Matthew 20:16 taught us that the last shall be first, and that's the best way to describe Santora's Pizza, Subs & Wings, a dank tavern just down the street from the sterile opulence of the Shops at Mission Viejo. Santora's pizza is passable; the subs nothing a Togo's drone can't slap together in three minutes. But Santora's Buffalo wings are the gourmand Gospel manifest: the Good Word transubstantiated into fleshy appendages ready to burn through your alimentary canal like the fires of Gehenna.
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Here's Santora's inferno: neon-beer-logo-lit interior with a couple of televisions flickering anything remotely resembling a sporting event. Waitresses with bosoms as macro as their skirts are micro. A mini-reservoir of various libations that could knock out a USC frat party. A lonely shuffleboard. An overwhelmingly male clientele of all collars and lechery, most arriving in groups and each flirting with females in creepy unison like they were auditioning for an Annabel Chong feature.
And here's Santora's saving grace: Buffalo wings, things so impressive even the folks over at besthotwings.com noted that the bar's "preparation and sauce are outstanding." A regular order means 10 plump flappers, all slathered with a thick, brick-red sauce that has a faint smoky savor usually exclusive to the Earth's core. This chicken is tender and steamy; its gnarled skin suggests a singed, not burnt, preparation. Pale pepper seeds dot each wing and lend a seemingly surprising Mesoamerican furor to the sauce; the sting is not so shocking, though, when you hear the faint oompah-pah of Spanish-language radio broadcasting from the kitchen.
Santora's buxom gals provide sharp bleu cheese goo along with celery and carrot stalks as edible asbestos, but that kind gesture is ultimately futile. The wing sauce possesses the senses with the totality of a poltergeist. All the effluvia stopped up within you gushes out with diluvian furor—you'll sweat, snot, tear, salivate. Fingers are stained for a good week; lips crust with an orange tinge that stubbornly remains for days. Napkins are available, but then you notice that the rest of Santora's clientele ignores paper in favor of their tongue and you begin licking your fingers in a rather bedroom sort of way as well. And no one seems to care because you've earned the right to do whatever you want after plowing through those seraphical wings in this slice of Mission Viejo hell.
SANTORA'S PIZZA, SUBS & WINGS, 28251 MARGUERITE PKWY., STE. 1, MISSION VIEJO, (949) 364-3282.
GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM
