{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "dominic-bellissimo",
 "type": "person",
 "names": {
  "name": "Dominic Bellissimo",
  "aliases": [
   "Dom Bellissimo"
  ],
  "sort": "Bellissimo, Dominic"
 },
 "region": [
  "western-ny"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "role": [
   "family",
   "founder"
  ],
  "state": "NY",
  "styles": [
   "buffalo"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Son of Frank and Teressa Bellissimo, tending the Anchor Bar on the night the house dates its wings to, 4 March 1964. He later owned the bar and spent decades promoting it and the wing. He died in March 1991, aged 68.",
  "story": "Dominic was behind the bar. Late on 4 March 1964 a group of his friends came in, and he asked his mother to put something together for them.\n\nSixteen years later he gave Calvin Trillin a different hinge for the same night. Trillin's 1980 New Yorker piece quotes him: \"It was Friday night in the bar and since people were buying a lot of drinks he wanted to do something nice for them at midnight when the mostly Catholic patrons would be able to eat meat again.\" In that telling the clock does the work — meat became allowed at twelve — and the idea for wings was his mother's.\n\nA third version, his father's, has a delivery arriving wrong. All three ran side by side for years, and the family never picked one.\n\nDominic sold the story as much as he sold the wings. He was the one reporters reached; he is the reason the Anchor Bar's date is the date most people can name. He died in March 1991 at 68. Ivano Toscani, who began working for the Bellissimos in the mid-1970s and later owned the place, died in November 2018.",
  "today": "The bar's own telling still runs on his 1964 date and his mother's fryer."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "anchor-bar",
   "as": "Tended this bar on the night it dates its wings to, then owned it and sold its story.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "teressa-bellissimo",
   "as": "His mother, whom he asked for something to feed his friends.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "frank-bellissimo",
   "as": "His father, who told a version with a wrong delivery in it rather than a midnight.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "calvin-trillin",
   "as": "Took his midnight version down in 1980 and printed it in The New Yorker.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo",
   "as": "Put the date, 4 March 1964, into every later account of the style.",
   "rel": "style"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-origin-fight",
   "as": "Gave two of the three family versions himself, years apart, to different listeners.",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-anchor-bar",
  "s:wp-buffalo-wing",
  "s:trillin-1980"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-anchor-bar"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "inference"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "Son of Frank and Teressa Bellissimo, tending the Anchor Bar on the night the house dates its wings to, 4 March 1964. He later owned the bar and spent decades promoting it and the wing. He died in March 1991, aged 68.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "western-ny",
   "name": "Western New York",
   "state": "NY",
   "note": "Buffalo, Niagara, the counties around them; where the wing starts"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "anchor-bar",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Anchor Bar",
   "as": "Tended this bar on the night it dates its wings to, then owned it and sold its story.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "teressa-bellissimo",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Teressa Bellissimo",
   "as": "His mother, whom he asked for something to feed his friends.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "frank-bellissimo",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Frank Bellissimo",
   "as": "His father, who told a version with a wrong delivery in it rather than a midnight.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "calvin-trillin",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Calvin Trillin",
   "as": "Took his midnight version down in 1980 and printed it in The New Yorker.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Buffalo wings",
   "as": "Put the date, 4 March 1964, into every later account of the style.",
   "rel": "style"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-origin-fight",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The origin fight",
   "as": "Gave two of the three family versions himself, years apart, to different listeners.",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-anchor-bar",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "Anchor Bar",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Bar",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-buffalo-wing",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "Buffalo wing",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wing",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:trillin-1980",
   "kind": "article",
   "title": "An Attempt to Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing",
   "author": "Calvin Trillin",
   "publisher": "The New Yorker",
   "year": 1980,
   "note": "25 August 1980; the piece that carried the Anchor Bar story out of Buffalo"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-anchor-bar"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-anchor-bar"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "inference"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "anchor-bar",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Anchor Bar",
   "as": "Tended this bar the night the story turns on, and told the story for thirty years.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "from": "calvin-trillin",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Calvin Trillin",
   "as": "Gave him the midnight-Friday version, which the piece quotes.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "from": "frank-bellissimo",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Frank Bellissimo",
   "as": "His son, who told the story a different way and told it far more often.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "from": "teressa-bellissimo",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Teressa Bellissimo",
   "as": "Her son, behind the bar that night, and the one who carried the story out into print.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-origin-fight",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The origin fight",
   "as": "Tended the bar that night and told the story to Calvin Trillin in 1980.",
   "rel": "person"
  }
 ]
}