First Taste: Wings Around the Clock

It’s going to be a good summer for new food businesses in Birmingham. Besides new successes Urban Cookhouse and Sitar, we’ve got brick & tin to look forward to (in July, I think) and Pinches Tacos coming to Homewood. Plus Facebook tells me we’re getting a new brewery in Avondale (if anybody has the scoop on that, leave a comment).

So I can be forgiven for almost overlooking Wings Around the Clock. It’s right across the street from Sitar in the heart of the UAB Hospital area, where there used to be a Starbucks, and its (frankly, ugly) logo looks like another soulless chain, on the order of WingZone or Buffalo Wild Wings.

I was wrong; turns out Wings Around the Clock is a locally-owned place. The Southside location is their third; the other two are in Bessemer and McCalla.

I tried it this afternoon and was suitably impressed.

They have wings, of course, in 30 different flavors. There are a bunch of oddly-named concoctions, which turn out to be clever combinations of the available sauces: Blizzard is ranch plus Cajun, Vampire Stopper is hot plus garlic, Sweet Pepper is sweet and sour plus lemon pepper, and on and on. They’ve also got fried fish—choose from catfish, whiting, or tilapia—shrimp, and French fries.

I tried Chip’s Favorite—a combo of honey barbecue and spicy Asian sauces. It was a good pairing: nice and sweet, with a good soy-sauce backbone and just a hint of heat. The wings come sauced nicely, with a generous coating but not sitting in a greasy puddle of sauce.

Prices are pretty good, too: The $7 manager’s deal gets you eight wings, fries, and a drink. The place isn’t much to look at inside, but honestly who cares? It’s a wing place.

Despite the “around the clock” name, they’re not open 24 hours, or even especially late, as far as I can tell. It’s eat-in and take-out only right now, but they plan to start delivery service in July. Between the hospital lunch crowd and delivering to drunk college students at night, this place should do real well. And next time you’ve got a hankering for chicken wings, you can shop local.