Just The Specials: Sour Patch Kids X Wing Stop Wings
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
Just the Specials is where your old pal Anton sits down with all the new, weird, and often wild menu items, food offerings, and branded collaborations that find their way onto the plate in front of him.
This one felt risky as heck because I have never thought to myself, “Self…” (I call myself Self.) “Self, do you want fried wings with a sauce constructed from melted Sour Patch Kids candy?”
Wingstop, however, felt the need to ask that question and follow through on it. I felt it was my duty to try them. I do this for you.
Wingstop says these wings are “Created by Wingstop’s Flavor Experts. Wicked Punch features a mischievous sour then sweet Redberry glaze finished with Sour Patch Kids Bitz for a wickedly fun twist, available across all proteins.”
These are the tenders. I elected to go with the tenders because I only had to commit to two of these, and I was really worried about what was going to happen once I consumed these creations. I really did not want to put more of this very Spooky Season-themed food in my system.
If you are asking yourself who puts candy on wings, Michael Skipworth, President and CEO of Wingstop, had this to say “Candy on wings? We know exactly what you’re thinking. But no, seriously, it has no business being this good. Sour Patch Kids Wicked Punch wings bring sour and sweet together in a way only Wingstop can. It may sound unexpected, but one bite is all it takes to understand why this one is a treat.”
Now, I’m sure that Mr. Skipworth is a wing expert. He runs the fast-food wing chain, after all, so he has to know something about chicken, but I’m not sure if his read on these is exactly spot on.
The glaze itself is not bad. It very much harkens to the red “sweet and sour” sauce you may get with your chicken or crab rangoon at your favorite local takeout place. It’s very sweet on the front end and almost sour, like a red pepper or something fermented, on the back end. The sauce with the chicken itself isn’t awful, and one of the tenders split during frying, I assume, and was deeply stained crimson by this strange sauce addition.
Where it stops being a “treat” for me is the Sour Patch Kids Bitz that are clinging to the wings. The texture they bring to the chicken is unpleasant and alarming. It kept freaking me out as I would take bites and then think something was rotten, or worse, some kind of odd foreign object had gotten into the wings.
It was almost like wet cotton stuck to the wings that kept throwing me off. If you can power past that, it’s one of those experiences where you can say “Yeah, I tried that. It was wacky!” but it’s for sure not something I would look for on an everyday menu or order again.
Until next time, I’m not saying no to try them yourself. I am saying you have been warned.
