How the Spot for the Best Wings in San Diego Gives Back
Dirty Birds is well-known for serving up the best wings in San Diego, but less known is how the local restaurant group also gives back to its community.
If you’re not familiar, Dirty Birds is a local pub-and-restaurant with locations in Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Liberty Station, and UC San Diego in La Jolla. It’s legendary in San Diego for its delicious wings, which have garnered widespread recognition.
For example, locals have repeatedly voted Dirty Birds the best wings in San Diego. In a YouTube poll, the restaurant was also voted to have the best wings in all of the Southwest U.S., and the second-best nationally.
The people that run Dirty Birds are also community-minded, with the company donating all of the proceeds from its fourth annual wing-eating contest to charity. In the four years since it has been held, Dirty Birds has donated $27,678 to local nonprofit organizations.
As far as why its wings are the best in San Diego, the owners told SD News that all wings are baked a specific amount of time before being flash-fried to perfection. The in-house wing sauce is also carefully crafted for maximum deliciousness.
Carefully crafted isn’t an exaggeration, either. According to co-owner Shawnn Silverman, the team behind Dirty Birds spent more than 20 years testing the recipe and sauce before finding the perfect formula.
Dirty Birds has deep local roots, too. According to Silverman, he and his other co-owners — Jonathan Ollis and Adam Jacoby — all worked in the San Diego bar scene as bartenders before starting their own bar-and-wing business.
“We’re a local success story,” Silverman told SD News.
Media credit: dirtybirdsbarandgrill.com
Mike Peterson is a writer, editor, and strategist based in San Diego. When he’s not writing and editing the La Jolla news, you can often find him practicing yoga, rock climbing, or exploring the outdoors with his wife and dog.
