Boneyard Pub & Grill – Mukwanogo, WI

Boneyard Pub & Grill in Mukwonago, WI was recommended to us by a couple people over the last year or so and we finally got a chance to try it out. Did it live up the hype?

A good friend of ours who used to live in Milwaukee, who was actually a transplant from Alabama, who now lives in Florida, comes up to hang out a couple times a year and one of the times is usually on Memorial Day weekend. The week before he came up he hit me up on Facebook and said “Get the gang together. I want some wings!”. Boneyard Pub & Grill, in Mukwonago, had been recommended to us a few times so I checked out their website and seen that they had a lot of flavors for a local joint. Since it is a little ways away from us (most of us live in Milwaukee and Menomonee Falls/Germantown area) I thought James visiting would be a good excuse to make the drive out there.

Most of the gang was present for the review including, myself (Mel), my wife Nicole, Adam, Dan, Dave,  Jer, Jeanna, James, and Amanda. Boneyard Pub & Grill is located in a strip mall, but the place is quite big. When you walk in you get an immediate sense of the atmosphere. In fact, it feels strangely familiar. I don’t think it’s coincidental that it has an almost Buffalo Wild Wings feel to it. Right upon entering there’s a take-out counter complete with bottled sauces ready to buy. Make a sharp right and you enter the main dining area with flat screen after flat screen playing various sporting events. Adjacent to the dining area is a spacious, and well lit bar area. Similarities to BW3′s aside, the place is quite nice and probably a great sports bar for people in the area when compared to some small bars with maybe 2-3 TV’s. The sports bar theme is well done, casual and inviting. Boneyard has the perfect atmosphere to sit down and rip through plate after plate of wings when you are in Mukwonago.

As I mentioned before the list of sauces for a local joint is quite impressive. Here it goes:

• Mild Buffalo
• Garlic Buffalo
• Medium Buffalo
• Hot Buffalo
• Super Hot Buffalo
• Insanity Buffalo
• Stupid Hot Buffalo
• Boneyard BBQ
• Traditional BBQ
• Spicy BBQ
• Caribbean Jerk
• Roasted Garlic
• Teriyaki
• Honey Mustard
• Mango Habanero
• Apricot Chipotle Mustard
• Asian
• Dry Cajun
• Dry Garlic Peppercorn

That is an impressive sauce list indeed.

We placed our order and, between all of us, were able to get most of the flavors, initially staying away from the Stupid Hot Buffalo. Our order was placed and the beer was flowing. The service was great. Our waitress was always nearby filling up our pitchers or replacing our empty bottles.  The wings came out in a timely manner considering how many we ordered. At some places when we come in and order wings, in the amount we do, it can take a while depending on the cooking methods used.  A few waiters and waitresses came out to help deliver our gigantic order. Everyone’s mouths were watering at this point. After a few seconds of ogling each other’s tasty mound of wings, we all dug in.

The doneness and size of the wings were on point; Perfect, crispy skin with the right amount of chew and crunch. The meat inside was juicy and not dried out. We could tell they were all freshly made as well. None of them seemed to be sitting too long before they came out. The sauces all looked fantastic, with fresh ingredients and spices evident in most of them. As we all plowed through the first few wings, and started passing our wings around to share with each other our verdicts slowly started to come in, and there was a common theme… the sauces were just ok. Don’t get us wrong, none of them were bad, but none of them blew us away. There’s nothing wrong with Buffalo Sauce that just tastes like Buffalo Sauce if it’s really good. I don’t think that every sauce I like needs to be earth shattering or different, but something has to stand out for us to get that “Whoa!” feeling. As we all kept trying all the sauces we all just kept saying “Yeah, they’re good, but they aren’t blowing me away”. It’s really hard to explain. We didn’t hate the wings, in fact we liked them. But that was as far as the emotion went with them. To be more specific, Dave thought the Honey Roasted Garlic just weren’t garlicky enough and thought it was like a sweet honey glaze. Granted he is Italian, so garlic pulses through his veins much like techno music and spray tans.  The Garlic Buffalo again wasn’t garlicky enough (see the previous sentence), and the Buffalo wasn’t quite there either. Dave was also on the fence about Asian. He said it was good but it was just average.  Jer thought the Mango- Habenaro was missing the habenaro because there was little to no heat and there wasn’t a very apparent mango flavor either.

But there was one thing worth noting that did stand out. The owner stopped by to say “hi” and introduce himself (really cool guy too) and chat it up a bit. He asked if we had the Stupid Hot and I told him we hadn’t yet, but were planning on it. After we chewed the fat for a few minutes he disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with 7 Stupid Hot wings.  After the 7 wings were dispersed amongst the brave-er souls in the group that night, and we all bitched and moaned about how much were weren’t going to enjoy this, we manned up and inhaled the painful wing and sauce as fast as we could. Even before taking the first bite, the scent of habenaro was very strong, warning us that this was going to be bad, and our intuition was right. These were Stupid Hot Wings. Probably in our top 3-5 hottest wings we’ve had. All of our heads started sweating and turned a shade of red much like the outside of a ripe tomato. Tears dripped from our eyes, snot dripped from our noses, and cuss words spewed from our mouths. The heat was relentless too.  Even after a few minutes the heat hung on. A few of us decided to take a trip to the restroom and wash our faces off and try to do anything to cool ourselves down. Here’s where it got really uncomfortable for me. After wiping my sweat drenched brow I decided to relieve myself in the urinal. As I was pissing out four Miller Lite’s I started to drool uncontrollably. Unfortunately for me, I drooled exactly in the wrong place and dripped my flaming hot saliva right on my manhood! Instantly I knew I was going to be in some trouble. The first words out of my mouth were “Oh sh*t! I just drooled on my d*#k!” Laughter ensued. We returned to the table and not a second later someone said “Mel how’s you d*ck feeling”. I had to explain to everyone that wasn’t in the bathroom about my unfortunate experience. At this point I still wasn’t feeling any ill-effects, but I knew it was coming. Sure enough about 5 minutes later it hit me…and it was terrible. It was almost the exact same feeling I just experienced in my mouth (no homo), but slightly less, and in a worse location. Not cool. I tried taking my mind off of it by drinking more beer, but it wasn’t that easy. Luckily for my dumb-ass it didn’t last long. Maybe just 10-15 minutes and it was gone. Thank god. I had no idea if I was in for minutes or hours of burning pain.

So, all in all, Boneyard Pub & Grill was just OK. Again, the Boneyard’s wings were cooked perfectly, and the sauces were good, but nothing stood out and blew us away. The owner and the waitstaff were excellent, which counts for a lot in my book. Yes, we’ll all return probably at some point if the road steers us in that direction, but I don’t see any of us making a special trip.

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