The Flying Saucer is a beer bar located very near Busch Stadium that claims to have the “best beer selection in St. Louis” and the claim seems pretty credible. They’ve got quite the beer menu, both on draft and in bottles. Even better, it’s ordered by the style of beer, instead of alphabetically or by brewery. This, in my opinion, is the best way to order an overwhelming beer menu.

And unlike one of my other favorite beer bars in St. Louis, the Flying Saucer serves food. And the options are plentiful.

I’ve been to The Flying Saucer a couple of times before, but never to eat. My wife and I were looking for somewhere to go downtown before going to see The Book of Mormon at the Peabody, and decided it would be perfect. There’s free parking, and it’s a 0.8 miles from the theater.

The wings have their own section on the menu here, which is encouraging. The menu description says: “Served with celery, carrot sticks and blue cheese dressing” and they cost $8.49 for a reasonably sized order. Here are the three options:

• Buffalo: Traditional Frank’s Sauce
• Mojo: Cajun Spice
• Atomic: Warming This Is Hot

This, on paper, is a great selection. All three of these options are tempting, and none of them are BBQ. As this is the Wing Review’s first visit, I ordered the Buffalo.

I’m not normally a sucker for presentation or a proponent of superlatives, but the best way to serve wings is in a metal bowl. Also, I don’t normally eat the veggies served with my wings, but these veggies were fresh and crispy. The carrots and the celery were, that is. That lettuce garnish could politely show itself out. Lettuce is the ultimate soggy-wing-maker.

Sorry for that stupid paragraph about metal bowls and veggies. Let’s talk about the wings. First off, kudos to the folks at the Saucer for calling their sauce as it is: Traditional Frank’s Sauce. It takes the guess-work out of my review process and allows me to focus on other things.

Doesn’t it sound kind of boring though? By calling a sauce exactly what it is, it takes some mystery out of it. It erases the notion that there could be special magic happening in the kitchen with the chef crushing his own fresh peppers and adding his own magical blend of spices and seasonings. The expectations are set pretty low.

But there is much to be said for exceeding low expectations, and these wings certainly did that. The sauce greatly exceeded my expectations, both in quantity and quality. Each wing was thoroughly coated in it with plenty left for the bottom of the bowl, and it had a much greater spicy kick than I usually associate with “traditional Frank’s sauce”. The wings themselves were cooked properly. Everything was still tender and juicy on the inside. The outsides were not particularly crisp, but not particularly soggy. As far as size goes, they were very middle of the road.

I was expecting acceptable wings, and instead what I got was very good wings, served in an attractive way. And the buffalo was the least interesting sauce on the menu to me! There’s a lot of food that looks delicious at the Flying Saucer, but the wings are definitely worth your consideration. Next time I come back, I’ll be trying one of the other two options.

p.s. The music is pretty good here too.