Mumbo Sauce Wings appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Mumbo sauce wings · Washington DC
Chicken wings doused in mumbo sauce, DC's red-orange sweet-tangy condiment, served as the closing dish at the city's carryout counters from Petworth to Anacostia.
Mumbo sauce (also written mambo) is a sweet, tangy, faintly hot red-orange sauce that took hold in Washington DC's Black carryout counters from the 1960s onward. It probably evolved from a Chicago-style barbecue sauce, brought south by Argia B Collins, but the DC version drifted sweeter and tangier, more ketchup-and-pineapple than smoke-and-vinegar. By the 1980s it had become the city's defining condiment for wings, fried chicken, fried rice and french fries from Wings-N-Things on Capitol Hill, Yum's, Danny's Sub and dozens of carryouts. In 2011 a Chicago-based company tried to trademark Mumbo Sauce; the DC counters fought back, and the name remains generic. Capital City Mumbo Sauce, founded 2011 in Anacostia, bottles the DC house version for grocery sale.
Where to eat in Washington DC:
- Henry's Soul Cafe
- Florida Avenue Grill
- Oohh's & Aahh's