a joint · NYDuff's Famous Wings

A wing house at Sheridan Drive and Millersport Highway in Amherst, north of Buffalo, open under that corner since 1946 and selling wings since 1969. Eight heat levels run from mild to death, and the house warns at every level that its scale runs hotter than the word suggests. Buffalo's long argument over who started the wing puts Duff's on the other side of it from the Anchor Bar.

Louise Duffney opened a corner gin mill at Sheridan Drive and Millersport Highway in 1946. The house dates its first wings to 1969: "It was in 1969 that the local tavern known simply as Duff's served up their first batch of chicken wings. Selling nearly 20 pounds of wings a week." Around 1985 the sign caught up with the trade and the name became Duff's Famous Wings.

That 1969 date does work in the origin argument. The Anchor Bar dates the Buffalo wing to 4 March 1964, but a local newspaper piece about the Anchor Bar in 1969 does not mention wings, and Duff's started selling them across town that same year.

The heat scale is the other thing people know. Visit Buffalo puts it plainly: "Order the medium sauce and you'll receive hot wings. Order hot wings, and you might give your tongue first-degree burns." The Buffalo sauce runs at eight levels, mild through death.

Wings arrive fresh, not frozen — the house specifies "roaster sized wings that are delivered daily" — and go out double-fried, sauced in recipes the house dates to 1969. Heat is picked at the order, and the printed warning does the rest.

The Sheridan Drive room still trades on its original corner. Wikipedia counts five Buffalo-area rooms, one in Rochester, one in Southlake, Texas, and three around Toronto; the company's own site lists ten across New York, Texas, Florida and Kentucky as of September 2026. A version of the wings went into Ralph Wilson Stadium in 2014 under a deal with the Buffalo Bills.