At Yankee BBQ, tallow-fried wings add draw to Hamburg's smoked meat sensation

There's smoked cheesecake with loganberry sauce for dessert, of course

Large sampler at Yankee BBQ.

There is nothing flashy about Southern barbecue, meat cooked long and slow in a woodsmoke atmosphere. After all, barbecue’s United States roots were in Southern plantations, where enslaved people made the best of gnarly cuts after hams, chops, and tenderloins went to those living “high on the hog.”

That’s why pork ribs and sausage are modern barbecue standards, along with beef brisket from cattle country. Pork ribs are shot through with bone and tendons, but rubbed with spices and patiently smoke-roasted, they are transformed into noble fare.

Smoked wings fried in tallow at Yankee BBQ.

Barbecue joints are more plentiful in Western New York than a decade ago, but great barbecue joints remain rare. Yankee BBQ is one of the exceptions. After starting from scratch in Blasdell, Brian Nagy and his crew have turned Hamburg’s former Raphael’s location near the Erie County Fairgrounds into a TV-lined bar and dining room full of smoke-eaters.

The result feels like a sports bar that happens to have exceptional food.