A Wing Away closes in Calverton
Chicken wings with assorted dips at A Wing Away Kitchen in Calverton. Credit: Megan Schlow
Anthony Marengo may have closed the original Calverton location of his prizewinning chicken-wing spot, A Wing Away, this weekend, but he believes the second location, which opened in his hometown of Islip Terrace in April, is where he was meant to be all along.
Marengo makes excellent classic fried wings, but they are outsold by his smoked ones — less crisp but imbued with smoke and char. Among his 20 "outside the box" sauces are a fine Buffalo, Buffalo-garlic-Parm, Jack Daniels-infused whiskey-teriyaki, "Everything but the bagel" and Caribbean coconut. There’s also a dry-rubbed wing and a "wing of the week." Wings are packed to go in vented boxes to preserve their crunch. Six wings are $10.99; a dozen are $19.99. He also serves sandwiches, salads, burgers, and more.
A Wing Away made Newsday's list of Long Island’s best wings earlier this year; the spot also took the Best-in-Suffolk award at the 2021 and 2022 New York Best Wings Festival.
Marengo’s wing odyssey started during the early months of the pandemic. He’d been executive chef at Gerardi's Bar & Grill in Hauppauge when, he said, it closed due to COVID. With nothing to do, he and his wife, Stefanie, began preparing meals for essential workers and the business took off.
Inspired by the 2014 movie "Chef" (in which a fine-dining chef, played by Jon Favreau, finds personal and professional salvation making Cuban sandwiches on a food truck), the couple bought an old camper and converted it into a mobile kitchen. "I didn’t want to do Cuban sandwiches or tacos," Marengo recalled, "but Stefanie said I made the best wings, and it didn’t seem like anyone else was doing that out of a truck here."
The truck debuted in Holbrook and moved later to Riverhead, all the while racking up great reviews. In 2022, the Marengos "docked" at Coliseum Kitchen & Caterers, the sprawling Plainview deli. They also dispensed with their original vaguely Hawaiian theme (chickens doing the Hula dance, etc.) and Anthony stepped to the fore wearing a chicken mask and adopting a chicken-adjacent superhero persona. Around this time, they found a long-abandoned spot in Islip Terrace and began renovating but were beset with permitting and zoning obstacles. Meanwhile, they had parted ways with Coliseum Kitchen and, needing a steady source of income, they opened a brick-and-mortar eatery in Calverton in 2023.
Calverton came with its own headaches — including being hidden from the road ... a road along which there was no foot traffic. Islip Terrace was finally able to open earlier this year, but Marengo found it was impossible to focus all his attention on it while struggling in Calverton.
Finally, he decided to put all his chicken-wing eggs in one basket and devote himself, solely, to Islip Terrace. He’s serving breakfast, lunch and dinner there, has TV screens for watching the game and, on Wednesdays, offers dollar wings.
A Wing Away, 38 Lowell Ave., Islip Terrace, 631-446-1010, awingawaykitchen.com. Open Monday, Wednesday to Friday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
