I’m not sure the phrase “bad day” can ever be appropriately used to describe a sixty-degree afternoon in January, but last Sunday did its very best to earn that moniker.
It started out with such promise. Not only was it nice enough to play Ultimate Frisbee, which normally requires a vacation to Florida this time of year, but it was also the last weekend of the NFL Playoffs.
Championship Sunday is ordinarily one of my favorite days of the sports calendar because it is the last day for almost eight months where there will be more than one football game. Unfortunately for me, I’m not sure I have ever hated two football teams more than I hate New England and Seattle, who will now face off in a Super Bowl that will, at best, give me time to start filing my taxes while I wait for the commercials to come back on.
The one positive of the day is that while the Patriots were beating the Colts, deflating footballs, and generally being pains in my behind, I was enjoying both the atmosphere and the food at Buffalo Wings and Rings.
Buffalo Wings and Rings definitely isn’t Buffalo Wild Wings. I know that now. Was anyone else confused by that? No? Never mind.
Located between Rule G and Vega right off Canopy Street in the Railyard, Buffalo Wings and Rings is a fixture of one of the best entertainment districts Lincoln has to offer. If the weather is nice, you can watch the game outside on a plasma screen roughly the size of my apartment, if the weather is cold you can go ice skating. If the weather is like it was last Sunday, you can do both.
While wings are definitely the specialty of the establishment, Buffalo Wings and Rings has a lot more good non-wing options than Buffalo Wild Wings. As if to overwhelm me with viable choices, they offer two kinds of bacon cheeseburger, chicken tenders, and a gyro that is “more popular than you’d think, for a place that mainly serves wings.”
As a sports fan, Buffalo Wings and Rings doesn’t leave a lot to be desired. With most traditional domestic beers on tap, more televisions than I could count, and $2.00 off pitchers on Sundays, it really is a phenomenal place to watch football.
Both times I’ve been there—last Monday during college football’s National Championship Game, and Sunday for the AFC Championship Game—the game I was there to watch was the only game on, but my feeling is that they probably mix it up a bit more on normal night. It is also perhaps worth mentioning that in both cases, my party was able to stay for the entirety of the game we had come to see without our waiter being awkward about it, which isn’t as much of a forgone conclusion as you might think.
Buffalo Wings and Rings offer 69-cent wings on Tuesday nights, and kids under the age of ten eat free on Mondays. They also have an ongoing non-sports-related trivia challenge you can participate in while you wait for your food to come, if sports isn’t your thing.
My verdict is that this might be the best place I’ve tried since I started writing these, even if parking in that part of downtown has a tendency to be an absolute hellscape. My only hope is that next time I go there, a domestic draw and a bacon cheeseburger won’t be consolation for another Super Bowl appearance by the Seahawks.
Photo by Chris Lexow