These are the best 4 wings in Delaware, according to you. But who will be victorious?

Who has the best wings in Delaware?

As March Madness turns the country into a den of brackets and semi-legal sports betting, we've been pitting bar against tavern, brewery against grill, to find the best wings in all of Delaware.

Since mid-March, we've put this question to the readers of Delaware Online/The News Journal in a multiweek bracketed tournament. Each week, we've received thousands of online votes that have since whittled the field from 32 to 16, and then from 16 to 8, in a single elimination tournament.

In a fit of wild creativity, we've dubbed this contest "Delaware Wing Madness."

Now, competition is down to four fierce and flinty-eyed competitors with birds on the brain. Delaware Wing Madness is almost complete. And in the end, there can be only one wing to rule them all.

The process is simple: For the two remaining matchups, vote for the wing you love or vote against the wing you hate.

Voting on our four finalists begins Monday, April 8, at 7 a.m. It ends Wednesday, April 10, at 9 a.m. The winners will go on to the final face-off to determine the One Wing to rule them all.

Here are the four remaining competitors, in the order they're shown in the brackets.

Click here to jump to the bracket

Wing Matchup One: Kid Shelleen's vs. Anthony's Coal Fired

Kid Shelleen's Charcoal House and Saloon

1801 W. 14th St., Wilmington, 302-658-4600; 1812 Marsh Rd, Brandywine Hundred, 302-308-3560, harryshospitalitygroup.com/kid-shelleens.

In the late '80s, when Xavier Teixido's charcoal-grilled pub Kid Shelleen's first started serving wings, there weren't a whole lot of wings in Delaware — or anywhere else in the country that wasn't Buffalo, New York. (The Buffalo wing, if you didn't know, is named after the city where the food was born, not the tiny-winged animal on the Wild Wings logo.)

But when a Buffalo journalist visited Kid's in 1990 for some saucy drums and flats, he gave the restaurant some tough love: You're doing it wrong, he told them. Teixido, who also owns Harry's Savoy Grill, gamely responded by taking a trip to Buffalo to find out. He spent three days trying every wing spot he could find. He fell in love with Buffalo's most famous food export, especially at a still-popular Irish wing haunt called Cole's that's known for serving jumbo wings.

So they changed the recipe. More than 30 years later, Kid's wings remain distinctive and famous in Delaware: large and tender and impossibly saucy and crispier than a Jimmy Buffett fan who ran out of sunscreen. The wings are lightly dusted with seasoned flour, then fried not once but twice for maximum crackle before being tossed in the house hot sauce or flavors that rotate by the week.

The sauces may change, said Teixido. "But the key is that texture," he said.

Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza and Wings

4805 Limestone Road, Pike Creek, 302-635-7013; and 5611 Concord Pike, Talleyville, 302-477-1488; acfp.com.

When we seeded this contest with 32 Delaware favorites, we didn't favor wing chains like Buffalo Wild Wings or Wing Stop. But we did ask dedicated wing lovers all over Delaware for their favorite wings. And Florida-based Anthony's is a name that rings out in the Wilmington streets.

And so alongside Korea's Bb.q Chicken, the only other out-of-state chain we included in our wing brackets was Anthony's Coal Fired, owned since 2021 by Tampa-based BurgerFi International.

So what gives Anthony's this heady wing rep? In part, they're some of the most distinctive wings around. The wings are not fried: Rather, they're roasted in a coal-fired oven. Staff marinates the wings overnight with olive oil, lemon juice, rosemary, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic, said staff at the Pike Creek location. Then they're roasted to order over literal hot coals. Beyond this, there's the saucing: There's the original, topped with caramelized onions. The Buffalo, the dry rub, and the garlic Romano. And lately, there's a new one: Mike’s Hot Honey. Each wing bowl comes also with house focaccia bread. Families might order 20 wings to a table, staff says, and then fight over the tongs.

Wing Matchup Two: 2 Fat Guys vs Stanley's Tavern

2 Fat Guys American Grill

701 Ace Memorial Drive, Hockessin, 302-235-0333; 2fatguys.net.

"If our wings aren't number one, I'll sell my restaurant," joked Jeff Cook, co-owner of Hockessin favorite 2 Fat Guys. Cook is a man not prone to hiding his feelings, and he believes in his wings. He and partner Tom Craft have been in the restaurant business for decades apiece. And wings and burgers are where they hang their hat.

The 2 Fat Guys menu is known best of all for flavor, and for its wild innovations like a peanut butter and jelly wing that Cook says people aren't sure of until they try it: After they do, he said, they become near-religious converts. "Once they eat it, they eat it again and again," he said.

Each wing is lightly dusted with a 16-seasoning flour and cornstarch mixture for maximum crispiness. It's roasted, then fried to a crackling texture that lets the sauce stick glisteningly to each wing without being over-sauced.

The rest of the story is the chicken itself, says Cook. It's all fresh and local, Perdue or Mountaire. The wings and drums aren't jumbo. They're medium-to-large, for the best ratio of meat to crispy surface area. Then you slather on that hot or mild or trademark Triple Play sauce, and "that's the magic."

Stanley's Tavern

2038 Foulk Road, Brandywine Hundred, 302-475-1887, stanleys-tavern.com.

It's quite possible that no one in Delaware has been serving hot wings as long as Stanley's Tavern.

When we say Stanley's is classic, we mean it. It's MGM movies classic, Buster Keaton classic. "Neighborhood pub since 1935" classic. The pub, born Bill's, became Stanley's when a Stanley bought it in 1947. Then another Bill came along and didn't change the name. And for more than 40 years, Stanley's has been owned and stewarded by Steve Torpey, Torpey said they first started serving wings sometime in the mid-1980s, when wings were still mostly considered a soup part.

"An interesting story: I had a partner come and tell me he was at a college event up north, and he had these chicken wings dipped in hot sauce and butter and they were great," Torpey remembered now. "I laughed at him, and blew it off completely."

Not for long. Years before wings became the most popular and expensive part on a chicken, Stanley's became a hot wing pioneer in Delaware, and they've parlayed that expertise into becoming one of the most famous and beloved names in wing.

Their process is meticulous, and long. Stanley's buy their chicken only fresh and raw, They marinate their wings for two days in their own special mixture that carries a little bit of chili pepper kick, so even the mild-sauced wings carry spice and seasoning down to the bone.

Stanley's slow roasts its wings most of the way, but then chills them back down and drops each batch of wings back in the fryer to order. Double-cooking is a classic short order trick for maximum crispness, of course — and the sauce at Stanley's is equally classic. The mild, medium, hot and "wicked hot" wings hew mostly to the old Buffalo tradition of mixing hot sauce and butter to varying degrees.

Stanley's also offers garlic parmesan, various other butter sauces, and a "Memphis dry rub" that follows the same seasoning as the tavern's well-known ribs. Can't decide? Get a dry rub or garlic parmesan, and ask for a second sauce on the side. Stanley's also adheres to classic hospitality, and the classic notion that more is sometimes more.

Who will be Delaware Wing Champion?

All that's left to do is vote.

Simply click on the bracket, then click on the wings you'd like to vote for.

Just go online to delawareonline.com/wing-madness-top-four, and click on the wing bracket at the end of the article.

To hinder bots and hackers and the types of people who like to vote over and over, we ask voters to fill out a form identifying themselves — but feel free to opt out using the checkbox at the bottom of the form, if you don't want to receive any communications from us.

Voting in the round of four ends Wednesday at 9 a.m.. Then it's onto the finals to determine the Delaware wing winner.

Matthew Korfhage is business and development reporter in the Delaware region covering all the things that touch land and money.. A longtime food writer, he also tends to turn up with stories about tacos, oysters, beer and wings. Send tips and insults to [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware Wing Madness: The top 4 wings in Delaware