Jose García orchestrated 300 individual chicken wings bubbling away in the seven-basket fryolator for 15 minutes. He gave each basket ten deft shakes a minute so the vegetable oil parboiled them evenly. Then out they went to the refrigerated truck in the parking lot to await saucing.
They joined what in the end will be — count ‘em — 25,000 individual wings, 360 pounds of cut celery, and 17 five-gallon buckets of Buffalo wing sauce, which will fill about 1,000 Super Bowl orders at Archie Moore’s between 11:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Sunday.
Asked if he could reveal what’s in the wing sauce, longtime manager Jim Wooley thought deeply and then replied, “No.”
But Archie Moore’s is ready. On a normal week, it slings 3,000 spicy buffalo chicken wings — a dish the historic eatery on Willow Street claims to have introduced to Connecticut.
On a recent morning, Wooley, who’s managed Archie Moore’s since 1985, showed this reporter the original liquor license for the restaurant — then just a bar — that stood across the street from the current establishment on Willow at Anderson Street.
“They started requiring liquor licenses in 1898,” said Wooley. Archie Moore’s was reestablished in its current location in 1982. It has become so successful that owner Bob Fuchs opened up four more in the state, in Milford, Derby, Fairfield, and Wallingford. Wooley arrives at the New Haven restaurant every morning but Wednesday at between 5 and 6 a.m. to supervise deliveries. The wings are delivered in batches each day of the week so they are fresh — one of the secrets to the wings’ popularity, Wooley asserted. Thursday is beer delivery day. Tuesday is paper products. And every day but Wednesday, when Wooley sleeps in, come the birds.
On the day of the Super Bowl, beginning at 11:30 a.m., the whole restaurant is turned into a staging area, with half the back dining room used for the orders to be finalized. People come in to pick up their orders all day long in a staggered schedule.
“We try to pick up two orders a minute,” Wooley said.
The restaurant hasn’t changed the menu much in 30 or so years and only recently upped the number of salads. It did include gluten-free alternatives: You could have any of the sandwiches on gluten-free bread and pay two extra bucks. People paid attention to it at first but are now not ordering. “I think it’s a fad,” Wooley said.
But the pub grub and the wings are not. The flagship Archie Moore’s on Willow Street grossed $2.5 million in revenue last year. “These past years we’ve been breaking records,” Wooley said, and all on pub food. “I think it’s because when the economy tanked, when that went south, now people are spending $20 a person instead of $50 downtown.”
What’s the most wings any one customer ever ate?
Allan Appel Photo
Wooley asked a colleague to take a guess. The colleague recalled when, a few years ago, “five or six guys ate a couple of hundred between them.”
All staff are involved for Super Bowl Sunday, which is very much an all-hands-on-deck day, with prepping going on in several long shifts. Long-time bartender Carl Apuzzo, however, counted himself out. He’s 73 years old; he was a New Haven fireman for 30 years and worked in the off time as a bartender, first for ten years at the old Casa Maria restaurant on East Street and at Archie Moore’s since 1982.
For 20 years he worked the Super Bowl. “I was the guy who made sure you got your right order,” he said.
This time he’s home watching the game, and he’s not going to order or eat wings, he added.
Who gets the first spicy chicken wings for the Super Bowl?
“One thousand wings for IRIS. That’ll be the first order to go out. 10 a.m. Super Bowl morning,” Wooley said.
They’ll be for the organization’s Superbowl Kick Off Run for Refugees road race. “We’re a sponsor,” Wooley said.