Favorite foods: Buffalo wings with ranch dressing

People often ask me what it is that I miss about living in the USA and most of the time I quite struggle to come up with anything because I feel like the pace of life over here in South East Asia is just so much better than life in the west. Yeah, we have more opulence in countries like USA but I feel as though that actually is a net detriments to society. Wealth brings obsession with possessions and I don't feel as though this is a healthy way to be.

But when I do answer the question about what i actually do miss it mostly ends up being certain food things that are extremely common in USA, but are very rare over here in Thailand.

I have loved Buffalo Wings since I first tried them about 20 years ago and if you live in the States, you already know that this particular dish is available just about everywhere.

Recently, a local restaurant started advertising the fact that they have Buffalo wings and just like most people who know what these wings actually are and are supposed to taste like, I had my reservations. A lot of the time in Thailand as well as the other SEA countries that I have been to, they put a western word on a menu but they don't actually get anywhere near what it is suppose to be like. In one particularly bad experience, I was at a place that served their wings with a side of mayonnaise claiming it was "ranch." Needless to say it was disgusting and I didn't eat it.

According to the owner, who happened to be at this place when I was there he was able to secure the import license for a critical ingredient of Buffalo Wings in Frank's Hot Sauce.

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He was happy to pass along this "secret" that everyone already knows because it is nigh on impossible for you to find this sauce on your own. He told me that in order to get the Frank's company to send it to him, he had to order something crazy like 250 bottles of the stuff. Then he had to go through customs and even pay some bribes to receive the order.

The secret with Frank's sauce, and I remember this from when I lived State-side, is that you have to mix it 50/50 with butter. If you don't do this, the sauce will not adhere to the wings and you will just end up with a pile of sauce goop in your bowl. The butter works as an adhesive and makes the sauce stay in place as well as get all over your face and hands. It's delightful.

According to the owner, the ranch dressing was a bit more complicated because he wasn't able to get a license to import the powder. No worries though, because he has a group of people who fly back and forth to and from the USA that live here in Thailand half of the year that will bring back 40 packets or so. This seems to be the magic number I guess because it is conceivable that this would be considered for personal use on a 3-6 month visa. I don't pretend to understand how customs works in this country, but he manages to get it through so I'm in favor of it.

Ranch is a difficult concept for non-Americans to understand but when I went to this restaurant with a friend from the UK who had never had it before, he was actually TRYING to not like it because people from the UK have this tendency to be very critical of anything that Americans like. I am happy to say that with a grin on his face he relented and said to me that this is one of the best things he has had to eat in his life. He acted surprised and kept laughing about how he has intentionally avoided eating this item for years simply because of his prejudice.

Let that be a lesson to everyone out there: Just because it isn't from your country, doesn't mean it is bad.

So this shop has absolutely nailed the recipe and I will be returning here on a regular basis. It was a taste of home that I really do miss and I will likely continue to eat it until I hate it because that is how I handle nearly everything food-related in my life.

Do you have a favorite food? If so, tell me about it so I can try to track it down and have it as well!