If you’re looking for Atlanta’s best lemon pepper wings, we’ve found them

Atlanta has deep feelings about chicken wings.

Ask a group of people where to get the best lemon pepper wings in this city, and you’ll start an argument that will last half an hour: flats versus drums; extra-crispy versus “don’t fry them too hard”; lemon pepper wet versus lemon pepper dry.

This is not a city that treats wings casually.

So with March Madness viewing parties all the rage right now, we decided to stop arguing and start eating. The goal was simple: find the best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta that you can get your hands on before the game starts, delivered or picked up by 3 p.m., no caveats. This took some city favorites, like The Local, out of the running.

The short answer: The best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta right now are from J.R. Crickets, based on a blind taste test of eight top spots.

How we chose the best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta

The Food & Dining team took years of reporting and a deep dive into multiple food delivery app rankings to build a list of 16 of Atlanta’s most popular lemon pepper wings. To conduct a blind taste test at the AJC headquarters in Midtown, we picked wing spots inside the perimeter so the wings would still be hot when they arrived, and we ordered all lemon pepper dry so they would remain at peak crispiness. We cross-checked with our Instagram audience and narrowed our 16 semifinalists down to eight finalists.

• International Cafe
• Magic City
• G Town Wings & Fish
• Hungry AF
• Wing Factory
• J.R. Crickets
• Tandoori Pizza and Wing Co.
• Sunnyside Pizzeria

Then we ordered a whole lot of wings. Over a dozen very serious journalists took eating and reviewing those wings very seriously for three hours.

There was one clear winner.

What makes the best lemon pepper chicken wings

A great lemon pepper wing demands attention. It should be golden and crispy enough that the skin gives a loud, slightly resistant crunch when you bite down.

Sadly, the delivery vessel can ruin that hard-won crispiness. If the container the wings come in doesn’t breathe, the wings will steam in their own heat. It’s not a surprise our winner’s wings came in a cardboard box. It’s a much smarter play than Styrofoam or plastic containers.

Then there’s the star of the show, the seasoning. Lemon and pepper should present themselves with equal force, balanced. They should not be buried under salt. Coverage matters, too. A wing should be seasoned all around, not just sprinkled here and there.

The meat should also be flavored all the way through and juicy, not dry. Everything should pull right off the bone. You should want to start devouring a second wing as soon as you finish your first.

A takeout order of lemon pepper wings, one of eight tested by the AJC Food & Dining team in search of the best in Atlanta. Over a dozen very serious journalists took eating and reviewing wings very seriously for three hours. (Matt Gannon/AJC)

How Atlanta made lemon pepper seasoning its own

Lemon pepper didn’t start in Atlanta. The seasoning dates back to California in the late 1960s, when William Shoffeitt launched bottled Lemon Pepper as part of his Shoffeitt’s Enhance Seasoners line. The dried lemon zest and cracked black pepper combo began as a way to brighten seafood.

What Atlanta did with it was something else entirely. Industrious transplants from the Northeast, where Buffalo wings were incredibly popular, moved to Atlanta and opened up shops — like J.R. Crickets, which launched in 1982 and helped push wings into the mainstream. Sometime in the late 1980s, local wing spots on Campbellton Road started tossing their fried wings in a mix of dried lemon zest, coarse black pepper and melted butter. The irresistible combination stuck.

As Atlanta’s hip-hop scene grew through the ’90s and 2000s, strip clubs like Magic City became hubs where wings and nightlife overlapped. The lore of lemon pepper became cemented in culture. By the time the FX series “Atlanta” introduced “lemon pepper wet” to a national audience in 2018, the flavor was already embedded in the city’s identity.

Georgia lawmakers consider lemon pepper as the official state wing flavor

Lemon pepper is so deeply tied to Atlanta’s identity that in February, Georgia lawmakers introduced a bill that would designate lemon pepper as the state’s official chicken wing flavor. The proposal, sponsored by state Rep. Eric Bell of Jonesboro, seeks recognition for the chicken wing style because it reflects how people in the state actually eat. Whether it becomes official or not, the proposal alone points to how much weight lemon pepper wings carry in this city.

So that’s why we set out to find who does it best.

Eric Bell, pictured here after winning a special election to represent House District 75 on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, introduced legislation in February of this year to recognize lemon pepper as Georgia’s official wing flavor. (Facebook)

The 8 best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta (finalists ranked)

Thirteen AJC journalists spent three hours tasting and scoring eight finalists from across the city. By the end, a pattern emerged. Three spots pulled ahead, but J.R. Crickets stood clearly above the rest.

Here’s how the tasting shook out:

• J.R. Crickets — 4 votes (WINNER)
• G Town Wings & Fish — 3 votes
• Wing Factory — 3 votes
• International Cafe — 2 votes
• Magic City — 1 vote
• Hungry AF — 0 votes
• Tandoori Pizza & Wing Co. — 0 votes
• Sunnyside Pizzeria — 0 votes

Where to order the best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta

If you’re ordering for the game, try ordering from the top three. J.R. Crickets has multiple locations across Atlanta and is your safest bet if you’re looking for consistency. G Town Wings & Fish on Campbellton Road delivers bold flavor. And then there’s Wing Factory, which is widely available across metro Atlanta and holds its own.

Greg Bluestein, chief political reporter for the AJC, and his daughter taste test wings to help find the best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta. (Matt Gannon/AJC)

The best chicken wings in Atlanta for March Madness: J.R. Crickets wins

In the end, it wasn’t especially close. G Town Wings & Fish and Wing Factory made strong cases with three votes each, but J.R. Crickets kept showing up with four first-place votes, plus enough second-place mentions to make it clear this wasn’t a split decision.

The OG still owns the lemon pepper crown.

J.R. Crickets’ wings held together the way good wings do. Even after the drive and a three-hour taste test, they stayed crisp. The seasoning landed clean, with bright pops of lemon and sharp black pepper. Every bite was juicy, fully seasoned and consistent.

Atlanta will continue to argue about wings the way it argues about everything: passionately and probably without resolution.

But when the box hits the table, and the game’s about to start, if you’re looking for wings that deliver classic punchy lemon pepper better than anyone else, your best choice is J.R. Crickets.