It's Wings Week, so Defector staffers were asked to declare their loyalties in the competitive field of chicken wings.
Flats
If you want to know a lifehack, it’s that eating chicken wings with chopsticks is the way to go. I don’t like getting my hands dirty when I eat either, but babies who engage in baby behavior like boneless chicken wings in an attempt to keep their hands neat are simply weak. You get all the benefits of flats (best meat, fun shape, kind of like an animal food enrichment puzzle except for human beings) with none of the drawbacks. - Kathryn Xu
This is a painful truth to speak, on this week of all weeks, but I am not the biggest wings-enjoyer. There are circumstances in which I have enjoyed them, and there is one particular place that I go with friends to have them once every 18 months or so: there are inter-city travel challenges, child-care stuff; it usually requires a band that all of us liked in college playing a show that all of us can go to. But for the most part I simply do not care for the tiny bones. I don’t like the work of it. So I like the flats because it’s easier to get at that Bird Meat, and because they deliver more of what I am really in it for, which is eating some kind of crispy seasoned surface in a way that involves using my hands. (I suppose there is an argument in this answer for boneless wings, but for some reason I decided years ago that I Don’t Do That.) - David Roth
Greater meat-to-bone ratio, the meat is more tender and more flavorful than on the drumettes, and you can easily strip all of it in one go via any of the various gross pro wing-eater moves (my favorite is the one where you sorta split the two bones apart as you go; done well, you can denude the entire flat in like two seconds). Plus the suckers and marks all go for the drumettes, so the flats are always available. - Albert Burneko
If I have to choose, I'm going flats. To be honest, I'll eat any type of wing; I grew up loving the boneless wings at Chili's, so my threshold is pretty low. As for drums, I'm not going to kick those off my plate either. But flats for me tend to have the best crispiness of the three, and I love a crispy wing. If I have one complaint about wings in general it's when they are too soft and mushy. I need a bit of a bite, and flats generally satisfy this to the highest degree. But I think all wings have their place, so this isn't a passionate defense of flats. They just have both the highest ceiling and highest floor, and if I have to split a plate of wings with a drums sicko, I will be happy enough to demolish all of the flats and ask for more. - Luis Paez-Pumar
The messier the wing, and the more I feel like a savage while eating one, the better. Flats. - Drew Magary
Drums
I will eat flats if I must, but I’m always going for the drums first. I hate trying to bite between the bones on flats, but wings should feel a little bit barbaric, so the bone is essential to the experience. Boneless wings are not wings, they are nuggets. Which are great! But they’re not wings. I want to feel like Bamm-Bamm in The Flintstones. - Alex Sujong Laughlin
Nothin’ better than grabbing onto one of those big ol’ suckers, dunking the fat end into the lil’ tub of blue cheese dressing, and then popping into your mouth, as if it was the world’s grisliest lollipop, so that you can spend a few gnawing on that thing like an animal. - Tom Ley
All wings are good. Boneless wings are just chicken nuggets, but that doesn’t mean they are not delicious. Eat whatever you want! I will usually go for the drums first, because I am usually incapable of eating flats without giving myself a Joker smile of wing sauce, and then I feel like I need an immediate shower between each wing. But I like the brittle little crunchable bones in the flats, so after I’ve DEMOLISHED the drums, you’re damn right I’m moving in on the rest. Eat fast! - Chris Thompson
I want my chicken to have a lil' handle, something to hold onto. I also like to wave it around like a slothful king near the end of his reign. - Israel Daramola
Boneless
Oh, so it’s “baby behavior” to want to be able to eat all the meat on your plate and not leave scraps behind looking like a hyena got to it? It’s “infantile” to not want wing sauce under your fingernails and at the corners of your mouth for the rest of the day? It’s “only something a little tiny pathetic baby would want” if you want to eat some delicious chicken breast, with all the flavor and none of the hassle of true wings, with a fork and knife if you so choose? Wah wah wah, then. - Barry Petchesky
Finesse, patience, an endless supply of napkins: These things are not present in or near me when I go to a wings bar and order wings. When I order wings at a wings bar, I am hungry for spicy fried food, and I do not want to waste efficiency maneuvering around bones, drying my hands before touching literally anything, or piling up an unwieldy plate of refuse. Sticking a fork in a sauce-doused boneless wing lowers my anxiety, ensures every square millimeter of meat finds a home in my stomach, and makes me look less like a slob. Boneless wings are what separate us from the animals! - Lauren Theisen
I love chicken tendies. - Kelsey McKinney
I spent the majority of my 20s bartending and waitressing in establishments of various quality that served cheap wings, and nothing will convince you of the merits of bonelessness like the cumulative aftermath of a pub’s Wing Night. I have seen bones piled up on a table in ways that Will Graham would find meaningful. I remain haunted by it. - Brandy Jensen
I confess that flats taste better than boneless wings up until the point that I get sensory issues and feel guilty about not being able to cleanly eat off the bone. Which is why I will choose a boneless wing! They are for children, you say? Well, age-wise, I am practically a child, also I love my dinosaur chicken nuggets dearly, and boneless wings are not much of a jump from there. - Heather Chen
I like these nugget-like fake wings. — Giri Nathan
No preference
Chicken is already the most boring of meats, save turkey. The only reason it should not simply be tossed onto a Cybertruck is that it doesn’t come in lunch meat–sized slices. I am an embarrassingly picky eater, like a baby who eats from a vast menu of 25 foods, only fully grown. I am not a wing person, as I like my food not to have chunks of inedible calcium in them, and I don’t like breading. On occasion, I’ll have chunks from a rotisserie chicken, but I’d usually rather just have a hot dog instead. - Owen Lewis
