a style · GALemon pepper wings

A wing cooked without breading and finished in lemon pepper — granulated lemon zest mashed with cracked black pepper, then baked and dried, usually with salt and sugar in the blend. Atlanta orders it two ways. Dry means the seasoning goes on alone. Wet means a sauce underneath it, butter or a lemon sauce or Buffalo, with the dry seasoning shaken over the top. The wing plate comes with fried rice at a great many Atlanta counters, and Wikipedia calls the dish emblematic of the city's cuisine.

Lemon pepper is a commercial product before it is a wing. William Shoffeitt, a product engineer in Healdsburg, California, launched the blend in July 1967 through Shoffeitt's Enhance Seasoners, sold it along the West Coast, and moved it through trade shows and department stores including Sears and JCPenney. It was aimed at seafood.

Atlanta turned it into a wing. Wikipedia's account is that people there began adding lemon pepper to Buffalo wings to cut the heat, and that the dish took hold in the mid-2000s — attributed in part to its not marking a white t-shirt the way an orange sauce does, which mattered to rappers wearing them. The wings are a fixture of Atlanta's strip clubs; Chris Kirschner of The Athletic reported that the food at those clubs, wings above all, drew celebrity customers. Keisha Lance Bottoms, before she was mayor, said in 2017: "Lemon pepper wings are Atlanta." Eric Kim wrote in The New York Times in 2022 that "in Atlanta, lemon pepper is queen," calling the wings "central to [the city's] social fabric."

The wet version's paper trail is knottier than the phrase suggests. Wikipedia credits its invention to the American Deli in Atlanta. The second episode of Atlanta put "lemon pepper wet" in a character's hands from J.R. Crickets — a restaurant that did not then have it on the menu, though it sold a similar item called Fester wings that customers already called lemon pepper wet; the show's writer Stephen Glover said he wanted the character hooked up with something off-menu, and the dish on screen was modelled on the American Deli's. J.R. Crickets added lemon pepper wet to the menu in 2017 in the show's honour. Mike Jordan of Eater Atlanta credited the episode with popularising it. So the restaurant most famous for the dish is not the restaurant credited with inventing it, and the fame arrived through television.

The wings run through Atlanta music and back out. 2 Chainz's "Hot Wings" (2018): "She just want her 20-piece/ All flats with the lemon pepper." Drake's "Lemon Pepper Freestyle" (2021) features Rick Ross, who owns Wingstop locations and has named them in several songs. In 2020 Lou Williams of the Los Angeles Clippers was nicknamed Lemon Pepper Lou after reports he ordered the wings with Jack Harlow at Magic City during a trip outside the NBA bubble; the club already sold a "Louwill Lemon Pepper BBQ Wings". He objected to the nickname, then trademarked it.

Fry the wing bare and hot. Dry: shake it in lemon pepper straight out of the oil while the skin still holds seasoning. Wet: toss it first in melted butter, a lemon sauce or Buffalo sauce, then hit it with the dry blend on top, so it reads sharp and salty over something slick. Wikipedia's own description says the wings are roasted rather than fried; Atlanta counters fry them, and Inference — the encyclopedia is describing a home method rather than the takeout window. Many shops use a premade blend rather than mashing zest into pepper themselves.

Chains sell lemon pepper nationally, and the flavour has spun off tacos, loaded fries, pierogies, pizza, beer and soda. It was already Wingstop's second-most-ordered Super Bowl flavour in the National Chicken Council's wing round-up, behind Original Hot and ahead of Hickory Smoked BBQ. Inference — Atlanta's version survives the export because what makes it local is the order rather than the recipe: the count, the all-flats, the wet-or-dry, and the fried rice under the plate.