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Chef Philip Foss Deletes His Buffalo Chicken

Philip Foss's buffalo wing with Corona and lime foam.
081020fossbuffalo.JPG
We had starred a particular entry on the blog of Philip Foss, exec chef at Lockwood — it was a quick photo/caption entry, entitled "Buffalo Wing, Corona with Lime Foam," because it reminded us of the iconic buffalo wing dish at graham elliot.

Interestingly, when we clicked over to Chef Foss's blog this morning to investigate the similarities in more detail, the post was gone! (Also: The call came from inside the house!) We're always curious about post-retraction, and here the coincidence struck us as, well, a bit too coincidental — Chef Foss's blog has been getting a lot of attention lately: it held a presumably low-radar position when we broke the story of its very existence in September, but when Hungry Mag called Foss out on his critique-the-critic bit on TOC's Heather Shouse, folks started taking notice of his little corner of cyberspace. And in the wake of ravioligate 2008, Foss might not want to attract more of Mike Nagrant's ire with yet another copycat dish.

Bowles's version: Budweiser foam and celeriac slaw.
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In Foss's defense, the flavor set of a buffalo wing (buffalo sauce, blue cheese, celery, beer) isn't exactly palate-shattering in its uniqueness, and it's plausible that he and graham elliot chef Graham Elliot Bowles came up with their platings entirely independent of one another (in fact, that seems to be the case with most great ideas). But while Foss's version is different (instead of Budweister foam, it's a little shot glass of Corona), Bowles' rendition has earned him so much attention (both at his current resto and at his previous gig at Avenues) that we think it's safe to say that, at least in Chicago, an haute-deconstructed buffalo wing is strictly Bowlesian territory.

Still, we've speculated before on an item on Bowles's menu — the "deconstructed snickers" — that was unnervingly reminiscent of one of Thomas Keller's famous recipes. So perhaps all's fair in love and kitchens. But nota bene to Phil Foss: You can delete a blog post, but an RSS feed is forever.

Chef Philip Foss [Official Site]
Lockwood [MenuPages]
Lockwood [Official Site]
graham elliot [MenuPages]
graham elliot [Official Site]

Filed Under: Dish Focus,
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5 Comments - Add yours

  • the problem with this whole "copycat" idea is when you really cook you start to realize that a lot of the same ideas you have are either ones that someone has already done or ideas that someone will do and get press in the future, for instance i did a cornbread pudding with a dessert a long ass time ago, then i revisited the dish at a dinner and put up a pic of cornbread ice cream with bacon and i also did a dish of cornbread pudding with pork belly and got the copy cat crap. when i had never once scoured the net nor been exposed to it before. i am sure a million people have done it but i had no clue, and with phillip foss' blog he did his own spin on what they serve in bars and so did graham elliot. so basically you could say that every bar from the us are the true inventors and us cooks are all copycats (even if we may not be exposed to an idea) how many chefs interpret things differently yet in the same way. think about how many different ways you have seen coffee and doughnuts now. yeah its kellers, but is it really? did the term coffee and doughnuts not exist before him and how american is a a buffalo wing with a beer? or coffee and doughnuts? snickers which i have seen and actually done a play off of not trying to copy keller, i ate snickers growing up to and love them. so its hard to throw around the copy cat term i think when most of us have grown up with the same stuff, its american, its like going to sweden and seeing the 2 million different ways you can eat dill and fish together or swedish meatballs with lingonberry. yet when i was there i had it a ton of different ways from lower end to high end.

    By craig thornton on 02/22/2009 at 1:43 PM

  • I apologize for any confusion here... The reason I removed the post is because I wasn't happy with the photo. I don't recall exactly, but I'm 95% sure it came down during the same session I put it up. Also, if you scroll down the page (near the bottom), there is a much better photo of what we are serving as an appetizer (this is from one of my first posts in September). In regards to copycatting, I can assure you this is something I avoid at all costs. I don't deny - and actually even advocate using my colleagues for inspiration (as one of the reasons for creating my blog was so others could use it as a resource). But also note that when I do find inspiration from another chef, as it in the case of the video for the posting 'Autumn Aromas', I give the credit where it is due. Buffalo wings were something I'd wanted to do more than a year before I came to Chicago and first prepared at a private party. I'm sure there are plenty of Chefs all over doing interpretations of this. Also, I will gratefully add that having dined for the first time at Graham Elliot's last week, at the least there are plenty of contrasts between our preparations.

    By phillip foss on 10/21/2008 at 11:05 PM

  • The deconstructed chicken wings are still on Foss's blog, just a bit down in the list. I don't think they were ever taken of.

    By Jens Muenchenbach on 10/21/2008 at 10:27 PM

  • Perennial and Bristol also have deconstructed chicken wings....that and sweetbreads are the new pork belly.

    By Mike Nagrant on 10/20/2008 at 11:47 PM

  • Perennial and Bristol also have deconstructed chicken wings....that and sweetbreads are the new pork belly.

    By Mike Nagrant on 10/20/2008 at 11:47 PM

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