Wings Over Amherst, Amherst, MA

This is yet another restaurant review, but the food is so damned good! Couldn't help myself.

This is a culmination of three separate Wings trips, all with sandwiches and different sauces on the chicken. Maybe I'll just make Wings into a separate category for all their flavors.

This is like delicious food porn. So the three sandwiches I ordered were to give me a taste of the wet sauce vs. the dry rub for the chicken. At some point, I'm going to splurge like there's no tomorrow and order Wings with all 25 sauces for an ULTIMATE REVIEW. Likely a project with Swagger sometime soon.

But tonight was just three sandwiches, one with West Texas Mesquite, a dry rub, one with Cajun Barbecue sauce, and the other with Golden Barbecue, a mixture of spicy mustard and barbecue sauce- a wet sauce.

The WTM sandwich is freaking awesome. I got it with a slice of American cheese and the cheese gooed and melted all over it. The bun is nice and soft, and contrasts well with the crispiness of the fried chicken. I never thought a chicken rub could so accurately emulate the flavor of barbecue-flavored potato chips, but this hits the spot. It's salty, it's spicy, it has a great crunch, and the chicken is just delicious. The dryness of the chicken and the bread goes well with the cheese, which was a nice, thick, melted slice and made the entire thing more...deliciously viscous.

9/10- PERFECTION

The Golden Barbecue sandwich was really great, too. The sauce reminded me of the Roy Roger's Gold Rush sandwich, except way more plentiful and more of what the sauce tasted like, instead of the honey honey flavor I imagined. It was a salty, spicy, mustardy, and sweet sauce, really, really good. There were hints of soy sauce and the spices were spot-on perfect. It was more mustard and less barbecue, which surprised me, but was really good as far as texture and flavor went.

The bun and the sauce went really well together, because the bun soaked up all the sauce, but held up to the wetness of it all, which was fantastic, because although the WTM was really perfect, I wanted sometime saucy to make it even more perfect. Unfortunately, the cheese was not a good addition in this one. Although it was another thick and nice slice of perfect American cheese, it floated on top of the sauce on the chicken and didn't melt at all, and since it was wet, just got gooey and slimy and made the entire experience slightly chalky-tasting. The chicken was, again, perfectly cooked and completely meaty, and the breading maintained a wonderful crispy texture despite the sauce drenching. I just wish the cheese hadn't screwed it up.

8/10- LOVELY

The last sandwich was the Cajun Barbecue sandwich, which I ate in the restaurant. The only difference between eating in and eating out is that the bun is toasted and a pickle is included. I find it very strange that they use the same dishware as the dining commons here.

The CB sandwich was interesting, because the equivalent of "Cajun" and the sauce is their regular sauce, paired with the spices. Death Cake explained that this was the chicken dipped in barbecue sauce with Cajun spices sprinkled on top- cayenne, paprika, etc. The sandwich was too spicy for me. Not in a Buffalo sauce, "I'm eating this because I have to and I love it" spicy, but a, "Put it down, this is getting irritating" spicy. Which I obviously did not like. I also have a personal irritation with things that are hot, as in heat, and spicy at the same time, because it becomes vastly overwhelming. I didn't finish this sandwich, which I hate, because the food is so good that I like to finish it. It's not even that I was full, necessarily, it's that it was just too much. The concept is good, the flavor is accurate, the heat...not so much.

4/10- OKAY

And now, to the fries! In restaurant, there are so many more options one can get, and I'm quite inclined to go back and try their cheese fries, or their potato skins, and things like that. For delivery, though, you can have waffle fries with seasoning or plain french fries.

The plain fries are good in the restaurant, because they're crispy and hot and have a soft and fluffy inside, and you can get them with sauces if you'd like. The delivery fries taste like they were switched with my baby cousin's plastic foods. They're chewy and soggy and cold, like they've been deliberately left outside. And since I get delivery fries, I've got to rate these low. I mean, it's really a hit or miss with the delivery fries, especially if you get them in conjunction with an order instead of as an entire side. Also, be prepared to add salt and pepper- these have none and the experience is that much worse without them.

2/10- BAD

And then, the waffle fries. They're crispy, massive, and delicious. They are a brilliant bright orange from seasoning, and arrive at your table piping hot. There is a depth to them in texture- there's a change in the inside, almost like a mashed texture, that is held together in a concentric prison. They're delicious. So what's the matter?

It's the seasoning.

You'd think that the seasoning additions would be really, really awesome. I mean, you can add cajun seasoning, BBQ, ranch, or more. And ranch dressing is awesome, so why not seasoning? I thought that this was a fluke with my chicken, actually, in another sandwich (yes, up for review) that I consumed, but it's consistent with Wings's ranch flavoring across the board. There's an undertone of sweetness, of a strange cinnamon-like flavor with the saltiness. And it doesn't taste bad, per se, you can still tell that it's kind of ranch-like in concept, but upon tasting these, you think, "Sweet. Huh."

3/10- NOT BAD

I've thrown in the towel. I've added in a Wings category to the sidebar to cover my exploits, and I suspect I'll end up filling it. It's the college way, people.

Wings Over Amherst, aka, The Hangar
88 University Drive
Amherst, MA, 01003