by Bottom Line: The Boneless Bar Pizza from BWW is rather messy and not too hot (unless you amp up the sauce level), but it is a decent nosh that should go down well with a beer.
Buffalo Wilds Wings really wants you to pay them a visit. They have their regular wings–which are some of the best among the chains–and all sorts of Happy Hour specials to entice you. They are putting their chicken on hot dog buns and calling them Bird Dawgs (and they are not bad). And now they have a pizza topped with wings. Interested yet?
Well, you don’t have to do much to convince me to go to BWW as I can generally find plenty of interest on their menu (and they have some good craft beers on tap). But when they came out with their Bar Pizzas, I figured I had to give those a try. They have two types available:
Buffalo Boneless Bar Pizza: boneless wings, ranch sauce, medium buffalo sauce, mozzarella cheese, bleu cheese crumbles, pickled hot peppers, green onions on a thin crust.
Honey BBQ Bar Pizza: boneless wings, honey BBQ sauce, mozzarella cheese, cheddar-jack cheese, medium buffalo sauce, bacon, pickled hot peppers, green onions on a thin crust.
I went with the first of the two.
After taking my first bite, I was met with a strong tang from the Buffalo sauce and ranch sauce right off, and that would stick with the pizza throughout. The wings are chopped up and quite plentiful. The crust is crispy on the edges with a cracker-like consistency but gets softer on the inside because of all the toppings. The blue cheese crumbles (which are cooked in with the mozzarella) give a nice sharpness, though I would have liked to have had more of those. The pickled chilis have a nice pop and I would have liked to have had more of those as well. My pizza had no green onions that I could see, but that was not a big loss.
There is a lot going on with this pizza and it is rather messy. The chicken pieces were clustered to the center and required rearranging. In fact, it appears that most of the toppings are placed on after the cooking of the flatbread base. The Ranch may have been overkill with the pizza having maybe a bit too much tang, and it was definitely high on the salty side. Some pizza sauce with a bit a sweetness might have been nice to add as a counterbalance, but maybe that is where the Honey BBQ version would work better. I ordered mine to go, and I’ll bet if I was sitting at the bar eating this with a beer, that would have been the perfect pairing. (Thus the name “Bar Pizza”).
Heat-wise, this came in at the Medium level, as you would expect from something sporting their regular wing sauce. And I will have to admit that the burn lingered for a while. I ordered this as shown on the menu, but next time I will ask for the Wild sauce and/or Blazin’ sauce on the side for dipping. That is the nice thing: you can alter the heat level to your taste. I will also tell them to hold the Ranch because that did not seem to bring much to the table (and I am not a huge fan of that particular sauce anyway) and add more of those pickled peppers.
As for the calories, this pizza really packs them in. The whole thing totals up to 1,370 cals, and no matter how much you tell yourself you are only going to eat only half, you will end up finishing the pie if you order it as your entrée. It doesn’t look like it should have that many calories (it’s thin-crust, isn’t that low-cal?) but the tale of the tape says differently. If you get this and a beer, you better skip the appetizer and plan some extra time on the treadmill the next few days. And if you need to keep down your salt intake, look elsewhere because this one tops out at 4110mg!
This is yet another limited-time-only selection from BWW, so if you want to give it a try, head to your nearest location before it disappears from the menu. That chain is definitely trying to get more people coming through the doors (for dine-in and carry-out) as competition among casual dining establishments gets stiff in the current inflation environment. And you can eat at BWW pretty economically compared to some other casual restaurants, especially if you hit Happy Hour. The Bar Pizza is ten bucks (no Happy Hour discount) and you can pair it with a brew for two to four bucks between 3 PM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Sure seems like a good way to wrap up your work day. Just make adjustments accordingly to your pizza toppings for the heat level desired (and leave off the Ranch).
Tale of the Tape:
Calories: 1370
Fat: 91g (25g Sat/25g Trans)
Protein: 56g
Carbs: 80g
Sodium: 4110mg
