Located near the western entrance to the University City Loop, Cicero’s has been around for a long time. They’ve got food, they’ve got a great selection of beer and they also have a small concert venue in the back.

Cicero’s, the concert venue, is the iteration of the building that I am most familiar with. What bands have I seen there, you may ask? None other than the likes of Camo Pancakes, Remedy, The Monskasities, and the like. You’ve probably never heard of these bands, because they were all local bands that I went to high school with.

And I performed there five to ten times as well, with my jam band Klug’s Mojo (later, just “The Mojo”). So my primary memories are of parking in the fire lane with my flashers on while I lugged pieces of my drum set in and out the back door. We’d play Sunday local band showcases which were either weekly or month and some of our parents and friends would come watch us play a 30 minute set. We might make $20 and then we’d go home.

All this to say that while I’ve spent a lot of time at Cicero’s, I’ve either never eaten the wings here before, or cannot remember eating them.

I strolled into the place by myself early on a Friday night, hoping to eat at the bar, but the bar was full so I settled for a table. The beer selection at Cicero’s is exceptional and the prices are very reasonable, with most pints of craft beer for $5-6. Very good.

The wings sit as the second item on an overwhelmingly large menu but the options are limited. This is a good thing for a bar. Too many sauces is not an indicator one way or another of successful wings. The options are “Spicy, Breaded or BBQ chicken wings” and the prices are $8.75 for an order of 8 and $15.99 for an order of 16. Wings are served with your choice of

I had very friendly service and my server suggested a side of fries with my wings… why not! She asked if I wanted my wings crispy and I said yes. I ordered them hot, obviously.

My order of 8 wings came on a no-frills bowl-on-plate type situation and they were piping hot when I got them. The wings were crispy, as ordered. The sauce was a fairly nondescript buffalo sauce: franks and butter, probably. The chicken was not anything special. Overall, these were on the upper end of acceptable bar wings. If you’re here and you want wings, get them.

More to the point, these wings are perhaps a good example of why the wing review has been on hold for a year and a half. I eat a lot of wings, but I don’t often have a lot to say about them. I am committed to this process, and to finding excellent and interesting wings in St. Louis. I hope to be more diligent in writing about places, even when I don’t have much to say about the wings.

Cicero’s is good and it is certainly better than Fitz’s. Don’t go to Fitz’s.