Where Have All The Wing Festivals Gone in Connecticut?

There was a glorious time in the early to mid 2010's where every event organizer around Connecticut put on a chicken wing festival. We even did it here a few times in Danbury. I found one of the old signs we had made up for the Connecticut Wingfest that we did at the Matrix Conference and Banquet Center in 2015, and it made me think, where have all of the chicken wing festivals gone around Connecticut?

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I don't think about the Roman Empire once a week, but I do think about chicken wings every day. A recent encounter with Brookfield's JJ Stacks' garlic parm wings at the Danbury San Gennaro Festival has reignited my wingy-thirst. I bought three pounds of chicken wings since, and I can't stop dreaming about them.

If you went to our events in 2015-2016, $20 got you a wing from 15-20 different restaurants in the area. It was such a great way to sample different cooking methods and flavors all in one place. We've put a lot of different events over the years, but those were two of my favorites.

I did a quick scan online for '2023 chicken wing festival' + Connecticut, and the results were disappointing. At first, I thought that maybe it was still a Rona-inspired supply chain issue, but that's long gone, I bought my wings for $5 a pound at Big Y last week. Wallingford had a Wingfest 2023 in June, something called 'The New England Wing Festival' never materialized, but the rest of the year? Nothing,

Why have we let Buffalo steal back some of it's Wing-thunder? Norwalk's and Bridgeport's The Blind Rhino took home the title at the 2022 US Wing Festival up there, it's time to start reclaiming our territory.