When the wind is right, a battalion of vents pushing through the roof of 3753 Nicollet Avenue pump a fried, spicy scent into the sky that can reach you as far away as Stevens and 38th. There are throngs of eaters who are cultishly devoted to the soul-food of Shorty and Wag’s Wings and Ribs. They come from as far away as Stillwater, Faribault, and north Minneapolis. For 23 years, this take-out stand has been getting people four-cornered on the cheap. On a recent afternoon, The Rake met the master of the joint. Not the famed Art Song, under whose name the establishment first opened in 1978, and not Wag, who left about five years ago. It was Harold Preevish, a.k.a. Shorty, the only constant in a series of partnerships at this location for more than two decades.
A full-time staffer named Carrie led me through a Wonka-like stainless steel maze of kitchens, coolers, and food-processing machines. There stood Shorty and his fry-cook. They had been forcibly relocated to the most remote of his kitchens when city workers broke the gas line serving his main operation. With a long pole, he worked a massive pot of greens in smoked-turkey broth. The short and soft-spoken chef took the accident in stride. Luckily, his redundant kitchen is served by a different gas line, so half of his dozen deep fryers kept the wings moving to the front.
At 2 p.m., he unloaded 60 pounds of ribs from his vintage electric smoker. They had slowly roasted since 6 that morning. The smoker, which has lasted longer than most marriages, is fed with hickory sawdust. Shorty proudly described how he repairs and maintains it himself. Another machine he demonstrated looked like a stainless-steel raffle-ticket barrel; a motorized crank tumbled dozens of wings in batter and spices. A salted bucket then received the wings for delivery to the fryer.
In a reversal of its decline as a functional part of living chickens, the wing has here undergone a dramatic evolution in the after-life. It dominates over menu habitat once shared with Art Song’s egg rolls and the legendary Siamese hot dog (a hot dog slit length-wise to accept a strip of cheese, wrapped in a wonton skin, deep-fried and covered with spices). Like Art Song and Wag, egg rolls and Siamese hot dogs have left the partnership, but chicken wings thrive.
On a wall-mounted calculator, Shorty figured how many wings he serves in a two-day production cycle. “Forty-three cases, 240 wings a case. Let’s see… that’s 10,320 wings.” He seemed dumbstruck by the number, and did the math again. It was true.
The retail end, a window-walled store front in the southwest corner of the building, has changed nothing but the prices since this writer first stepped through the door 13 years ago. Cravings and budgets still reach their compromise during long staring matches with the light-up menu. There is fried okra, greens, hush puppies, black-eyed peas, and other sides to the wings-and-ribs staples. Chit-chat is sparse to none among the counter crowd gathered over the boomerang-patterned Formica.
A customer named Jenny, packing off with a carton of wings, had come some distance. She professed her taste for Shorty’s hushpuppies, which I had never tried. She promptly produced a bag from her take-out carton, and offered one. It was smooth, light, hot, and deep-fried. “I’m eating them on the way home in the car,” she said. I could understand why.
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