The Popular Chain Restaurant You Should Avoid If You're Craving Buffalo Wings

If you're craving buffalo wings, we set out to find the chain restaurants with the best ones. However, in our quest, we also found the chain restaurant to avoid. We sampled wings from six popular chain restaurants, judging their classic buffalo wings based on flavor and consistency of the sauce, and the taste and texture of the chicken meat and skin.

The clear loser of the bunch was Chili's bone-in buffalo wings. To begin, we felt shortchanged as half the wings weren't the meaty drumettes we so desired. The wings were fried, giving them crispy skin, which we enjoyed. However, the meat itself was chewy, tough, and dried out. The worst offender, however, was the buffalo sauce — if you could call it that. Instead of a zesty, smooth, spicy sauce, we got an oily mess that tasted almost floral. Suffice it to say, the texture of the chicken, along with an abomination of a sauce, put us off Chili's wings forever.

Customers on Facebook back up our opinion about their subpar texture, with one even going as far as to say they were "frozen and raw in the middle." Others experienced the same raw, rubbery texture. According to another customer, "there was very little sauce. They just tasted like chicken ... I'm pretty sure most of my wings didn't actually have sauce on them." Even the boneless wings were described at best as "like the frozen ones you buy at the store, just fried."

In our ranking of every Triple Dipper appetizer, the bone-in wings unsurprisingly came in last place despite the many saucy variations. They certainly weren't worth the $1.50 surcharge you have to pay to include them in the appetizer. If you're looking for a better chicken option from Chili's, we recommend the honey-chipotle chicken crispers. You can make the chicken crispers into a meal by ordering our favorite Chili's entree, the Nashville hot chicken crispers. Other tasty chicken entrees include the ultimate Cajun pasta with grilled chicken and shrimp in a spicy Alfredo sauce and the chicken bacon ranch quesadillas.

While Chili's is decidedly not the place for buffalo wings, we found the 5 absolute best chain restaurant buffalo wings to be from Buffalo Wild Wings, Longhorn Steakhouse, Wingstop, TGI Fridays, and Applebee's. Buffalo Wild Wings has an impressive lineup of over 20 different sauces, while Wingstop's best wing has no sauce at all. Smoked, fried, and seasoned with Longhorn's famous char seasoning, the wings at Longhorn Steakhouse are one of the best menu items that aren't steak, while the wings at Applebee's and TGI Fridays were voted their best appetizer offerings. Applebee's also has a comparable meal deal to Chili's, as well as great happy hour deals. Plus, all of these chains are equally accessible, budget-friendly, and widespread as Chili's. So, if you're in the mood for wings, you can save Chili's for another night.