Wingfest 2011

It was quite a celebration of culinary expertise yesterday afternoon in Edgartown. There was talk of lemon zest and mangos; smoked chipotle peppers, a touch of ginger and soy. But this wasn’t a meeting of local chefs; it was a meeting of fire fighters, police officers, teachers and others who threw their hats into the contest for the best wing sauce on Martha’s Vineyard.

celebrated its third year as the ultimate test of knock-your-socks-off wing sauce. All proceeds of the event, which was sponsored by Coors Light, radio station WMVY 92.7-FM, and , go directly to the Boys & Girls Club of Martha’s Vineyard.

Executive Director Pete Lambos was thrilled to be a part of the event once again. “About three years ago JB (Blau, owner of Sharky’s) called me and asked if I’d be interested in doing a Wingfest fundraiser for Boys & Girls and I said, ‘sure.’ Twenty minutes later I got another phone call to schedule a meeting and it just took off from there.”

According to Lambos, children attend the Boys & Girls Club for a membership fee of $20 a year, “but it costs about $1500 a year per kid,” said Lambos. “The club has about 350-400 members a year and we see about 100 kids every day in our after school program.” Last year, Wingfest raised close to $7500, which goes to help support all of the programs at the Boys & Girls Club.

“We also really try to raise awareness about other organizations at Wingfest,” said Lambos. “The police and fire departments are here and this year the are here, which is great because there’s a long waiting list for Bigs on the Island and hopefully they’ll be able to get the word out to some people today. So this is not just for us, it’s for all the other organizations as well.”

We weren’t able to get to every single booth, but we started with the . According to Sgt. Jonathan Searle, the department all worked together to come up with this year’s sauce. Sgt. Searle wouldn’t give out the secret to their sauce, but did tell us that the ingredients include, “a lot of garlic, onion, ginger, some mango, chipotle peppers and a little soy.” These wings were a great combination of tang, sweet and a good amount of heat too.

Over at the Martha’s Vineyard Rod & Gun Club’s booth, Steve Jordan and Donald O’Shaughnessy were betting on the Liberian Bush spice brought to them by Dr. Helene Schaeffer straight from Liberia. “I also smoked all of the peppers before putting them in the sauce,” said Jordan. These were some of the hottest wings the event had to offer and they were worth every mouth-burning moment.

Over at the booth, it was “Tiger Time,” complete with mascots, games, theme songs and some super sweet wings. According to Tisbury School 4^th grade teacher Veronika Buckley, the secret to their wing sauce was, “all in the spirit of the tiger.”

Sean Slavin of the cooked up a finger-licking peach whiskey sauce – perfect for the dry towns of Up-Island. “Normal buffalo sauce is pretty easy to make,” said Slavin. “We have lunch together every Friday and someone said something about a peach-whiskey sauce and I just went from there,” he said. “I found a really basic recipe on line and just kept adding to it. By the end, it was a completely different sauce.”

Last, but most definitely not least, was the . Winners of the last two years, Matt Millman who was the creative force behind this year’s sauce felt confident that his mixture of fresh lime, lemon and orange juice was going to take the department to the top for the third year in a row.

At the end of the day, when everyone was stuffed full of wings, the votes were tallied. Turned out that Mr. Millman was right to confident in his sauce. The Edgartown Fire Department came through as winners for the third year in a row. Meaning that they remain the champs, and that their wing sauce will be featured on the Sharky’s menu for another year.

Other prizes went to the Oak Bluffs EMS for Best Booth and Big Brothers Big Sisters of won the Committee Choice Award.