Six-thousand pounds of chicken wings devoured at 20th annual Wingfest
Bones quickly piled up at Shelter Cove Community Park on Hilton Head Island Saturday as people devoured 6,000 pounds of chicken wings at the 20th annual Wingfest.
The two-day festival, presented by Hilton Head Island Recreation Association and Hargray Communications, featured 20 local restaurants and 15 home cooks competing for the 2015 Best Wing of Hilton Head title.
Festivalgoers stood and sat hunched over, gnawing, nibbling and licking their lips as they tasted the wing variations. Napkin dispensers stood nearby for the inevitable sticky fingers.
Vittles included the usual suspects: Dry rubs, celery and blue cheese, but also bacon bits, pecans and syrup.
A line snaked in front of R Bar & Grill's booth as people waited on the bar's popular Chicken N Waffle wings. Workers moved as fast as they could to dip wings into a big bowl of gloopy waffle batter, plop them into a portable fryer and then tong them onto a pan to be drizzled with syrup.
"It's like dinner and dessert all in one" said Lara Riele in between serving customers.
Andrea Burger, a part-time Hilton Head resident, said The Chart House's pecan-crusted wings were the best she had tried so far.
"It was a little different, but I don't think you can go wrong with anything," she said.
There is, apparently, a right and wrong way to eat wings. According to many a food website, the best way to eat a wing is to put it into your mouth vertically, separating the bones and sucking the meat off. As for the long-standing debate over which part of the wing is better -- the mini-drumstick, or the piece with two parallel bones, often called the flat -- wing experts say the flat has highest meat-to-bone ratio.
Rodney Jue of Savannah said he preferred a combination of wing-eating methods.
"The drumettes you hit from the side. The wings you part in the middle and have to do vertical," he said.
His wife, Donna, stuck to horizontal bites.
"Either way they're messy," she said, dabbing her lip.
"Yeah, you've got a spot right there," her husband pointed out.
The mess factor was not a deterrent, however, Donna Jue said.
"We're going to try them all, I think."
Follow reporter Erin Shaw at twitter.com/IPBG_ErinShaw.
Related content:
- WATCH: Crazy lightshow during Groove Town Assault performance at Wingfest, March 20, 2015
- So Apparently, We've Been Eating Chicken Wings All Wrong
- Lasers, music, chicken: Must be time for Wingfest, March 18, 2015
This story was originally published March 21, 2015 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Six-thousand pounds of chicken wings devoured at 20th annual Wingfest."