Discontinued Buffalo Wild Wings Sauces We'll Never Eat Again
Buffalo Wild Wings has built a chicken wing empire on the back of its crispy wings drenched in an almost-glowing orange Buffalo sauce. It is hard to find a chain that does it better. Among the legions of Buffalo Wild Wings loyalists, the chain is known for more than a classic wing, and fans think of it as the house of a thousand sauces. "We should own the conversation when it comes to wing sauce flavors and we intend to do that," Jamie Carawan, vice president of brand menu and culinary, said in 2020 (via Restaurant Business). The menu of 26 sauces and seasonings is beloved by fans, offering an array of ways to enjoy the staple protein. But even beyond that, fans love the limited-release sauces that pop up, making brief appearances and, if you're lucky, making a return stop years later.
When you have an expansive sauce menu and trot out special releases with some regularity, not everything can be a permanent menu addition. Some dearly departed sauces keep fans talking months and years after they've gone to that great chicken wing in the sky. Here are a few sauces that have left the menu that we hope to see in the future if the wing gods are feeling generous.
Dragon Fire Wings
It doesn't get much more limited than these wings. Dragon Fire Wings were a tie-in to the final season of "Game of Thrones" and available for just a single day: April 14, 2019. The final season was met with widespread disappointment, but the wings, though few customers could try them, were a hit (and confirmed as being just as spicy as advertised).
Dragon Fire Wings were coated in a soy-ginger glaze crafted with chili and ghost peppers before being garnished with fresh jalapeños. The chain has used variations of these ingredients before, but these aimed to be as intense as an arm wrestling match against the Hound. Spicy wings have hit the menu on several occasions — the ghost pepper wings won a fan vote years before — but the "Game of Thrones" tie-in garnered attention and convinced many consumers to give them a try despite the potential for torching mouths.
El Loco
El Loco was released as part of a trio of wing options called Hackables that offered something a little off the beaten path. El Loco was easily the most exciting option of the three. It was essentially a basket of nachos with a base of chipotle BBQ wings instead of tortilla chips. The wings were topped with a dry chipotle BBQ rub, queso, shredded lettuce, house-made pico de gallo, and jalapeños.
The idea of Hackables was to allow customers to arrange various menu items to make something new and unique on their own. Only some hacks were formalized in this special menu. Unfortunately, these wings were just on the B-Dubs menu briefly. If any of these Hackables deserve a prompt return, the El Loco wings are the top candidate. Considering that the chipotle BBQ dry rub is still on the menu, you could still cobble an order of El Loco wings together.
The Vampire Slayer
This wing dish with spooky season vibes was another in that trio of Hackables releases from spring 2018. Despite its name, The Vampire Slayer wings were not a Halloween release. The wings did not get their name not from the vampire happy holiday but from the profuse amount of garlic that coated each crispy bite. The Vampire Slayer wings (or adult chicken nuggets if you prefer the boneless variety) were doused in a spicy garlic sauce and finished with a zig-zag of parmesan garlic sauce.
The dish combined a couple of sauces you can still find on the menu. Again, that was the idea behind the Hackables menu — items you could stitch together on your own, but curated and turned into a new and easily accessible offering. If you're really craving extra garlicky wings and desperate to repel both vampires and dates, you could still pull this one together.
Salted caramel BBQ wings
These wings were a special treat for the type of customer who eats an order of wings and asks the server for yet another order of wings for dessert. Salted caramel BBQ wings last landed on the menu for a brief moment in 2018. The unique summertime dish raised eyebrows for sure, but we all know that salty and sweet go together well. (Hey there, chicken and waffles.)
The wings were made with the chain's honey barbecue sauce and a hint of caramel and salt. According to the company, the idea behind the pairing was to celebrate sports rivalries with contrasting flavors as the NHL and NBA reached their seasonal apex. The salted caramel BBQ wings were placed on the menu alongside a monster pulled pork Cuban sandwich. We're pretty sure that no one would be upset if that sandwich returned to the menu alongside some of these wings.
Truffalo wings
It was only a couple of years ago that Buffalo Wild Wings got in on the trend of truffle-infused hot sauce. It's hard to argue with this winning combination. While you might think these wings were doused in the popular Truff's signature hot sauce, there was no team-up between the wing hub and the top name in truffle sauce in this case.
Instead, B-Dubs mixed up its spicy Buffalo sauce with real white truffles for a potent, spicy wallop from its Truffalo wings. This combination followed the path of the wing chain's best sauce impulses. There have certainly been some limited-time sauces that verged on something of a stunt, but more often you get ones like this that are eye-catching while still focusing on flavor. This tasty sauce showcased a potent truffle taste with the tangy spice on which the chain made its name, for the ultimate flavor duo.
Doritos spicy sweet chili sauce
Doritos and Buffalo Wild Wings feel like a match made in heaven, not unlike the fan-favorite partnership between Doritos and Taco Bell. However, the chicken wing house and Doritos do not have that same deep history. This 2021 team-up was the first between the two companies. At the time of the release, Jamie Carawan described the wings as an "opportunity to experience a familiar flavor in a new and exciting way" (via Inspire Stories).
The sauce combined the flavors of soy sauce, brown sugar, onion, garlic, and paprika. The wings were covered with the Doritos-inspired sauce, and then, naturally, they were topped with crumbled Doritos spicy sweet chili chips, giving the wings an element of spice, sweetness, and crunch. The Doritos sauce-covered wings even came with a small bag of Doritos spicy sweet chili chips on the side for yet more chips, which was a nice touch.
Pizza wings
Buffalo Wild Wing's pizza wings were released among a quartet of new sauces in 2020. That release included the debut of cauliflower wings, as well as a pair of sauces that have stuck around as menu staples since then: orange chicken and lemon pepper. However, only one of the four fresh wing toppers was a limited release, and that was the buffalo house's pizza wings.
Pizza-flavored items have always had mixed success. For every Combos-like pizza-flavored success, there are dozens that don't quite make the grade. So, maybe it's not surprising that pizza wings were planned as a short-term endeavor. The item offered a generous helping of garlic parmesan sauce and a sprinkling of dried tomato powder and basil in an attempt to approximate something like a Margherita pizza on a chicken wing. Ultimately, they received mixed reviews from fans of the chain and have not returned to the menu since their quick visit.
Champa sauce
For the most part, these various sauces were intended to be around for just a short spell. Having menu items that are a limited release creates hype and urgency, and perhaps even gives the company the opportunity to bring products back over and over to increase fan excitement. Think of releases like McDonald's almost-annual McRib or Taco Bell's nacho fries. Champa Sauce, however, was in a category by itself and about as limited a release as you could feasibly conjure. The sauce was only made available in Tampa-area B-Dubs to celebrate the Bucs winning the Super Bowl in 2021.
The sauce combined two of the chain's newer sauces: sweet orange chicken and savory lemon pepper rub. Champa Sauce might be gone forever (or at least until a Tampa-based team grabs another championship), but you could recreate something like it on your own by ordering the orange chicken and lemon pepper wings and combining them yourself.
BBQ pumpkin ale sauce
The deluge of pumpkin spice everything in the fall is famously overwhelming. It has since long crept into the summer and spread like crabgrass. Not only has its presence widened across the seasons, but more and more foods have become pumpkin flavored. It has reached the point where highlighting that there is a pumpkin-flavored variety of a product feels a little like pointing out that there is oxygen in the air.
In 2018, Buffalo Wild Wings joined the flurry, and pumpkins wormed their way into wings. The chain briefly released a BBQ pumpkin sauce, flying in the face of the assertion that the chain usually shied away from stunt flavors. At the time of the release, the chain said it mixed ale with barbecue flavors and pumpkin spice to create a flavor that is uncommon for chicken wings. We could probably do without too much pumpkin flavoring in the world, but the chance to try pumpkin spicy instead of pumpkin spice was tempting.
Doritos Flamin' Hot nacho wings
Another Doritos release arrived in 2022 as a promotion tied to the NBA playoffs, with Golden State's Klay Thompson as a celebrity endorsement. In this case, the flavor was none other than Flamin' Hot, which has its own following above and beyond the Doritos brand. In fact, it's probably fair to say that no other chip flavor has had more success as an ingredient at chain restaurants in recent years. So, the question of introducing Flamin' Hot nacho wings felt more like a "when" than an "if" for Buffalo Wild Wings.
That's not to say Doritos were not a factor in how B-Dubs built the flavor profile for this limited release. The wings were coated with a sauce flavored with Doritos nacho cheese chips. They were then coated with crushed Doritos Flamin' Hot nacho tortilla chips, adding a little crunch to the spicy wings. With the crushed chips encasing each wing, it was definitely a good call to go with Flamin' Hot Doritos over the original Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Blue Moon BBQ sauce
Beer and chicken are a winning combination, but this particular pair only arrives at Buffalo Wild Wings once in a blue moon. The sauce made with the immensely recognizable wheat beer first showed up on the Buffalo Wild Wings menu in 2015. It returned in 2017 as part of a celebration of the chain's 35th anniversary. At that time, you could even get it in bottles.
The barbecue sauce is made with Blue Moon and accentuates the beer's flavor by incorporating coriander and orange peel, staples of the Blue Moon flavor profile. Photos from its 2020 return depicted it served like a Blue Moon, with an orange wedge on the side. The wings were sweet, a little sticky, and quickly became a fan favorite that the chain has repeatedly brought back. This is one we hope to see hit the menu for a limited time in the future if the chain's habits are any indication of what it may do down the line.
Big easy bourbon honey mustard
In 2015, Buffalo Wild Wings hosted a fan vote, vowing to bring back a pair of its most popular limited-time-only sauces. One of the two victors was bourbon honey mustard. The flavor combination is so classic that it is hard to imagine that it was eligible for a fan vote instead of simply being a fixture of the 26-sauce menu. Other competitors in the vote were Sriracha Sizzle, Wicked Wasabi, Honey Ginger Kick, Classic Margarita, ghost pepper, Korean BBQ, Chipotle Cherry Sting, Smoldering Santa Fe, and buttery maple.
There are more than a couple of those sauces that would be warmly welcomed back to the menu even now. But it was the ghost pepper sauce that joined big easy bourbon honey mustard at the top of the vote. It is not hard to think of either of those sauces popping back onto the menu for a short stay at some point.
Summer Shandy sauce
This is another tasty sauce concocted with a famous beer in mind. Like Blue Moon, Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy is a hugely popular summertime sipper. Buffalo Wild Wings took advantage of its reputation to craft a sauce based on the beer and lemonade combination. (It's a refreshing style worth sipping if you haven't had a shandy in a spell.)
This one popped onto the menu in 2016, offering another sweet, summery sauce with a lemon flavor in case you weren't up for a traditional Buffalo sauce as a year-round affair. One reviewer found the flavor unusual and noted that the strong malty element was far more present than just in the marketing language — it was a significant portion of the flavor profile. The Summer Shandy wings might not have been quite as in-demand as others on the menu, but a beer-based sauce with a lemon kick is intriguing, even if the brew no longer has quite the clout it carried in 2016.