Because it's a chain restaurant, that I would ever even get near one was definitely not a forgone conclusion, but because they specialize in my just about my favorite meat in the world, chicken wings, it was inevitable that if one opened in my town, I'd have to try it out.
It did, and I did. Here's what I found:
Pretty much what you'd expect for a publicly-traded chain restaurant highly visible from Wall Street. Which means: everything on the menu is mainstreamed for mass appeal and ease of preparation in an assembly-line kitchen manned by non-chefs. Pretty sure no one there would ever have been or ever needed to go to culinary school. At peak hours, what would be needed back there is a drill sargeant, not a master chef. With all that comes a certain built-in mediocrity but also, on the plus side, a rah-rah friendliness on the part of well-trained staff who double-team you with wholesomeness and service.
Obviously, the cornerstone of the menu is deep-fried food augmented by a number of other main course things like burgers (in which a layer can be boneless 'wings' over the meat patty), hot dogs, sides like mac n' cheese and fried dill pickles. You could also call this "Food That Fat Guys Like With Beer". The principal shtick is the large variety of both wet sauces and what they call dry rubs, which technically aren't dry rubs at all, just flavored salts applied after cooking.
Depending on the size of your order, for every five wings you choose you can order a different sauce or dry rub. So, after our 'Team Captain' ran us through a sample tasting, we ended up going two wet and two dry. We especially liked the Thai Curry wet and especially disliked the Lemon Pepper dry which, especially after a mouthful of Buffalo sauce, tasted like nothing more than plain salt. There was certainly no detectable lemon or black pepper flavor. We also found the sauces on the wings too thick. In fact we liked the Buffalo dry best of all, as the wings stayed crisp from the fryer. The skin on the wet wings was immediately flaccid.
The beer list is good, as you'd expect, and the bowling alley sized restaurant has to be the largest room in Bellingham, and it's decked out in dozens, and I do not exaggerate, of giant TV screens. There's one about every eight feet, and each is (or can be, on request) set to a different sporting event. From my seat in a booth near the front of the restaurant and facing the entry, I could see 13 screens without turning my head. There must have been another 75 behind me. Sensory overload.
But the chain's a huge success because of that, so don't mind me--I'm not their target customer. Interesting to see, but we won't go back.