Wing CountryPeople (18)

Philadelphia sports-radio morning host, born 13 March 1951, whose WIP show founded Wing Bowl in 1993 and ran it for twenty-six years.

Philadelphia hockey writer and broadcaster, born 28 May 1953, and the man Wing Bowl is credited to.

Joseph Christian Chestnut, Jaws

American competitive eater, born 25 November 1983 in Fulton County, Kentucky and raised in Vallejo, California.

El Wingador, Bill Simmons

Five-time Wing Bowl champion, born 1 November 1961, and the contest's own house name — El Wingador, 6 foot 5 and 290 pounds at his peak.

Teressa Bellisimo

Cooked at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, which she opened with her husband Frank in 1935 and lived above.

Big Bob Gibson, Robert Gibson

Decatur, Alabama barbecue man, 1888 to 1972, who dunked hickory-smoked chicken in a sauce of mayonnaise, vinegar and black pepper.

Andre Prince Jeffries, Miss André

Took over her great-uncle Thornton Prince's café in 1980, dropped the BBQ out of its name, and has run Prince's Hot Chicken Shack since.

Thornton James Prince, James Thornton Prince, Thornton Prince III

Nashville cook whose family café put cayenne paste on fried chicken and made a city's dish out of it.

John Mack Young, John Young's Wings 'n Things, King of Wings

Sold chicken wings whole and uncut — breaded, deep-fried, and coated in a tomato-based sauce he called mumbo, or mambo — from a restaurant on Buffalo's East Side in the 1960s.

Dom Bellissimo

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.

Opened the Anchor Bar in Buffalo with his wife Teressa in 1935 and ran the front of the house. His account of the first wings turns on a delivery that went wrong.

Argia B. Collins Sr., Argia B's

Chicago barbecue man who made and bottled Mumbo sauce, and whose trademark on the name later beat a Washington, D.C. company that had been selling a sauce called mumbo for years.

James Disbrow, Jimmy Disbrow

Figure skater, skating official and co-founder of Buffalo Wild Wings, born 9 July 1948 and dead of brain cancer on 16 October 2002, aged 54.

Harold P. Pierce, the Fried Chicken King

Founded Harold's Chicken Shack in Chicago on 22 June 1950 and built it into the South Side's fried chicken chain, where a wing dinner comes cut over fries and drowned in mild sauce.

Founded Wingstop in Garland, Texas in 1994 with Bernadette Fiaschetti, franchised it from 1997, and sold it in 2003 at ninety units. He had already built Pizza Patrón, started 1986, and sold that in 2017.

the Wing King

Founded the National Buffalo Wing Festival in 2002 and runs it. A marketing man by trade, he took the idea from a film that invented a Buffalo wing festival that did not exist, and built the one that does.

the Soul Food Scholar, Adrian E. Miller

Food writer and historian of African American cooking, based in Denver.

Calvin Marshall Trillin, Bud Trillin

American journalist and food writer, born 5 December 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri. He joined The New Yorker in 1963 and wrote its "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, a piece a month from somewhere in the country.