quick bite: Buffalo Chicken at Ma Magoo’s

April 26, 2021

I first wrote about Ma Magoo’s buffalo chicken over eight years ago. As I read through it today, the only thing that’s changed is L’Espalier has gone out of business. I have tried a lot more buffalo chicken since this was first published and Ma Magoo’s is still, without exception, the best in town. I just got an order of buffalo fingers last week with a side of honey mustard and decided I need to republish this classic post. I added a new picture because both camera quality and my photography skills have come a long way in eight years.

Buffalo chicken has been one of my favorite foods since I first had buffalo wings at Culpeppers in St. Louis when I was twelve. So if you have a favorite place to get it, please let me know. If I can, I will give it a try and share my thoughts.

March 7, 2013

If I were going to leave Boston forever and never come back and had time for just one meal before I left, I would eat at Ma Magoo’s.  I don’t care if the meal was free; I would rather pay eight dollars for their buffalo chicken sub than get a free tasting menu at L’Espalier or O Ya.  I love Ma Magoo’s. I have, as a grown man, requested it as my birthday lunch.  When I worked a half hour away, one of the guys I worked with used to bring back subs every time he had to go to Boston for the day.  There is no taste like it, anywhere.

I eat three things at Ma Magoo’s: buffalo chicken fingers, a buffalo chicken sub, and buffalo chicken pizza.  I am sure that they have many other wonderful things to eat there but I would have to go everyday for a month to be willing to pass up their buffalo chicken.  The chicken is hand battered, not processed, and deep-fried.  It’s plump and juicy with a perfect batter to chicken ratio. The fingers are drenched in a tangy, slightly sweet buffalo sauce.  There is heat but it is in the medium range, not too hot. I like my sub with lettuce, American cheese, and honey mustard.  If you have never put honey mustard on buffalo chicken, you need to, but I wouldn’t start at Ma Magoo’s.  Theirs is far too good and you would be disappointed for the rest of your life.  It is a very sweet with a yellow mustard base.  The flavor is mild allowing the sweetness to come through and the consistency is very thin for mustard, but with a stickiness you would expect from honey.

Ma Magoo’s looks like any other sub shop in the Boston. Inside, however, they make one of the best foods I have ever found.   I don’t know if I will live the rest of my life in Boston, but I hope they let me come back and eat the buffalo chicken at Ma Magoo’s.