Road Trip: Chi’lantro, Austin, TX

The Wing Review is on the road again, traveling this gloomy weekend of December in Austin, TX. Lydia and I were here for a weekend getaway of eating and drinking, but she has a terrible cold and I have a mild one, so neither food nor drink are living up to their full potential on the tastebuds.

When your sense of taste is lacking, you have two choices: you can give in with chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers, or you can fight like hell and order the spiciest thing on the menu everywhere you go.

Fortunately, wings are spicy!

Prior going to Austin, I was sent a lengthy list of great places to eat by a former Austin resident. I ran a google for “best wings in Austin” and did a quick crosscheck. That’s how I got to Chi’lantro: “Korean BBQ inspired”.

Korean fried wings are in general, based on my personal experiences, amazing. O’Wing Plus makes some of my favorite wings in St. Louis (review: here).

Chi’lantro has a full section for Korean Fried Wings on their menu, and they offer 3 flavors: Gangnam Sauce, Honey Butter, or Rooster Sauce.

Here are some other facts about the place: You order at the counter, they deliver the food to your table, as far as I can tell they have $3 beers all the time (I got my wings to go so I didn’t order one), most of the people who work there have exciting colored hair, and everything looks and smells amazing.

I asked my friendly bright haired cashier what their spiciest wing flavor was and she said “Rooster: It’s like Sriracha and Buffalo”. Excellent. So those were the wings I got.

I got my wings and my Korean street corn 15-20 minutes later and headed back to our AirBnB to dig-in. We would have eaten there, but Lydia was looking to get her sick self to bed as soon as possible.

Fortunately, the wings traveled well, and double fortunately they were amazing. The rooster sauce was delicious. It was thick and coated the wings well. In addition to the sauce, the wings had toasted sesame seeds on them. These were delicious and added a great dimension to the flavor profile. The sauce was spicy but not in the upper tier of spicy sauces. Even if I had a fully functioning sense of taste, I don’t think these would have made my face numb or uncomfortable in any way.

The wings were still crispy even after travel, and were moist and delicious on the inside. These were perhaps in the top 10 best orders of wings I’ve ever eaten. I would really like to try their other flavors, but I don’t live here and there are about 100 other food places I guess I need to try before I leave on Monday.

Oh well. If you’re in Austin, eat these wings.

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