a joint · NYCountry Sweet Chicken & Ribs

A Rochester counter open since 1977, hand-breading its wings and glazing them in a sauce the founder built in a home kitchen and the city now buys by the bottle. The house says the sauce is "not quite BBQ, and it certainly wasn't Buffalo—it was something entirely new," which is the whole of Rochester's case against Buffalo in one line of its own marketing.

Tom Lask "created a sauce that defied categorization in a Rochester home kitchen" and opened Country Sweet in 1977, seventy miles east of the city that had just started exporting the cayenne-and-butter wing.

The sauce is sweet and tangy with heat behind it, sold in three grades: mild, hot, and a barbecue version the house calls "sweet and smokey with tang." It goes on wings that are breaded before they fry — "hand-breaded & crispy," in the house's own words, "classic wings tossed in Country Sweet glaze." Buffalo fries its wings naked and sauces them after; Rochester puts a coat on first and glazes the coat. Both cities call the result a wing and neither concedes anything.

The bottled sauce outgrew the counter. It sells in Rochester groceries, which means a Country Sweet wing is something a household makes as well as something a counter sells.

Wings are hand-breaded, fried, then tossed in the glaze rather than a thin sauce; a glaze clings and sets where a butter sauce runs. Ribs come off the same sauce.

The original counter at 1691 Mt Hope Avenue is open seven days as of September 2026 — Monday to Thursday 11am to 9pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 10pm, Sunday noon to 9pm. A second room trades in Greece.