Connecticut– J. Timothy’s Taverne has been known for having the best buffalo wings in the country after being featured on Food Network, and garnering strong accolades, praises, and many awards “Best Buffalo Wings” “Award Winning Sauce” famous for churning out double-fried, double-glazed culinary work’s of art, people have come far and wide to try J. Timothy’s famous wings. Legend has it, back in the 80s a customer was served cold wings and demanded that they be refried. They then refried the wings and reglazed them in their iconic house-made buffalo sauce. “Dirt Wings” were born adding a bit of extra “crisp” most recently however after MANY trips to J’s over the years we started to notice changes, changes most customers are blissfully unaware of.
To keep up with demand, J Timothy’s recently upgraded their kitchen, but that hasn’t stopped the cooks from cutting corners to crank out wings. A few years ago they started bottling their sauce, and when they did that, they stopped making their iconic buffalo sauce fresh. Now on busy nights instead of making freshly house-made sauce cooks just simply toss the wings in the pre-bottled sauce different from the house sauce. You can taste the difference. Most people don’t know because it’s their first time going, but when you’ve eaten there for 30 years like one man I recently interviewed, there is a very notable difference. “I was disappointed,” he said, “I flew all the way up from Florida to have their wings and I found out they changed it, we sent the wings back to be redone but they still weren’t the same” Not only that many other locals noticed the difference too some going as far as leaving recent one-star reviews.
No more dirt wings – We noticed recently upon visiting the restaurant multiple times on busy Saturdays they no longer re-fry the wings. Cooks simply don’t want to spend the extra time double-frying the wings, so instead of giving customers what they pay for double-fried “Dirt Wings” they are served just ordinary wings with bottled buffalo sauce. It’s sad to see this happen to such a famous restaurant, it’s like McDonald’s sometimes quality gets replaced with demand, and as legendary as this place is, they should be far more consistent. Cooks are getting paid to recreate legendary wings and instead of doing that, they cut corners. Doesn’t seem like they do this all the time its mostly on weekends, says one customer “I drove from Rocky Hill to get some J’s wings and I was disappointed, we waited over an hour to be seated, and all we got was some regular wings dipped in bottled buffalo sauce, its a let down from what they used to be” Another customer said he was happy with the wings when he came during the week “Best wings I ever had” other menu items were also notably changed, the prime rib being much thinner and fattier then in previous years but with a new higher price tag. No word from the restaurant on these changes, or if they have done anything to compensate customers for a bad experience.
Here is a quick comparison photo of the wings:
