Being vegetarian doesn’t mean you lose that desire to pair your sports viewing and beer drinking with some spicy Buffalo wings. Inspired by Mark Bittman’s cover article this past Sunday on healthful, veggie-friendly fast food, I spent my weekend hunting for the best vegan Buffalo wings in New York City.
Vegan wings are made of a combination of soybean and seitan (a meat substitute made from wheat gluten) and are held together with a soybean skin. Most of them are molded around a bamboo stick or a piece of sugarcane, which provides a pretty convincing wing shape and a slightly sweet flavor. All of the vegan wing joints I visited buy their wings from one of two suppliers: May Wah or Absolute Vegetarian. The differences, as with “normal” wings, are in the sauces added in the restaurant that serves them.
Here is a rundown of some of the best spots in the city for vegan wings.
Food Swings (295 Grand St., Brooklyn.)
Wings come in four varieties: Southern fried, sweet southern fried, buffalo and barbecue.
Price: $2.65 per wing
Kick, on a scale of 1 (mild) to 5 (fiery): The “Buffalo” and “Sweet Southern Fried” clock in around a 4.
Extras: Wings are served with a vegan ranch sauce that is just as good as anything from cow products.
Believability: These wings are passable in shape and texture. No carnivore would think it was the real thing, but after a long night out, they may not care. Open until 2 a.m. on the weekends, Food Swings tends to get a lot of the bar crowd. At that hour almost anything tastes like chicken.
Red Bamboo (140 West 4th St., New York)
Jade Wong, the owner of Red Bamboo, says she goes through about 300 per day. “N.Y.U. kids wish we would sell them in buckets,” she says.
Price: $8.95 for a plate of 5
Kick (1-5): 3
Extras: The sauce is a balance of citrus and spice. Wings are served with a side of vegan sesame-ranch dressing.
Believability: The texture is spot-on. The lightly fried skin is crispy and it melts away from the seitan. This wing avoids the heavy quality than affects many products made of wheat gluten.
Vegetarian Paradise 2 (144 West 4th St., New York)
The spicy barbecue wings come wrapped around a bamboo stick; sugarcane drumsticks are wrapped around a piece of sugarcane.
Price: $6.95 for a plate of five of either variety.
Kick (1-5): Spicy wings are a 5, sugarcane drumsticks are a 1.
Extras: The spicy barbecue wings, still quite hot, used to be even hotter.
Believability: If you want to recreate the real thing, go for the spicy barbecue. (Sugarcane drumsticks get points for novelty.)
The V-Spot (156 5th Ave., Brooklyn)
The bamboo sticks are removed and the wing is cut into smaller pieces before it is breaded and fried. “It’s just weird having the stick inside of them,” said Alex Carabaño, manager of the V-Spot.
Price: $10 for a plate of 8
Kick (1-5): 4
Extras: The V-Spot’s sauce is reminiscent of Korean barbecue. Wings are individually dipped in the sauce instead of smothered; served with vegan blue cheese.
Believability: These were the crispiest of all of the wings sampled. Carabaño said nonvegan guests are always surprised by their likeness to real chicken.