Chicken Bonz

Trafton B.

December 5, 2009 - 6:15 PM

On my to do list is to compile a "Best Spots in Eugene" restaurant guide for you all, and I apologize for not having that ready quite yet, but I can at least give you a preview today. Let me give you a play-by-play on my dinner, which my stomach is still angry with me about. My roommates and our friends just got back from a celebratory guy night out at one of our favorite local establishments. Chicken Bonz in Springfield, Home of the All You Can Eat Wings.

If you're thinking that this is just a manly, ego-driven excuse to see who can stuff their face with more chicken wings, well, you pretty much have us pegged. We've invited our girl friends to come with us, but for some reason or another they've never accepted our offer. It might be due to the fact that we all come home and can't do anything other lie down on the couch, moan and take turns sprinting to the bathroom. But I won't go into further details about that.

Let's get back to the good part. The first round, you get a basket of ten wings (or should I say bonz) with your choice of any of their amazing sauces - spicy barbeque, garlic parmesan, lemon pepper, teriyaki, honey barbeque, mild, hot, and damn hot just to name a few. My favorite is sweet chili garlic, personally. Then, every round after you get five more wings with a new sauce.

The smaller wing total in the later rounds has always been an interesting facet of the Chicken Bonz experiences. It's smart because it slows down the customers' pace of consumption, which I can only imagine saves everyone from a great deal of waste. But also, you can see a noticeable difference in the quality of food as time goes on. First round, the wings are cooked in the sauces and the presentation is about as stunning as an all you can eat diner should have. Second round, just plain chicken wings drenched in sauce. Third, fourth and fifth rounds, you might as well have prepared the wings yourself because they are doing their best to get you out before you run them out of business.

We did some rough calculations on exactly how much we ate while utilizing the provided wet naps to their full extent at the end of our feast. Between nine guys, we polished off somewhere between 150 and 200 wings. You can do the math for how many chickens that equals out to, but I prefer to think about how many chicken farmers we kept in business. I threw in the towel after soldiering through the fourth round (25 wings total), but I still only tied for 3rd place overall.

Is it worth it? Well, $11.95 (plus the cost of a bottle of Tums afterwards) for endless supplies of chicken wings and not having to eat for the next week. Yeah, I'd say it's worth it.