Anchorage Daily News

It's not quite the second coming, though some would disagree: Wings 'n Things is back.

This downtown Anchorage institution abruptly closed its doors in August 2007 after nearly 25 years, leaving addicts wondering if life was still worth living. It's being resurrected with a new owner and a new location, but with the same name, same recipes and most of the same employees.

Word among the city's wing nuts is traveling fast.

"Well, if I weren't in middle of the 911 Fitness Challenge I'd be ecstatic," said Anchorage Fire Chief Craig Goodrich, who'd heard rumors.

The kink in his enthusiasm is a competition among firefighters, police officers and other public safety workers across the country, where the team that gets the most buff by spring wins. Sadly, fried chicken wings basted with secret sauce and dipped in even more sauce are not part of his workout plan, he said.

For now, anyway.

As for Rod Hill, there's no such nonsense. He is "so there."

Over the years, Hill, who works for city parks and rec, ordered enough Philly cheese steak sandwiches with wings on the side that his co-workers feared he might need rehab when the place closed.

People apparently take their wings pretty seriously.

In the online discussion following news of Wings' sudden end, one fan claimed to be "bereft and inconsolable," while another put it this way:

"AAAAAaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!! The cry of anguished lament from a nuclear wing gastronome."

How to explain these people?

Turns out chicken wings are another mind-altering substance born of the '60s.

WAY OF THE WING

Depending on which version of the story you go with, crispy fried chicken limbs as snacky food were either invented at Teressa and Frank Bellissimo's Anchor Bar or John Young's Wings and Things, both in Buffalo, N.Y. Thus the common name "buffalo wings."

Anchorage's Wings 'n Things chicken appendages took that concept to new heights, fans say.

Founders Joe and Teresa Connelly came from Buffalo, but by the time they arrived here in 1983, buffalo wings were already firmly entrenched. So Joe created his own recipes, a variation he called "the original Anchorage wing":

Deep-fried in vegetable oil, basted with secret sauces in varying degrees of hotness, served with crisp celery sticks and homemade blue cheese dipping sauce. (Or ranch if you'd rather.)

Wing worshippers fell under its spell.

Connelly's wings came in five temperatures -- barbecue, mild, medium, hot and nuke -- "an explosive experience," the menu touted, which Joe created when some customers claimed his hot wings weren't hot enough.

He sure showed them.

"That stuff could burn a hole through lead pipe," said Tank Jones, a "mild" wings guy himself, and a private investigator who worked within walking distance of Wings' old location at Fifth and I. Jones was a loyal fan until the day he walked up for lunch as usual, saw the "closed" sign, stopped in his tracks and went, "Whoa."

Like a lot of Wings fanatics, he never gave up hope that the owners had just taken a long vacation and the place would re-open. He clung to that little fantasy until the day the building at 521 I Street met a wrecking ball.

Another regular, Leo Brandlen, retired police officer turned security consultant, learned that Wings' reign was done when he called home from the North Slope a year and a half ago.

"My wife said, 'I've got some bad news. I hope you're sitting down.' "

Like a lot of fans, Brandlen tries wings whenever he travels and none measure up.

"There's just no comparison to Joe's," he said.

Connelly isn't talking about why he closed with so little notice. But he did say through his sister, Kerry Whitney, that after nearly 25 years it was time to move on.

RESURRECTION

Al Carranza, another Wings regular, was so sorry to see it go, he and Ricardo Mejorada did their best to re-create it, opening Big Al's Wings-N-Wings in the former Wee Bees building on Spenard Road. And they brought two former Wings employees along with them.

It's common knowledge that Connelly was so secretive with his recipes even his cooks didn't know them. So Big Al's had to invent its own sauces, Carranza said.

The basics are the same: Fresh wings fried up, then gussied up with special spicy sauce, the hottest being "volcanic."

It would have been nice if Wings hadn't reopened in the same part of town, says Carranza, but he is not anticipating a war of the wings, and says he wishes the new guy well.

That would be Daryl Hunter, owner of Big D's Pro Shop, a golf and bowling business. This is Hunter's first foray into the restaurant world. It was the wings, not that world, that drove him there. Hunter is yet another longtime Wings fan, one who could never figure out why the place wasn't a franchise.

Now that he's bought Joe's highly coveted recipes, that's his goal.

"I think in five years you're going to see franchises everywhere," he said. "I'm telling ya, it's going to be big. Everywhere. In the United States."

Wings 'n Things reopens Jan. 30 in the Olympic Center at 36th and Arctic, in the former home of Atlasta Deli and Monrique's Brasserie. It even has the old phone number, 277-WING.

In a break with tradition, however, it will be open on Super Bowl Sunday -- but for deliveries only.

Among returning Wingsters are several longtimers -- Joe's two sisters, Kerry Whitney, who'll be managing, and Pat Wagner, who'll be a supervisor; two cooks, Neil Lippincott and Harold Hunter, and sandwich master, Kathy Booker. There will be eight of them in all. Most have worked other jobs in the interim and having so many available, even if just for part-time shifts, must be God's doing, Whitney said.

And word has it that Joe Connelly will be one of the new place's most loyal customers.

Find Debra McKinney at dmckinney@adn.com

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