The Yankee Tavern is located in Eagan, MN. For those who live in MN - its located right off highway 13 and Yankee Doodle Rd. One of Eagan's oldest restaurants, its definitely one of the more famous places to eat in the city.
From a menu standpoint, they offer a lot of classic American cuisines from different types of burgers and sandwiches. That said, they are very well known for their Southern comfort fried chicken and fish fry's.
Alright, all that is great - now lets talk WINGS
Style of Wings Available:
The Yankee Tavern is an old school establishment and they only offer Traditional style wings (in my opinion the only true way to eat Wings).
They do offer "Chicken Strips" as an option - but unless labeled "traditional" or "boneless" - its no wing.
On the menu, they labeled their wings as "Jumbo". In reality - the menu was a bit misleading. Though they weren't small, they were average in size.
The Sauce:
For a place where wings aren't their main staple, I was excited to see they offer 10 different sauce options.
If you look at the picture below you can see the different sauces they offer. I ended up going with the Eagle Style Buffalo Sauce.
They lathered these wings with a TON of sauce. Now this can be a good thing or a really bad thing. In my personal opinion, I'm not usually the biggest fan of overdoing the amount of sauce when served as a final product, but in this case wasn't bad.
Taste:
First off - the flavor profile was very good. The buffalo sauce is definitely a classic sauce and easily the most widely used sauce by restaurants. That said, every establishment try's to add their own spin to it and some can really miss.
The meat itself was perfectly temped and the chicken was great.
The one thing I was a bit let down by was the lack of crispiness. Though it wasn't to the point where I didn't enjoy the wings, they definitely could improve the crispy exterior.
Lastly, the spice level. If you're and avid lover of the spicier things in life, the buffalo sauce here is not the option you want to take. On my score card I gave it a "Not Spicy at all".
Price:
In the picture above it shows the price of the wings. $11.99 for 8 wings.
The hard part here is they label the wings as Jumbo and they are most certainly not jumbo.
Again, being in the Twin Cities, I would say the price was on par with the rest of the restaurants around. I would say probably slightly over priced for what you get.
Overall Rating:
I actually gave this a 8.3
What really helped these wings was the flavor profile, really propping up the score here.
The wings were definitely not Jumbo, lacked in crispiness, and were not very spicy. Again, that's how impressed I was with the overall flavor profile.
Probably no the first spot I would suggest going to but I would recommend this place to others to try. Good spot for a Happy Hour with friends/co-workers, especially if the plan is to share appetizers.
