Howdy folks, Scott here. Travis is on sabbatical from his Wingsday duties for the time being, so in lieu of my normal amazing reviews, I’ll be editing this week — inserting my own comments here and there. So I guess I’ll be your tour guide for today… I hope I don’t screw this up.

Anyway, this week we visited Wingstreet, inside of Pizza Hut on S. Florida Ave in Lakeland. So, on to the reviews:

“I must admit that I was not very excited when I learned where we were going for Wingsday on this day, Pizza Hut. I thought to myself, ‘They can not make pizza very well, what makes them think they can make wings?’ To my amazement I was surprised. There were several different varieties available and all of them seemed good. I ordered Spicy Asian and the Honey BBQ. When the wings arrived I was amazed, temperature-wise they were very hot and had just the -right amount of sauce. The Spicy Asian were exactly what they said, the sauce was a sweet and sour mixture with a shot of peppers. The Spicy Asian were a treat to have after eating some of the other flavors because it helped cool the mouth. (Agreed… a good palette cleanser, like that little pink stuff you eat between sushi rolls to quench that wasabi-burn.) The Honey BBQ was good as well, my least favorite, but good. The BBQ sauce was not very thick and contained a hint of smoke flavor which no other location has done.

Others at the table order Buffalo Burnin Hot, Garlic Parmesan, and Cajun. When the Buffalo Burnin Hot was ordered our waitress warned us they were extremely hot, I laughed. We were at Pizza Hut, how hot could wings be? She was right. The Cajun wings arrived and had a strong pepper smell. I have tried Cajun wing at several locations now and how decided I am not a fan of these so to me they were okay. I was very optimistic of the Garlic Parmesan. When this wing arrives on a table most of the time it looks like a wing that has been dipped in some sort of Alfredo sauce. Thank goodness these were not. These wing had a good buttered glaze with garlic on top and what looked like fresh Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. These wings were excellent, overall these were the best.

I would visit Pizza Hut again for wings and would not have a problem ordering any of the above flavors.”
-Jason

“This week we went to Pizza Hut for Wingsday, that’s right: Pizza Hut. Well it was actually a WingStreet Pizza Hut that served pizza and wings. I arrived a little late and asked some of the other reviewers to order on my behalf. When I arrived I noticed that the waitress seemed a little stressed and might have been the only one serving with a full blown lunch crowd in the dining area. Both the food and drink seemed to take a little while to arrive with the wings coming out in stages. (Yes… I believe I probably waited 20 minutes overall for my drink — AFTER reminding her 3 times. What do you expect from a “Fast Food Waitress?”) Since there was quite a bit of confusion about what wings belonged to who we basically put them in the middle of the table and started sampling each flavor. All of the wings were medium size, non-breaded and cooked to a good consistency. (Kudos to Wingstreet for labeling the plates with stickers denoting each wing flavor.) Below is a summary of each wing that I sampled:

Buffalo Burnin’ Hot – Probably one of the hottest wings we’ve had so far. Although the heat was top notch; the flavor of the sauce was just average.

Garlic Parmesan – These were excellent wings and there’s nothing more I can really say outside of the fact that they were probably one the best, if not the best, Garlic Parmesan wing I’ve ever had.

Cajun – These were OK nothing special or great about them.

Spicy Asian - As the menu explains these wings have a sweet sauce with a little bit of kick. I’m not a big fan of really sweet sauces on my wings so I thought they were just average.

Most of the wings were more than adequately covered in there respective sauce and there were no containers provided for us to place our eaten wings into so we placed them on napkins. The waitress made up for this snafu by bringing us warm moist (cloth like) paper towels to clean up with afterwards. Forget the moist towelettes that come in the little square packets — this is the way to go. Overall the price was right (20 wings for $10.99) and the wings themselves were pretty good. I’m pretty sure just about everyone has been to a Pizza Hut so that environment and service is pretty much what you would expect from past experience. (Yeah, it wasn’t great… but they did turn up the A/C at our request!)”
-Shawn

“This week we went to WingStreet. I have heard really good things about this place, and even saw the awards they won last year, but still wondered how good wings could be from a Pizza Hut. The restaurant was pretty slammin’ for the pizza buffet. I think we were the only ones with wings in that whole place. First and foremost, our waitress sucked. (Again, I stress that I cannot agree more.) It took her 20 minutes and about 4 requests before she even brought me my glass of water, then another 5 minutes before I could get a straw. (SEE?!) More on her later. The wings came out by orders of 10. We all pretty much shared everything. So here is the wing breakdown.

Hot - These were really good. I can’t remember the last time I sweat from eating wings. The heat really grew on you.

Spicy Asian - These were not spicy, but very nice anyways. They had a subtle citrus flavor to them.

Garlic Parmesean - Nice and crispy. The flavor was very well dispersed throughout the entire wing - not just on the surface.

Cajun - These were just kind of peppery. I wasn’t a fan.

Honey BBQ - Someone finally got it right. They had a nice smoky flavor, not just doused with K.C. Masterpiece.

Overall I was very pleased with the wings. They were pretty large, very flavorful, and cooked really well. Also, I liked that they didn’t skimp on the sauce. The environment was pretty nice, as much as you could expect from a Pizza Hut. The restroom’s floor was sticky. That’s negative points for me. Our waitress was never around. Our cups were always empty. When she was around, however, she made me very uncomfortable by somehow managing to always place her 50 year old left breast on my right shoulder. (Watching that happen each time actually added points for the rest of us.) How thoughtful of her. She topped the day off by taking my debit card off the table (before I could even react) and charging me for the wrong meal. I then had to go through the entire process of voided my purchase and ringing up the correct ticket. Thanks for making me arrive late to work.”
-Mike

“It’s weird for me to be on this side of the proverbial table, writing a review rather than sprinkling my witticisms throughout the entire post, but I’ve got confidence Scott will hold down the fort/make fun of me admirably. (I’ll try my best… but sometimes it’s too easy.)

What do you say about Wingstreet? They have Pepsi products? Their pizza buffet is second to none? No, we do wings, and Pizza Hut’s entry into the wing market gave us plenty of choices – Spicy Asian, Parmesan Garlic, Burnin’ (their apostrophe abuse, not mine) Hot, Honey BBQ, and Cajun (there may have been a few others we didn’t get to). I was very impressed with the sauces they used; not overpowering, but plenty of flavor. That said, the wings were small, occasionally broken, and not overly meaty (that’s what she said!) (Jeez, stop writing parenthesis jokes! That’s MY job this week!). I’d recommend the Parmesan Garlic or Spicy Asian as the best of the crowd.

The service was poor, perhaps because there was one waitress for a very busy lunchtime crowd. As for value, this ranked near the top - $5.99 for 10 wings. Add in the fact that you could conceivably have them delivered to your door, and WingStreet’s a win. Not the best I’ve had, but a surprisingly tasty wing for a chain restaurant. (That’s what she… oh, you already ruined it.)
-Travis

“Today we went to Pizza Hut, I mean WingStreet for lunch. I tried hard not to be biased based solely on my low opinion of their pizza. I shrugged off the server’s warning that the Buffalo Burnin’ Hot wings were “very hot.” Yeah right, like Dave Thomas (of Wendy’s fame) makes a spicy chicken sandwich. (He does make a mean Frosty, brother.) Wingstreet’s wing sauce is a very unnatural red no. 5 colored capsaicin sauce that definitely brings the funk and the noise. That is to say, they were flipping hot. (Steve nearly got an open-handed smack because I think I saw a tear forming in his eye…) There was a strong vinegar acidic burn as well, and not in a good way. I tried the spicy Asian and honey BBQ flavors as well. They were much better. The atmosphere was exactly what you’d expect from a dine-in homogenized, generic, franchised \ chain establishment. Service left something to be desired as well. I doubt I’d go back to the dine-in restaurant, but I’d probably be okay with a delivery order of any flavor other than hot. They missed the mark in my humble opinion on the standard hot wing flavor, but did well in the artisan flavors. Coming in at about six bucks for ten wings, the value is hard to beat. For the technically savvy chicken wing lover, you can even order online. On the upside, I learned two new terms at lunch; the iron cross and the log cabin. Since this is a wing review I’ll leave those for you to Google on your own. (As the person who introduced these new phrases to the table, I recommend NOT googling them, especially prior to lunchtime.)”
-Steve

Overall, I’d pretty much agree with everyone: The waitress would have been better off had she not come in to work that day. The “special” flavors were halfway decent. The price was a good deal. The Buffalo Burnin’ Hot made my tounge feel like I had just licked a Solar Flare (with less flavor). The wings were medium-to-small sized, but had enough meat on them to satisfy. See, then I coulda said “that’s what she said” here. It fits so much better. That’s what she said. Crap. Thanks, Travis. See ya’ll next week!