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Casual Dining

The Cheap Chicken Dish From The '60s That's Not So Affordable Anymore By David Stringer Oct. 26, 2025 8:20 pm EST

The rising price of chicken wings was inevitable once people learned how delicious they were after being fried and tossed in hot sauce. When wings first hit plates in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, they were the perfect bar food — cheap, plentiful, and spicy enough to have you ordering another beer. Back then, wings were considered trash . Bars could toss them in hot sauce and serve them with celery and blue cheese, and offer them up on 10-cent wing nights that helped get people through the door. Fast-forward to 2021, and the great chicken wing shortage hit, when prices spiked and never really came back down.

In the decade

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