You want to love a place like Frankie's. A craft beer in hand, a plate of wings piled high--it's…read morethe universal language of late nights and bad decisions. Walking in on a Saturday night, I half-expected that familiar college-town hum--a low murmur of conversation, sticky tables, and the faint smell of fried dreams. Instead, the place was eerily quiet, like the party wrapped up long before I got the memo.
I went for the classics--half a dozen of their Signature Buffalo Spicy and half a dozen Salted Egg Bone-In Wings, with blue cheese sauce riding shotgun. A side of rice (because it's Manila--of course there's rice) and mashed potatoes that... well, we'll get to those in a second. The beer--a cold Honey Ale from a local craft brewer--was the unsung hero of the night. Finally, someone in Manila brewing something that didn't taste like regret and melted ice.
The wings? Definitely not bad. Crispy, juicy--like they actually respected the bird. But if you're going to throw your name in the ring for best wings in town, you need to bring more than just competence. The Salted Egg seasoning--Southeast Asia's current golden child--was a heavy, clumsy affair. It coated every inch of the wing like a thick winter jacket. No chili kick, no garlic bite--just a flat, salty blanket that had me checking my pulse halfway through. The Buffalo sauce, their so-called signature, leaned way too sweet--more candied ketchup than the tangy, spicy, vinegary slap you want from proper Buffalo wings.
And then there was the blue cheese sauce--if you could even call it that. The kind of stuff that comes squeezed out of a sad little plastic packet, shelf-stable for the next nuclear winter. You know the one--overly loose, weirdly tangy, with about as much real blue cheese as a 7-Eleven hot dog. A sauce like that isn't just disappointing--it's disrespectful.
The mashed potatoes were some kind of crime against carbs. Lumpy, under-seasoned, with a pale, plasticky cheese blanket on top that made me wonder what the poor spuds did to deserve this fate. The rice, surprisingly, became the unsung palate cleanser--cutting through the heaviness and giving the meal at least some rhythm.
Service was the kind that leaves you alone--sometimes a little too alone. You had to flag someone down like you were hailing a cab in the rain.
Look--Frankie's isn't a bad joint. If you're already three beers deep and need something fried to keep you vertical, they'll do the job. But for an avid wing eater--someone who's chased those little fried miracles across NYC--this was just another forgettable night. And when it comes to wings, forgettable is the worst sin of all.