The Buffalo wing has two origin stories, not one. The famous version credits Teressa Bellissimo, who on March 4, 1964, deep-fried leftover wings in a peppery sauce at Buffalo's Anchor Bar. The lesser-known version belongs to John Young, a Black restaurateur whose breaded, whole wings in tomato-based "mambo sauce" were drawing crowds at his Wings & Things restaurant in East Buffalo during the same era. Understanding both claims — and how the dish spread from a local bar snack to a national game-day staple — means abandoning the tidy tale of a single midnight invention.
The Contested Origins of the Buffalo Wing
By the 1980s, the Bellissimo family had become famous for supposedly inventing Buffalo wings, as Becky Little reported in a History.com account of the dish's disputed parentage. Yet local historians have increasingly drawn attention to John Young and the cooks who came before him, and the record shows that chicken wings were never an undiscovered food. The National Chicken Council notes that deep-fried wings had long been a staple of Southern cooking, and Buffalo's affection for the cut goes back well over a century: the Buffalo History Museum's research library has documented a Clarendon Hotel menu from July 1, 1857, listing an entrée called "Chicken Wings, fried," along with an 1894 chicken wing recipe published in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.
That context matters, because the popular narrative risks implying somebody stumbled upon an otherwise uneaten part of the bird. In reality, wings were familiar food in the African American community Young served, and the Anchor Bar's own account describes wings as a part of the chicken that "usually went into the stock pot for soup" — cheap, yes, but hardly unknown. The genuine innovation claimed by each camp is narrower and more interesting: a specific preparation, a specific sauce, and a specific moment when a humble cut became a sensation.
The Anchor Bar's Account: A Late-Night Snack
According to the Anchor Bar's own history, the story begins late on the evening of March 4, 1964, when Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar and a group of his friends arrived with ravenous appetites. Dominic asked his mother, Teressa, to prepare something for them. She deep-fried the wings and flavored them with a secret sauce, and the snack was an instant hit — people soon flocked to the bar to experience what the restaurant calls "this new taste sensation."
The National Chicken Council's version adds the details that would define the dish: Teressa Bellissimo, the bar's co-owner, cooked leftover wings in hot sauce as a late-night snack for her son and his friends, and the family put them on the menu the next day. Crucially, the wings were split into pieces and left unbreaded, then tossed in a peppery hot sauce and served with celery slices and blue cheese dressing — the accompaniments that became the standard presentation. The city of Buffalo itself eventually embraced the claim, issuing a 1977 proclamation honoring co-owner Frank Bellissimo and declaring July 29, 1977, Chicken Wing Day.
