03/08/2025
If you remember the great festivals of Downtown Kalamazoo, then you definitely remember the Fire Thigh Sammie! People often asked, “How did you come up with those?”
Here’s the history as briefly as it can be explained:
1998:
We did our first “Taste of Kalamazoo” and offered Beef Tri-Tip or Chicken Breast wraps filled with our Fire-Roasted Salsa. That was back in the day when vendors were competing for HOTTEST WINGS where you had to sign a waiver to eat them.
1999:
Our second “Taste” … We mocked the hot wing folks by coming up with the “Fire Thigh” which was originally a bone-in chicken thigh dusted with a mega spiced up version of our now famous chicken seasoning coining the tag line “All the heat & twice the meat of a hot wing”. Needless to say, we could not cook enough of these!
2000:
Here we go! Our junior year at the “Taste” and Fire Thighs were an even bigger hit! After day 1 (of 3) we cooked approximately 500 thighs. Day 2 was so busy we were running out of thighs before the end of lunch so our meat guy said we would deliver more to the festival site to save us time. Once the cases were received, we opened and found they were all boneless…. So, we improvised and put them on a bun and the rest is history. We served thousands of them year over year until the last festival.
Although Fire Thighs are not on our current catering menu, we still do them at events upon request.
