Last Sunday was the Second Annual Peoria Wingfest and I went and you can see the post from that by clicking right here. Last night I was going to meet my friends, Amber and Joe at The Last Hurrah bar and I decided to keep the wing thing going by getting some different styles of wings at Firehouse Pizza, which is located in the same shopping plaza. Then Amber told me that Rumberger’s Wings new location was right next door to The Last Hurrah and we decided to have...(drumroll please and thank you, Ringo!): Our Own Personal First Annual Post Peoria Wingfest at the Last Hurrah! Is this the start of a new tradition here at MBIP? Fuck if I know, I just want to go get some more chicken wings, so it’s off to the MBIP Moblie we go!
We’re traveling up Knoxville Avenue to the Northpoint Shopping Center, the home of all of our activity for this Thursday evening. And yeah, it’s evening even though it looks like the afternoon. That’s the one thing I hate about this time of year, it’s light way too fucking late, but once again, what are you going to do? Okay here we are and the first stop is...
Firehouse Pizza. I’ve never been to this place and it’s nice inside with lots of booth seating available. Two women greeted me at the counter and even though they were very pretty, they declined to have their picture taken, so they forced these two fellows to post for the MBIP Camera! That’s Trevor and Elijah and they’re the one’s who made our wings here, thanks guys, now on to stop number two...
Which is located on the other side of this shopping center. It’s the newest location of Rumberger’s Wings. I’ve been to the one on Prospect many times, but I’ve never been inside of this location. Unfortunately, I had even worse luck with pictures in here, the woman behind the counter said I couldn’t take any pictures without permission from the manager who wasn’t there. Well, that’s no big deal, she was extremely nice and had no idea what I was doing, so I ordered my chicken wings and then it was on to the final stop for the evening, a bar appropriately named...
The Last Hurrah! It’s almost been four years to this date since I’ve been in here! I did a post back then and you can look at that right here. As I walked in I saw a familiar face behind the bar and it’s Marie who was tending bar back when I did the first post in here! She’s looking better than ever and it was fun to see her and catch up on things! And it was also nice to see there’s still bowls of free snacks at the bar! There’s only one thing better than free snacks and that’s...
Free Happy Hour food! Check out this lit-up spread of food! Very impressive! Maria said this doesn’t happen all the time, but you never know. It really looks good and I’d dig in, but it’s time for...
Our Own Personal First Annual Post Peoria Wingfest!
Here’s the special guests for the evening for this somewhat impromptu wingy festival: Joe and Amber! They’re both looking great and it’s always wonderful to see them! Now let’s start the other Peoria Wingfest!
We’ll start out by looking at the outside packaging for the chicken wings. The top is Firehouse Pizza and they’ve packed their wings neatly into a pizza box! Rumberger’s are below in a styrofoam container and it’s just a little sloppy. That makes me think of Poppie (fast forward to the 6:46 mark at the end.) Oh and pay no attention to the smaller styrofoam container, those aren’t wings, we’ll get to that later.
We opened up the Firehouse Pizza Box and got a really nice surprise, they labeled all the different wings on the inside of the box and then separated all the wings into little compartments according to their flavor! We all loved this so much! The hand-printed sign is so cool and I love how the wings each have their own little space in the foil! It’s like a dormitory of chicken wings!
Rumberger’s presentation isn’t as impressive, but it is nice that they’ve separated the wings by flavor and they’ve added celery. Does anyone ever eat the celery that comes with chicken wings? I know Chad Wallace doesn't!
Here’s our table, time to dig in and try out the wings!
These are the three plates that we started out with, all of the wings look top-notch!
While I was ordering at Rumberger’s I got an order of the Rum Buns which are little pillows of fried dough that are drizzled with a honey and butter sauce and they are so delicious! A sweet way to end a savory meal of chicken wings! Okay now we’re going to let the wings and sweet buns digest while we decide on the awards for this first MBIP Post Wingfest! And so while that happens, here’s some obligatory photos of The Last Hurrah!
Obligatory Photos of The Last Hurrah
As you can see, that rotten sun has finally set here on The Last Hurrah! Marie told me this place has been in business over twenty years and it’s a nice little hidden gem you should definitely check out! There’s a Family Guy pinball machine up front and as you can see they have dueling taps at the bar, a pool table in the back and we ran into our friends, Neil and Bo and Julie seated at the end of the bar! I wondered where they went when they weren’t at the Navy-Marine Club! Also at the end of the bar is a Little Nut Hut! One of the few left here in town! One of these weeks I’m going to do a Little Nut Hut bar tour, so stay tuned for that! But now, it’s awards time here on MBIP!
Our Own Personal First Annual Post Peoria Wingfest—The Awards!
• The award for the Best Wings is a tie. Amber said that she liked the wings from Rumberger’s and the sauces from Firehouse Pizza. Joe and I were too busy eating and licking sauce from our fingers to really voice an opinion, so we’ll call it a tie. They both served up fantastic chicken wings and you should try both of them out!
• The award for Best Presentation goes to Firehouse Pizza for their spectacular and inventive chicken wing dormitory box. I love that thing and it was definitely a highlight of the evening and a fun surprise when we opened it!
• The award for Best Dessert goes to Rumberger’s for their Rum Buns, but to be fair to Firehouse Pizza, we didn’t order dessert from there, so we’ll have to next year.
And speaking of next year, maybe we’ll have some sort of actual awards for this thing. We would’ve this year, but we kind of made the whole thing up as we went along! Thanks to Marie for being a great hostess and to Amber and Joe for hanging out and being part of this new festive yearly tradition at MBIP! We’ll see you all tomorrow!
Related Posts: Thursday Night @ The Chef and The Baker, Steve and Kathy’s House, Chai’s Cuisine and The Navy-Marine Club and Hangovers.