Buffalo Wild Wings' Doritos Flamin' Hot Nacho Wings are an unholy oddity (2024)

There's that famous meme from Arrested Development, where Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) opens a paper bag that reads "Dead Dove Do Not Eat." Bateman opens the bag, looks in, and makes an incredulous face. "I don't know what I expected," he deadpans.

When I asked Buffalo Wild Wings to send me a sample of its new Doritos Flamin' Hot Nacho Wings, I was super curious to give them a try. I mean what in the would would that taste like? Turns out it tastes like chicken coated in liquified Flamin' Hot Dorito. And well...

Via Giphy

To add some detail: It tasted pretty damn weird. Chip dust isn't meant to be liquid. It isn't meant to coat chicken. It is designed to stick to a chip, then your fingers, and to provide that salty, umami, I need to go back for more feeling.

It pains me to say this about a Buffalo Wild Wings product. If such as a thing as a BWW superfan exists, I am that person. Before the pandemic closed my favorite location for good, I was a regular at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Times Square, braving America's tourist hell for my fix. Oh, and I tweet about their wings incessantly. Like a strange amount.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

But I love Buffalo Wild Wings because they make actually good wings and offer, in my humble but well-informed opinion, the single best Buffalo sauce known. Buffalo Wild Wings' Wild sauce is legitimately quite spicy, while still having classic Buffalo flavor. In other words it actually tastes good while burning the ever-loving hell out of your mouth. It's everything an elite wing sauce should be.

That's my standard for BWW. And the Doritos-themed wings don't even come close. But I get why someone would want to try it. They're kind of worth giving a go, if only for the novelty.

My order arrived at my apartment, paired with a bag of Flamin' Hot Doritos chips, in case I forgot what I was eating.

My first impression upon opening the carton of wings: That is an unnatural color for chicken wings. The sauce was cherry red and the wings were topped with crumpled Flamin' Hot Doritos.

The first bite was a bit of a let-down, though. If I'm going to eat something truly deranged as Flamin' Hot chicken wings, I want you to slap the sh*t out of my taste buds. Give me the spicy weirdness. Make me see God.

But despite the cherry red sauce, the wings weren't holy hell Flamin'. They were, dare I say, kind of bland for such a weird concoction. There wasn't much spice up front. The artificial, Flamin' kick mostly hit on the back end of a bite. It would leave a strange tingle on your tongue, similar to the chips. It tasted just enough like a Flamin' Hot Dorito to make the chicken kind of odd, while it was not Flamin' enough to make it fun.

The artificial Flamin' flavor has an almost puckery, sour quality to it. The spice tastes nothing like a hot pepper. On chips, it works. On wings, it's just not right. The actual crumpled of chips, meanwhile, were soggy because they had soaked up the chicken wing sauce.

Still, I'm not going to tell you to not order these wings. It's such a weird concept, I understand wanting to try it. I felt the same way. But if you're in the mood for some novelty at BWW, I'd honestly rather do the Blazin' challenge again than eat the Flamin' wings. At least the challenge made me feel something (intense pain in my mouth). The Doritos-flavored wings left me cold. Flamin' Hot Dorito chicken wings felt like some unholy corporate mashup, because it is.

Ultimately they were weirdly boring. The Flamin' wings seem like a way to get curious people in the door. Fair enough. But for this BWW regular, it'll be the usual order — 10 Wild wings, extra saucy — from here on out.