Johnny's West Wing

And so it begins...

Our first stop on the great TourWing 2013 begins at Johnny's Tavern West. This is the second Lawrence location with the original Johnny's just across the river.  There are several Johnny's throughout Lawrence and the KC metro area and I know what you are thinking:"I thought you said no chains."  Actually, what I said was no national chains.  Johnny's is local.

But, before I give you our score, you should know that we got together as a team and practiced scoring at a few locations first.  This allowed us to discuss each criterion and why we are giving a certain score.  Now you might think that given our vast experience eating wings that would be a no brainer, but actually this exercise sparked a lot of discussions and even disagreement at times on our interpretations of how a criterion was defined or what it was we really were trying to measure.  This gave us opportunity to better define each criterion and rules.  Also by doing so, we have developed inter-rater reliability because now everyone is looking at/for the same thing.  We take our wing scoring very seriously.  So now without further ado, this is how Johnny's Tavern West faired.

What we judged: "Flamingo Wings" Classic Sauce


“Heisenberg” “No-Nonsense Nancee"   “Just Wings” Judy “Turbo” Teri“ “Tailgate” Ted
A: 7                  9            8         8         8
TnT: 8                  9            8         7                      7
F:            8                                9                                9                           7                      7

When you calculate it all out Johnny's West Wing is worth a 7.94!    That's a pretty high benchmark for others to reach, I think.

Appearance (10%) overall was good.  They had good color, were fairly well coated, but could have been a little saucier.  Wings were proportionate in size and mixture of wing sections and drummies.

Texture and Tenderness (30%) overall was good too.  The skin was fairly crispy and the chicken was juicy.


Flavor (60%) was also good but perhaps a bit on the mild side for the classic buffalo style as we have come to expect.  It had some kick, but as noted under "appearance" the wings could have been a little saucier as some were not as well coated. Lack of sauce might have attributed to a lesser heat.  One judge noted combining the "flaming" with the "classic" was "perfect".

However, if you are wing fanatic, Johnny's Tavern West has other flavors to sample.  Other "flamingo" wing sauces include flaming, BBQ, or Tai Chile.  There are also the "Simmons Wings" and is a local favorite.  They combine their house BBQ sauce and the classic sauce, flash fry the wings, then finish them on the grill.  The results are crispy, tangy sweet wings with grill marks. You should definitely try them sometime.

Other things noted on our visit, both positive and negative, for your dining consideration is that they have an extensive list of beers on tap to wash down your wings and quench your thirst if beer is your thing.  And they're big beers too - 33 oz.  And if you are trying to find a sports game on TV, you will probably find it on there.  Every table has at least one TV you can view.  It is a popular spot on Sunday afternoons in the Fall because they show each football game.  However, their blue cheese dressing was watery and flavorless and they were very stingy on celery - two pieces with an entire order of wings.  But, none of this was a factor or had any bearing on our scoring.  Just the wings.

So there it is; one down and several more to go.  We are doubling up next time: the Jayhawker and Jefferson's on Mass Street.