Buffalo Wings and Rings

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

Buffalo Wild Wings

Sometimes, when choosing a venue from which to take in a sporting event, it is important branch out from your comfort zone and try something that is unfamiliar. And sometimes it is important to do the exact opposite of that and keep your thinking firmly within the box.

With the latter sentiment in mind I decided to watch last month’s Nebraska-Northwestern game from the comfort of a sports bar that I have probably gone to two dozen times.

Buffalo Wild Wings, while a little on the corporate side, is a place where the service and product are dependable, the televisions are abundant, and the crowd is a sure thing.

“Sometimes, when choosing a venue from which to take in a sporting event, it is important branch out from your comfort zone and try something that is unfamiliar. And sometimes it is important to do the exact opposite of that and keep your thinking firmly within the box.”

I think most people are probably familiar with their sixteen varieties of chicken wings, the spiciest of which at one time came with a free t-shirt, and the many different kinds of beer they have on tap, so that won’t be my focus here.

The focus of this column, the thing that has kept me coming back to BWWs in regular intervals for the whole of my adult life, is the atmosphere of the place.

Watching a football game at Buffalo Wild Wings is one of the precious few things in life that is just as much fun as it looks on television, at least in my experience. While the establishment’s ability to send games into overtime by doing things like controlling the weather or using the sprinkler system to attack the kickers might be a touch exaggerated in the commercials, the energy and enthusiasm is more or less true to form.

My experience there three weeks ago was honestly pretty par for the course when it comes to watching a Husker game in Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m pretty sure I could watch a Nebraska game on a ten-inch hand-held in the middle of a rain storm and not have a problem getting people to watch the game with me.

My best experience at BWWs actually came last January during the NFL Playoffs.

I’m a San Francisco 49ers fan and, as most football fans will remember, the Niners played the Seattle Seahawks for last season’s NFC Championship. Far from being the only person there who even remotely cared about that game—which was my honest expectation—there was a healthy contingency of supporters for both sides who were more than just casual onlookers who decided to root for a team once they got there. Several people were wearing red and gold jerseys while others adorned the acid rain and highlighter that you wear if you support Voldemort…I mean the Seahawks.

“Watching a football game at Buffalo Wild Wings is one of the precious few things in life that is just as much fun as it looks on television, at least in my experience.”

My verdict is that if you are an NFL fan living in Lincoln—my most sincere condolences to you if you are, I know how lonely that can be—and you’re looking for a place to watch your favorite team, BWWs might be the place for you. It has a broad enough reach that there is usually a good turnout for prime time or playoff games even when the fan base is a little bit more marginalized.

This is to say that while there may not be enough 49ers fans in Lincoln to fill Memorial Stadium, there are certainly enough to fill Buffalo Wild Wings. Which is important, because losing to the Seahawks is something no one should have to do alone.

Down the Hatch Bar & Grill

It may never cease to amaze me how unifying a Nebraska football game is in this town. I grew up as a Nebraska fan living in Iowa which meant that watching the Big Red usually meant watching a game that no one outside of my immediate family had any interest in. I’ve been in Nebraska for coming up on five years now and the novelty still hasn’t quite worn off.

With that in mind, the Saturday before last presented me with my most recent opportunity to take a pilgrimage away from my cable-free apartment for the noble pursuit of watching a televised sporting event while eating something that is bad for me. My journey this time took me to the farthest reaches of the Lincoln area to a place called Down the Hatch Bar and Grill.

Down the Hatch very nearly cemented itself as having eternal sentimental value to me as it was very nearly the venue in which I watched the largest comeback in the history of Nebraska football. But alas, Alonzo Moore couldn’t hang on to the ball, Tommy Armstrong Jr. threw it to the wrong team, and the rest is history.

“The score of the Nebraska-Michigan State game notwithstanding, my final verdict is that Down the Hatch is a pretty solid place to watch a game should your travels ever take you to northwest Lincoln.”

The menu at Down the Hatch is pretty simple, which might be a turnoff to someone in the mood for a culinary adventure, but I am a man of simple tastes so I really didn’t mind. Generally, my perusal of the menu at a sports bar ends when I have ascertained the house name for a bacon cheeseburger. In any case, I was there to watch a game. And for that, the atmosphere was more than admirable.

Like many sports bars in Lincoln, Saturdays in the fall make Down the Hatch over into a rendezvous for Husker fans who want to trade the tranquility of a home living room for a place that erupts in loud cheering every time Nebraska gains three yards.

Located on Northwest 1st Street about two miles east of Highlands Golf Course, Down the Hatch offers smaller portions for lower prices than some of the other places I’ve been to, which makes it a great option if you’re looking for a place to watch a specific game, or just a place to have an inexpensive night out.

The score of the Nebraska-Michigan State game notwithstanding, my final verdict is that Down the Hatch is a pretty solid place to watch a game should your travels ever take you to northwest Lincoln.