When in Memphis, Don’t Miss the Whole Honey Gold Chicken Wings
Published January 15th, 2025
Photography by Jennifer Bain
When I heard that Memphis has twice as many chicken wing establishments as barbecue joints (200ish to 100ish), plus a signature wing flavour called honey gold, I knew just where to go for lunch.
The downtown branch of Central BBQ, in the shadow of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, serves the usual barbecue suspects (ribs, brisket and pulled pork) but has quite the reputation for its whole smoked wings.
Did I want three for nine bucks or six for $18? Given the exchange rate, I picked three.
Did I want “wet, dry, naked, jerked, sweet heat or honey gold?” Obviously I wanted to try a flavour that was birthed in Memphis.
After ordering three honey gold wings at the counter, I took my plastic number 75 to the back room to wait at a table in front of musical artist Lamar Sorrento’s Mississippi Blues Map and Long distance information … give me Memphis Tennessee murals.
One of the murals reminded me that “the blues had a baby and they named it Rock and Roll.” Twenty legends like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and B.B. King watched over the room from that same mural. I trust they dug hearing the restaurant play songs like “Choosey Lover” by the Isley Brothers and “Sweet Wanomi” by Bill Withers.
When my food was delivered on a wax paper-lined tray, saucy wings mingled with baby carrots on one side while a Hawaiian roll and small container of blue cheese dip stayed dry on the other side. Luckily I had an entire roll of paper towels to myself and nobody to see the mess I made.
I’m a honey garlic wing fan from way back and so instantly fell for honey gold, which the woman who took my order described as reminiscent of “Carolina barbecue sauce and McDonald’s mustard sauce but sweeter.” Beyond the intriguing sweet-tangy layers, I loved the smoky succulence of the chicken itself.
Here’s a strange thing, though. Nobody seems to know the honey gold origin story.
I Googled and learned only that a local chain called Crumpy’s Hot Wings saw the flavour take off in the early 2000s. I Ubered 20 minutes from the Peabody Memphis (the “South’s Grand Hotel” and home to the daily “duck march”) to a popular no-frills joint called Ching’s Hot Wings that offers not just honey gold options but honey hot and honey extra hot.
No two honey golds are alike and most recipes are kept secret.
Central BBQ, established in 2002, has six locations in Tennessee. General manager Michael “Dutch” Edwards told me that its multi-step process for wings sets it apart from competitors.
Whole wings are marinated for 24 hours in a hot sauce blend, smoked over hickory for three-and-a-half hours and cooled. Next they’re deep-fried in vegetable oil to order, “for 60 seconds, no more, just to get a good crisp on them.” Finally, they’re served naked or tossed with dry seasonings or a wet sauce.
Honey gold, Edwards says, “is a sweet sauce, no heat at all, a little bit tangy.” It’s actually the only sauce they don’t make themselves. Instead they use Cattlemen’s Carolina Tangy Gold barbecue sauce, a slightly smoky concoction with mustard, apple cider vinegar and cayenne.
I’m not sure yet how I feel about eating sauce-drenched carrots or tearing into whole wings that include the drumettes, wingettes (aka flats, my favourite piece) and wing tips. In Canada, that work is done for us and we usually get a mix of drumettes and flats (what Memphians call “party wings”) and never see the gnarly tips.
It’s been a minute since I honeymooned in Memphis and ate my first made-to-order, hand-battered, southern spicy fried chicken (not to be confused with Nashville hot chicken) at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken.
This scrappy city of 650,000 welcomes more than 11 million visitors a year. It’s best known for Beale Street and a historic music scene that draws people to Sun Studio (the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll), the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and of course Graceland, the mansion where Elvis Presley once lived. (Elvis would have turned 90 the week of my January visit.)
Memphis is also home to Tennessee's largest African-American population and the National Civil Rights Museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 during a maintenance workers’ strike.
I toured that sobering museum right after Central BBQ — it’s steps away — and before collecting wing recommendations from random strangers for next time.
A good day to visit Memphis this year would be Apr. 26 for the World Championship Hot Wing Contest & Festival. Half of my short stay was scuttled by a rare blizzard that shut down the city, so I didn’t try nearly as many wings as planned.
The only other spot I can vouch for is Good Fortune Co., a scratch-made noodle and dumpling shop in the South Main Arts District. Its vaguely Asian GFC Wings are coated in a Sichuan honey butter sauce, are sprinkled with sesame seeds and green onions, and come neatly cut into flats and drumettes.
They’re delicious, but nibbling politely on them is nothing like diving face first into gloriously messy whole wings. Next time I’m at Central BBQ, I’ll do what Edwards does and even gnaw on the wing tips because “when something’s good, you want to get every piece of meat and every bite out of it.”
Jennifer Bain
After a career at daily newspapers, Jennifer began travelling the world in search of quirk in 2018. She goes wherever the story is, but has a soft spot for Canada and has been to all 10 provinces and all three territories. Jennifer has won multiple awards and written two cookbooks and three travel books. She lives in Toronto but has a vacation house on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, which some cheekily say is one of the four corners of the supposedly flat earth.