Hot Sauce and Panko

Now that I may have worn out my welcome at Shanghai Dumpling King thanks to a overly rowdy birthday party (one attendee was dressed as a handjob), the news that similarly cheap Outer Richmond restaurant was opening sounded like manna from heaven. The fact that it would be serving chicken wings and waffles? Uh. Yes.

Hot Sauce and Panko on Clement and 17th goes way beyond the delicious all-beige, all-grease feast that you can expect from most chicken and waffle places. First of all, the place is decorated like a 14 year-old boy broke in and respectfully tried to vandalize — a urinal hangs on the wall and Austin Powers peeks out from behind a rack of hot sauce. Their wings swim in spicy sauce; flavors include the requisite buffalo, honey mustard, and bbq, as well as the unexpected kfc (Korean fried chicken), mfc (Mexicali fried chicken), thai peanut, and miso.

Perhaps as important, however, is the veritable wall of specialty hot sauce for sale, as well as an open tasting table. Here, you can drench your tastebuds with a shot of Gringo Bandito, Fire Ant Juice, or Ass Reaper, not to mention drench your waffle with bacon, marionberry, ginger, strawberry, or regular syrup. A perfect meal – six wings plus waffle – runs you six dollars and a happy esophageal spasm.

Hot Sauce and Panko
1545 Clement St.
[Outer Richmond]

Photo Credit: Luis C.