Thirsty Elephant

Basic Information:

• Thirsty Elephant is Perfect for Hungry People - 08/18/22
  Overall Rating: 74

  Lynch Serniak

  Lynch's Rating: 36 out of 50

  Environment: 8
  

  Thirsty Elephant is a new wing joint in Scranton established in 2022. When you arrive, you may luck out with a parking spot in the lot next to the building, but you’ll likely end up parking on a side street due to the limited parking. The entrance is a rather nondescript door, which is a slight pet peeve of mine. I wish places put up a small sign indicating the entrance, although this is really not a problem if you’ve been to the place more than once. Either way, once you enter, you’ll know you’re in the right place. The place has a large square bar, which is where we took our seat. They also have plenty of sit-down tables as well as bar-height tables. The bartender on our visit was very nice and there to answer any questions we had about the wing night or if we needed more details on the sauces. We did end up waiting a small bit for our wings to arrive, which is surprising as it was not super packed. They do have plenty of TVs, a TouchTunes, and a pool table to help pass the time.

  
  Wing Size: 5
  

  The wings were slightly above average in size, but very much above average for wing price. On a normal night, they charge $12 for 8 wings. On Thursday, which is their wing night, they charge $1 per wing. From what I’m seeing from other places, we are mostly past the wing shortage and many places are returning to traditional wing prices. I’m even seeing wing night prices back around 60 to 65 cent range. Perhaps Thirsty Elephant needs to revisit their wing prices because even when we posted our visit on Facebook, people commented at how high the price was.

  
  Wing Flavors: 7
  

  There is a good selection of wing sauce flavors at Thirsty Elephant, including a mix of your classic flavors along with more unique flavors that may catch your fancy such as thai chili crisp, ginger teriyaki, and a spicy garlic ranch. It’s also nice that they have a feature wing sauce of the week that appears to be limited to that week. For example, on our visit, the feature wing was a bacon jalapeño cheddar ranch, which sounded awesome. I’m setting the score at a 7 because, in my opinion, the available flavors warrant that score for our visit, but based on their Facebook activity, it already seems they have added more flavors as always-available options. I can see this score increasing in a future visit if they keep adding more flavors, especially flavors like dill pickle ranch (they had this on a recent Facebook post and it’s really tempting to give this one a try sooner rather than later)

  
  Wing Taste (x2): 8
  

  Since they require minimum orders of 6, I placed an order of 24 in order to try four different sauces. If given the choice between a traditional buffalo or a creamy buffalo, i’m going to pick the creamy buffalo every time, and I’m definitely happy I did. The sauce had a nice, orange color and it lived up to its name since it was a creamier sauce. The spice was on the milder side, but it definitely had that typical buffalo wing flavor. These were really good and probably my favorite of the bunch – I highly recommend. The Garlic caesar on the other hand were my least favorite of the bunch, but it was still pretty tasty, which is saying a lot about how good all the wings were. The garlic caesar had a stronger caesar flavor with a hint of garlic, which I was totally OK with it. It was a milder wing with a white, creamy sauce. Another white sauce was their Signature sauce, which is described as a spicy garlic ranch on the menu. It did bring more spice than the garlic caesar, and the overall mix of sauces was very enjoyable. Finally, I ordered the ginger teriyaki. If you’ve read our reviews in the past, you may have picked up that I’m a sucker for good teriyaki sauce, and Thirsty Elephant did a good job on their teriyaki. It is a sticky, glaze-like brown sauce with a hefty amount of ginger. It also has that salty, teriyaki flavor that I look forward to in a teriyaki wing. If you enjoy teriyaki wings, you will not be disappointed here.

  Serniak's Rating: 38 out of 50

  Environment: 7
  

  Our not-as-active journey for the best wings in NEPA took us to Scranton to a place called The Thirsty Elephant. The Thirsty Elephant is a rather new establishment only existing for a few months. A bar called Pour Boys used to be where the Elephant now resides.

  The Thirsty Elephant got on my radar from a picture I saw of their wings that was posted on the internet. Love that internet. I knew when I saw them that I must have them. Lynch agreed.

  You’ll find when you get to the Thirsty Elephant that parking in the parking lot might be a hair tricky. You can park on the road on the side of the building if you need to.

  Inside, you’ll fine a very clean bar that has multiple tables surrounding it. There’s a pool table, darts, and course games of chance machines. I feel like at this point every structure in NEPA is required by law to have at least one video poker machine. Pretty sure I saw one at the courthouse.

  If you’re into watching sports or even The Wheel, the Thirsty Elephant has you covered. There are multiple TVs throughout the bar. We sat at the bar and even got to view the first 15 minutes of The Wheel. That’s always nice.

  The atmosphere of the place gave me the feeling of the kind of place where you go to after work and you’re looking to relax after a day of work and perhaps talk about how you don’t like your job as the bartender is already opening a beer for you before you even sit down.

  Our server, who was also the bartender, was very attentive to us and explained all of the questions we had about their wings. She was quick to make sure weren’t ever thirsty, which I expect is a high priority at the Thirsty Elephant.

   

   

  
  Wing Size: 8
  

  Wings are a dollar a wing on their wing night which is on Thursdays. I realize that the big news that came out this week is that wing prices are lower than they have been in years even before the pandemic started. I understand that a dollar a wing may seem high to some. To those people, I say that even though the wings are down that doesn’t mean that fry oil is. That stuff is still crazy expensive so don’t start thinking we’re going to see wing night prices back to 40 cents a week. That’s not going to happen probably ever.

  The wings come in orders of six which makes it easy to get multiple flavors.

  The size of the wings were a very solid size. They weren’t too massive where it’s difficult to get crispy but they also weren’t so small that you felt that you didn’t get your money’s worth. They were right in that goldilocks zone meaning they were just right.

  The wings came out with decent crispiness and were equipped with quality meat.

  
  Wing Flavors: 7
  

  There are 13 total flavors that you can get at the Thirsty Elephant but there are only 12 on their menu. That’s because every week they have a featured wing flavor. I love when places do stuff like that. It keeps me interested and it keeps them always thinking of new flavors. Maybe if one does really well they would eventually add it to the permanent list. I mainly just want an infinite amount of flavors to choose from.

  You can get the standard mild, hot, honey mustard, honey BBQ that you see at most places. But they also have one on the menu called Signature Spicy Garlic Ranch. You put the word signature in front of anything and I’m going to get it. That’s just a fact of life for me.

  There’s also Thai Chili and one called Thai Chili Crisp. Our splendid bartender/server explained that the word crisp means spicier. Sign me up.

  

  
  Wing Taste (x2): 8
  

  The wings at the Thirsty Elephant were excellent. My expectations going in based on the picture I saw on the net, were high and they exceeded my expectations.

  I got 18 instead of what I usually get when the circumstances are that they come in orders of six, which was 24. I don’t know, I feel like as I’ve gotten older the idea of getting 20 or more is simply something I don’t think I can handle as often as I did when I was a younger man and I held nothing back.18 of these wings was the right call.

  Let me tell you, the display of these wings before I devoured them was heavenly. I feel like every color in the color spectrum was represented. I’d be alright with a painting of this picture hanging up in every room of my house.

  

  As you can see every wing was heavily sauced, which is the right way to go.

  I’ll start with the feature which on this particular day was cheddar, jalapeno, and bacon. They were wonderful. Every flavor in the description was well represented. They didn’t use actual pieces of bacon, which you get at some places, but the bacon flavor was there. The jalapenos were very finely cut which didn’t overpower the other flavors or make them too hot. They had a real creaminess to them that slapped. They were just right.

  Next was the signature spicy garlic ranch. As I said, I’m powerless when I see a wing flavor with the word signature in it. They used, I think, their hot sauce to represent the spicy portion of the flavor. Honestly, I think they could have been hotter. They were tasty with garlic and the ranch but like the cheddar-bacon-jalapeno, they were quite creamy which neutralized a good amount of the spiciness. Were they tasty? You betcha. Just needed a bit more heat.

  Finally, I got the Thai Chili Crisp. I’m not saying that the word crispt is a menu buzzword for me like words such as smoked and spicy are, but when our server said it means hotter, I was all in. Right off the bat, I loved the amount of parsley on them. They stood out on the pristine dark color of the wings. The chili notes were present and there was decent heat due to the “crisp” portion of it. Again, I could have used more heat but it wasn’t anything that held the flavor back. The Asian stickiness that comes with Thai Chili sauce mixed well with the “crisp” portion of the wing. The sauce was thicker than I thought but it worked out great.