Since it opened in 2018, I can’t imagine that there’s a restaurant I’ve been to more frequently than Rockwell Beer Company. It has always been an easy place to take children, due to its spacious patio, generally chill atmosphere and VERY kid friendly food: burgers, fries, soft-serve ice cream (70% of the time, when the machine was working). The food was also very enjoyable for adults, and my favorite item on the menu was the chicken sandwich. Also, the beer is good.
In the last month, the kitchen situation at Rockwell changed. Previously, the Rockwell kitchen was operating as “Brasswell”, a sort of chill streamlined extension of Gerard Craft’s Brasserie by Niche. That is no more! Rockwell is doing their own food, and they’ve extended the menu.
Tonight, nervously, the Becker Family took their first journey to the New Menu Rockwell. The new menu is much more expansive than the old one, which fills me with trepidation, but one item caught my eyes and of course that item was their wings.
Available in quantities of 6 ($9) or 12 ($16), Rockwell’s Wings are offered in 2 flavors: Buffalo and Honey Garlic. They are served with Blue Cheese or Ranch.
The menu doesn’t use any flowery language, and these are not flowery wings. I ordered 12 buffalo wings with blue cheese. I did not consider the honey garlic, and I did not consider the ranch.
The wings arrived in a very reasonable amount of time with the rest of our food – Rockwell Burger, Corndog Kids Meal with Fries, Grilled Cheese Kids Meal with Apple Sauce. Everything was GOOD. The burger was different (more ingredients, maybe slightly thinner patties) but good. The corndog was described by my wife as “Great” (my 6 year old thought it was good/wasn’t that interested in eating). The grilled cheese was Five Guys style (An inside-out burger bun so that the flat sides of the bun are on the outside/flat on the griddle) and it was good.
The wings were… very very good! There was no individual component that was particularly special about them, but even the least notable parts were above average. They were standard fried, unbreaded wings, cooked perfectly. They were juicy and not at all dry. On a menu where I worry that wings aren’t ordered that frequently, I worry that the wings will be sitting in a freezer for awhile and have a freezer-y taste. This was not the case with these wings. They tasted great.
The wings were well sauced – fully covered, but not drowning on their dish. The sauce was not spicy, but was pretty flavorful. I tasted a bit of mustard (a la Syberg’s) but my wife said she didn’t pick up on that on the wing she had. The blue cheese was chunky & fantastic. It had a great tang to it and complemented the wings well.
Change is scary, but these wings are good, as was the rest of the menu that we sampled tonight. It won’t be long before we return to Rockwell, and I’m excited to explore some of the other options on the menu. Based on the strength of the buffalo wings, I might even see what the Honey Garlic wings have to offer, despite that flavor not generally sounding appealing to me.