On Fire at Wing Dome!

It’s no secret that BowlingJoe is an aficionado of all things spicy. With that in mind, BowlingWidow and I paid a visit to a food joint that has been on what might be called my bucket list for a couple of years now. The place is called Wing Dome (I imagine the name was inspired by the Kingdome before it was blown to smithereens) and there are a few of them distributed around the Puget Sound. Unfortunately none particularly near casa de BowlingJoe.

So after our Pilates session on Saturday morning we trekked to North Seattle in an effort to assess just how hot their wing sauce really is. The different sauces heat “alarm” scale runs from one to seven. Seven-alarm sauce is reserved for those crazies who want a truly painful challenge. Seven minutes to eat seven wings with nothing to wash them down with or otherwise provide relief. I’ve seen the Wing Dome contestants’ pain up close on a Food Network TV show and opted not to give that a try. At least not now.

The Original Wing Dome in North Seattle

One-alarm is dubbed “mild and flavorful” while the six-alarm sauce has the tagline “I can’t feel my face”. That was the one for me. We ordered beers which, in retrospect, may not have been the brightest move since all it really does is move the heat around the tongue, not cooling things down a bit as a glass of milk might.

The wings arrived with plenty of six-alarm sauce coating them. The first three wings gave me little or no problem. As someone who puts Tabasco sauce on everything from nachos to macaroni and cheese I was thinking that this would be easy. But as I found out, the presence of habanero peppers in this dangerous stew had quite a cumulative heat effect on my veteran taste buds. By the time I got to the fifth of the six wings that were on my plate I was starting to sweat noticeably. Clearly the final wing would require concentration and focus if I wanted to hit the finish line without realizing a “reversal of fortune”.

Looks Like Another Victim of the Seven-Alarm Challenge to Me

Was I successful? Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle? Indeed I was. BowlingWidow even thought that I could have passed the seven-alarm challenge and earned a place on the Wing Dome Wall of Flame. I’ll have to think about that one, though. Perhaps I’ll buy one of those wings next time. If the flame is too hot, I’m only out $1.99. But if not, the challenge of conquering some of the hottest peppers know to man might just be added to that bucket list.