by Michael P. Coleman
I still remember spending summers in Vossburg, Mississippi with my grandparents, My grandmother would wring the necks of a few chickens every Sunday after church, and fry some of the best yard bird known to humankind.
Except for the lack of chicken feathers flying around the yard out front, everything else about Water’z Wing/z in Sacramento reminds me of my Grandma’s kitchen.
Let’s start with those glorious chicken wings. Crispy, hot, perfectly seasoned, and just out of the grease when they’re delivered to your table. They smelled so scrumptious that I literally burned the roof of my mouth on the first bite because I couldn’t wait for them to cool. Ditto with the incredible fried catfish. And the chicken strips. And the fries. And the onion rings — and I typically don’t even LIKE onion rings!
Lest you think everything at Water’z Wing’z is deep fried —and a part of me thinks it SHOULD be —let me say that the macaroni and cheese rivals my mom’s (don’t tell her!), the greens are crazy good, the potato salad was near perfect (and I’m very picky about my potato salad), and the heavenly cake was very aptly named. And I’m not the only one to think so: regular customers drive from as far away as Antioch and Stockton for a meal.
All of this from a restaurant that started almost twenty years ago in a garage.
Water’z Wing’z owners Yvonne Bryant and Steven Wynne have been at it since 1997, and they just celebrated two years at their current location. The menu’s expanded quite a bit over the years, and now includes rib tips, red hots, several other varieties of fish, peach cobbler, banana pudding…you name it. They offer a rotating Weekend Hook Up that often goes FAR beyond their regular menu. And they have plans to expand even further.
“We’d like to open up the other side of the building as a ‘grown folks club”by this fall,” Bryant told me as I wrapped up a recent lunch. “You know, a place where people can come and eat and relax. We want every piece of society to feel comfortable here —that’s what we’re trying to build.”
I asked her what the most fulfilling part of running the restaurant was.
“The best part of it is seeing the satisfaction on the faces of the customers,”she shared, “and seeing them enjoying their meal. We want ‘Water’z Wing’z to be an extension of our customer’s homes.”
Wynne, for whom the restaurant is named (his nickname is “Sweetwater”) shared one of the secrets to the restaurant’s success.
“I decided to keep the menu simple, and develop foods that had that perfect taste,”he said. “I want to offer dishes that have that first smack, that first taste that makes you want to come back.”
Water’z Wing’z is at 7121 Governors Circle in Sacramento (right off of I-99 and Florin Road). They are open Wednesdays-Sundays. More information is available at www.waterzwingz.com.
Michael P. Coleman is a Sacramento-based freelance writer who drives directly from Water’z Wingz to Planet Fitness. You can catch him at michaelpcoleman.com, via email at mikelsmindseye@me.com, or on Twitter: @ColemanMichaelP
