Buffalo Wild Wings might be the king of wings, but students at SDSU like a variety of wing options, from going downtown for some fresh-made wings to wings made right at home.

For a majority of students, a lot of elements go into consideration before they choose where to go for wings.

Cost and quality is a key factor in wing choices. Buffalo Wild Wings offers various specials such as Traditional Tuesdays and Boneless Thursdays which are very popular because wings are discounted on the designated days.

Evan Minnaert, a senior speech communication major, takes advantage of the specials. His favorite day to go is in the middle of the week.

“I like to go on Wednesdays because it’s endless wing night and I can have a lot of different flavors,” Minnaert said.

Quality of the wings is an important part of choosing what wings restaurants and hangouts students go to as well.  

Lindsey Styltie, Kristin Egenes and Emily Bakke, all health education majors, do not go to Buffalo Wild Wings too often because they’d rather hit downtown locations such as Cubby’s Sports Bar and Grill and especially O’Hare’s Bar.

The group enjoys going to O’hare’s for Wing Wednesdays, but also because of the high quality the bar puts out.

 “I think they [O’hare’s Bar] have better wings than other places,” Styltie said. “And they come out a lot fresher and they put a lot more sauce on them.”

This group of friends also likes that these places are locally owned and operated, which offers a different atmosphere than other corporate or chain restaurants in town.

Locally owned or not, all of these places have one big things in common, they each have a large variety of wing sauces.

Buffalo Wild Wings has a total of 16 signature sauces and five seasonings, with the occasional new flavor for customers to try. Honey barbeque is one of the most popular items on the menu. Lisa Axtman, a former waitress at her hometown Buffalo Wild Wings and current senior at SDSU, discovered that while the honey barbeque might be the most popular, the hottest sauce, Blazin’, is a lot more common that most people think.

Axtman herself has had the pleasure of trying the Blazin’ flavor, but not by choice.

“While I worked there, I tried a lot of different things,” she said. “One time a coworker set out a tray for us to try but changed the label. We thought we were having a different sauce, but it turned out to be blazin’. I think my tongue was one fire for twenty minutes.”

Cubby’s offers an extensive choice of sauces as well, with a comparable 21 options.

Minnaert’s number one choice for choosing Buffalo Wild Wings is the large collection of sauces they offer. He even has a few bottles he keeps at home to use.

“I look for a wide variety of sauces. I tend to like sauces that have more heat, but heat that does not kill the flavor,” he said.

While Minnaert might be a die-hard fan of Buffalo Wild Wings, there is one place that he always will choose over the chain restaurant. When Minnaert is at home, he and his dad will grill some wings and toss them in their homemade sauce. They don’t have a variety of sauces, as they stick to a plain barbeque sauce and a hot barbeque sauce.

“If I had to choose from Bdubs and homemade wings, I would choose homemade wings,” Minnaert said. “About nine times out of 10, I’d choose the homemade wings.”