WINGS • 5 min read
Buffalo Beyond Wings
The sauce made its name on wings, but it was built to cut through anything fried — and two things on this menu prove it.
Buffalo shrimp is half a pound, fried and tossed in buffalo sauce — sharper and lighter than buffalo wings. The buttermilk buffalo chicken sandwich uses mild sauce with ranch on a burger bun, and is on both special menus as A2.
Buffalo sauce is not a wing sauce. It is a sauce that happens to have made its name on wings — butter, hot sauce and vinegar, thin enough to coat rather than cling, sharp enough to cut through anything fried. Which is exactly why it works on things that are not wings.
There are two of those on our menu, and one of them is among the most underrated things we make.
Buffalo shrimp
Half a pound, fried and tossed in buffalo sauce, on the appetizer menu alongside plain fried shrimp and a garlic version. It is the same shrimp all three times; only the finish changes.
What makes it work is timing. Shrimp cooks in a fraction of the time a wing does, so the coating is thinner and newer when the sauce goes on, and the sauce sits on the outside instead of soaking in. The result is sharper and cleaner than buffalo wings — more sauce flavour, less of the deep, rendered richness a wing brings.
- Sharper than buffalo wings, and lighter to eat
- Faster to eat — no bones, no working around anything
- Half a pound is a starter for two or a light meal for one
- Best eaten immediately; the coating softens faster than a wing’s does
Buttermilk buffalo chicken
The other one is a sandwich: buttermilk buffalo chicken with buffalo mild sauce, ranch and lettuce on a burger bun. Two things about it are worth knowing before you order.
First, it uses the mild sauce, with ranch on it. So it is the gentlest buffalo thing on the menu rather than the fiercest — if you are after heat, this is not the order.
Second, it is the only sandwich on the po’boy menu that does not come in a 7-inch and a 12-inch. It is on a burger bun, which puts it structurally closer to the burgers than to the po’boys it sits with. It is also A2 on both the weekday and the weekend special menus, which makes it one of the few items available as a special seven days a week.
How the three compare
| Buffalo wings | Buffalo shrimp | Buttermilk buffalo chicken | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form | Bone-in or boneless | Half a pound, fried | Sandwich on a burger bun |
| Heat | Your choice of sauce | Buffalo, as it comes | Mild, with ranch |
| Eats | Slowly, with your hands | Quickly | As a meal |
| Richness | High — rendered skin and fat | Lower, cleaner | Medium; the ranch softens it |
| Best for | A table, an evening | A starter, or a light meal | Lunch |
If wings are what you actually want, the choice between styles is covered in bone-in versus boneless, and the ordering options — all drums, all flats, extra wet, split — are in drums or flats.
The sauce cups, which change everything
Buffalo is one option among a dozen on the sides menu, and the others are worth knowing because they let you build the heat rather than accept it. Hot sauce, mild sauce, honey hot, honey hot lemon pepper and honey BBQ are all there as cups, alongside ranch and blue cheese.
Which means the choice is not really “buffalo or not buffalo”. It is how much sauce is on the food and how much is on the table:
- Sauce on it — more coverage, softer coating, eat straight away
- Sauce on the side — crisp stays crisp, and everyone sets their own heat
- Both — the honest answer for a table with mixed tolerance
- Ranch or blue cheese — not optional with anything genuinely hot
Ordering buffalo shrimp for a table? Get it sauced and add a cup of ranch rather than asking for the sauce on the side. Shrimp is small enough that dipping every piece individually gets tedious well before the plate is empty.
The third shrimp, which is not buffalo at all
Worth mentioning because it sits right next to the buffalo one and gets overlooked. Garlic fried shrimp is the same half pound, finished with garlic instead of sauce — no heat, and a completely different kind of depth.
The useful thing about having all three on one menu is that they cover the whole range with the same base ingredient. Plain fried shrimp is the neutral version you add your own sauce cup to. Buffalo is the loud one. Garlic is the one that goes furthest alongside something else already sauced, because it is not competing for the same part of your palate.
For a table ordering wings as well, garlic shrimp is the better second plate than buffalo shrimp — two buffalo things next to each other flatten each other out.
Where buffalo actually came from
Buffalo, New York, in the 1960s, and the name refers to the city rather than to any animal — a point that catches out roughly everyone who has not been told. Britannica’s entry on the Buffalo wing sets out the standard formula: unbreaded wings in a vinegar-and-cayenne hot sauce cut with butter, served with celery and blue cheese. The sauce was built for chicken wings, which at the time were a cheap cut most kitchens threw away, and the whole global wing industry followed from it.
What it was actually built to do, though, was cut through fat with vinegar and heat. Wings were the vehicle. Shrimp, chicken and anything else fried work for the same reason, which is why buffalo cauliflower and buffalo everything else followed within a few decades.
The short version
Buffalo shrimp is sharper and lighter than buffalo wings and takes half the time to eat. The buttermilk buffalo chicken sandwich is the mild one, with ranch, and it is on both special menus. And the sauce cups mean you can put buffalo on almost anything on the appetizer menu whether we sauced it or not.
Buffalo, on more than wings
Buffalo shrimp by the half pound, and a buttermilk buffalo chicken sandwich on both special menus.
Frequently asked questions
What is buffalo sauce?
Butter, hot sauce and vinegar. It is named after Buffalo, New York, where it was created in the 1960s, not after any animal.
Is buffalo shrimp hotter than buffalo wings?
Sharper rather than hotter. The coating is thinner, so the sauce sits on the outside and tastes cleaner and more direct.
How hot is the buttermilk buffalo chicken?
Mild. It is made with buffalo mild sauce and ranch, so it is the gentlest buffalo item on the menu.
Can you get buffalo sauce on the side?
Yes. Hot sauce, mild sauce, honey hot, honey hot lemon pepper and honey BBQ are all available as cups, along with ranch and blue cheese.
How much is a portion of buffalo shrimp?
Half a pound — a starter for two, or a light meal for one.
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