It’s a 10,000-year-old tradition, one that brings its devotees comfort and satiety. It appears everywhere in popular culture, from iconic lines in film (“The sky is falling!”) to schoolyard insults. It’s an essential element of modernity and antiquity combined into one beautiful three-or-four-bite-size piece.
Yes, I am talking about chicken.
Following five years of closure kickstarted by a fire and extended by a pandemic and lawsuit, the original Wingo’s location at 3207 O St. NW will open on Nov. 1, according to Mike Arthur, owner of both the O Street and the currently open Wisconsin Avenue Wingo’s locations.
“We’re about to reopen and we are so excited. It’s ready to go,” Arthur said of the O Street location. “We’re just finalizing the permits.”
Once famous among Georgetown students for its half-price Wednesdays and long weekend hours, between 2002 and 2018, Wingo’s offered buffalo and hot wings, burgers, and spicy fries, among other classic 3 a.m. food options.
Arthur also told the Voice that another location in Adams Morgan will open in January.
According to Arthur, when the O Street restaurant reopens, it will be an almost exact replica—inside and out—of what it looked like when it first closed in June 2018. It had closed originally due to a mechanical fire that damaged both the building that housed Wingo’s and the flower shop next door, English Rose Garden (which temporarily moved before reopening in 2021). The only difference between the old O Street Wingo’s and the one that will reopen this month, according to Arthur, is updated technology.
“We tried to put it back the way it was because it worked perfectly the way it was,” Arthur said. “The logo is the exact same—the original logo from 2002—the layout of the store, everything is the same. The technology is more current, but everything else is the way it was before the fire.”
According to Arthur, the fire caused significant damage due to a failure of the building’s fire suppression system. That fire was severe enough to send two firefighters to the hospital, though it caused no major injuries or casualties.
Following the 2018 fire, a restaurant-style Wingo’s opened on Wisconsin Avenue in Glover Park (the original had always been take-out only). That location offers karaoke on Tuesdays and live music occasionally, but according to Arthur, it never matched the energy of the Georgetown Wingo’s.
“The kids are different. Carry-out is different. You become a fabric of the community,” Arthur said. Among the ways that Wingo’s promoted their chicken to the Georgetown student body was by offering free delivery to campus during finals week and advertising in student publications, including the Voice.
To mark the reopening, Arthur said there will be a grand reopening celebration, complete with free chicken.
“We’re going to give out free food the whole day,” Arthur said. “From 12 to 6 [p.m.]. No purchase necessary. We’re just gonna be handing out free food for everyone who walks up.”
Wingo’s has been overly optimistic about reopening timelines in the past, however. Arthur has offered up plans to reopen numerous times to various publications that were not met. Despite this, Arthur assured the Voice that the reopening will take place on Nov. 1.
And once the Wingo’s on O Street reopens, management’s focus will shift to Adams Morgan.
That 18th Street Adams Morgan location was originally slated to open in early 2019. Setbacks related to the O Street fire and the COVID-19 pandemic, however, delayed its opening. Now, with the Adams Morgan Wingo’s fully built next to Madam’s Organ, a popular nightclub, Arthur’s goal is to get that location up and running by the new year.
The O Street Wingo’s faced similar challenges in its reopening. A 2018 Washingtonian article detailed an initial goal of reopening before the start of the 2018-19 academic year. Two years later, a Georgetown Metropolitan article reported a new reopening goal of July 2020. That article, however, was published on March 9, 2020, days before nationwide lockdowns began in response to COVID-19.
“We really thought when we had the fire in 2018, it would just take a short time to reopen,” Arthur said. They initially estimated it would take around two to three months to get the store open for business again. By the time they got the proper permits, however, COVID-19 had shut down the world.
“Once you close, it’s so hard to reopen,” Arthur added. That’s especially true when one faces a pandemic and a lawsuit at the same time, followed by repeated roadblocks involving permits and other elements of D.C.’s bureaucracy.
According to Arthur, the lawsuit involved the failure of their ANSUL fire suppression system—a mechanism intended to stop large kitchen fires—which contributed to the disaster that closed down the chicken shop in June 2018. The fire suppression system has since been fixed, Arthur said.
“The store is built. All we have to do is put food in. The staff is ready to go, and we will be open,” Arthur said, then paused.
“Finally.”
