108 E. 47th Street We’ve all noticed how bad the Chicago White Sox are this year, haven’t we?
If you’re not a baseball fan, they’re historically bad.
As a fan of that team, it’s hard to even want to go to a game, but every year, my dad, my brother, and my best friend from elementary school get together to go to a game.
Finding a time was hard this year. We all have kids in sports and things going on in our own life. We had planned for a day in May but something came up for one of us. Then we got in to travel softball season and figure skating competitions. August starts football season for my friend so that limits days.
We finally found a Saturday in that all four of us were able to go and the Sox were at home.
Our tradition has been to grab wings somewhere and tailgate in the parking lot. Chicago has such an awesome tailgate culture that even during bad years, people sit out in the parking lot along the Dan Ryan Expressway drinking, grilling, and having a good time.
When I got married in 2009, my bachelor party was a White Sox game. I found a wing place on the south side of Chicago that had really good reviews. We got 100 wings and had a blast in the parking lot before the game.
That original wing place closed and a new one popped up a few years later. Eventually that one closed to so we had to find other places to get wings from. We’ve had a few hits and a few misses but we all missed the original place.
I was looking for a new place this year and a familiar name popped up in my search. The name was the same. The menu was the same. It was just in a different spot a little closer to Guaranteed Rate Field.
Chicago Wingz Around the world is a small, carry out only wing joint on East 47th Street near Michigan Avenue in the Grand Boulevard Neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. The restaurant is a one story brick building that spans half the block. It looks like the space was a taco joint before my wing place came back sometime in 2022 and a Harold’s Chicken Shack (well known in Chicago) before that. Parking is limited to street spots in the area. My brother was driving and it took him a while to swing around and pull in to a spot right in front of the restaurant.
I put my order in for 50 wings and an order of fried pickles as we drove from the Kankakee area. I was getting a little nervous because I set the ready time for 4:00 PM and by 3:30, it still hadn’t been confirmed by the restaurant. Just as I was about to call, I got the message that the order was confirmed.
We walked in to the spot a little before 4:00. There’s not much happening inside other than an order window and a couple of tables that look like they’re mostly used for the staff to get out of the hot kitchen when there are no orders being made.
The kid working the kitchen said he was just finishing up our order and it would be a few minutes. He was just about to drop the fried pickles as he was finishing up saucing the wings. My buddy came in with me to help carry everything so the two of us grabbed a couple of the chairs by the window and waited for the large pan of food to be handed through the window.
We got the park not long after the parking lots open. My dad brought a table, a trash bag, and a ton of napkins so we got set up with the huge foil pan filled with all of the crispy, juicy, saucy wings.
You get four sauce choices with fifty wings. I went with some I like, some I know my group likes, and a classic one just because.
The first section of wings in the pan were the Spicy Garlic. These are my favorite and a favorite of mine to make at home. I love combination of Buffalo sauce and chunks of garlic. My brother grabbed one of these right away and it was an instant nostalgia hit for him. He remarked how crispy the wings were despite abundance of the spicy sauce.
Next up was the Parmesan Garlic which is a favorite of my dad. We all really like that one as well and it would probably be worth doing that one as a double but there was a lot of other good things so we let my dad have as many of those as he wanted. The sauce here is a thick butter, parmesan and garlic mixture. It’s not a mayo based sauce liked you’d get from Buffalo Wild Wings. The wings get a little greasy from the enormous amount of butter but it’s a good greasy.
The next section was the Classic Hot Buffalo. I love wings and I love Buffalo sauce. I could eat these all day. I kept taking a bite out of the huge, meaty wings and looking up knowing I had Buffalo sauce all over my face. I kept grabbing an ice cube out of the cooler and wiping down my hands and face so I didn’t look like a total fool amongst the throngs on tailgaters.
The final selection was Bourbon BBQ. This was probably the least favorite of our group but it was still a fantastic wing. The sauce is a thick, sweet, sticky BBQ sauce with just a hint of the woodsiness of bourbon.
The order also came with fries. We didn’t necessarily want fries but all the wings come with them. There were no complaints. We ate them. They are simple frozen French fries. I ended up using some of the leftover sauce in the pain to dip them in.
My dad and I were talking about food when I got to his house Saturday morning and he said if I was ordering wings to order him fried pickles. He had already looked at the menu and saw the fried pickles. I always used to see him sitting at the table with a tupperware container of dill pickles when I was kid. He’d just snack on pickles. He found fried pickles after J ordered them one time when we were out to dinner together. He’s gotten them a few times on his own since then and always loves them. We were all so distracted by the wings that I’m not totally sure if anyone else got any or if he just ate the whole order by himself. I know I didn’t grab one and I wish I would have.
The cost for all this food was close to $90.
The most important thing here is we found our wing place again. I don’t know what happened to Chicago Wingz Around the World in the years between this location and the second location on 75th Street, but man, am I glad we found it again. All four of us were raving about these wings and how they’re just as good as we remembered from that first time way back in 2009. I always joke with my kids that I don’t have any friends and that’s why I never go out. It’s kind of a joke but not really. I’m not a social person anyway plus it’s hard to find time for myself between having to work extra shifts and traveling with the kids for their sports. This is my one weekend a year that I go and do something. It’s a weekend I look forward to every year. Hopefully this place will still be around next summer because I know we’re all looking forward to these amazing wings again.