actually, that’s not even true. We had been to Teakwoods much earlier for a review but it hadn’t been written up and we chose Teakwoods for our final destination before we took a hiatus from the wing blog so and this Teakwoods trip was by far the better story of the two and Teakwoods has wings so consistent that we can judge the wings by any visit and get the same result.

You will most likely be surprised and heartbroken to find out that we have occasionally skipped a week in the past for some reason or another. But never anything like this. This time there was no definite end in sight and it was a far longer break than we had ever taken before. My wife was pregnant and getting very close to popping out that kid so it was time to take it easy on the drinking so I could, you know, drive her to the hospital and stuff.

We figured we could use this time off to get caught up on our backlog of wing reviews (which of course we didn’t and instead squandered the time with some expert procrastinating) and we would reconvene once the baby was settled in enough that my wife could watch her by herself while Xavvi and I drank ourselves stupid.