Here’s a news flash you’ll be surprised to hear from this group:

Sometimes you’re just in the mood for wings.

Wait, what? Us, in the mood for wings? You’d have better luck betting on the Cleveland Browns going to the Super Bowl than ever trying to prove that statement to be untrue on a given Wednesday evening.

But then comes the ultimate question: where to order from? Herein lies the problem, because when we’re out at a place on a Wednesday evening, and see wings on the menu, then that’s one thing. But when we’re consciously trying to choose a different place to order wings from week after week … well, it’s not as easy as it seems, my friends.

We definitely have our favorites (yes, we’re looking at you Wingstop). But in case you haven’t read the whole premise of our little WTGW adventure, I’ll just remind you that, well, we’ve been down that road of only going to a few places repeatedly, and that’s kind of why we’re all here in the first place.

So there’s that.

Enter Panini’s – a place we’ve been to many times since the particular location near us opened – but somehow have never ordered take out from.

Because life works in mysterious ways, my friends.

So, since I already gave away the secret that we ordered wings, I got 5 of the Six Pepper (way to make that confusing) and 5 of the Buffalo Parm.

It should also be noted that you can’t split flavors in the wing packs, so that’s why I had to do two separate orders of five just to get the different sauces that I wanted. If I have to have a gripe with Panini’s, it would be this. I mean, I get it’s a pain. But, like, even the 20-packs of wings don’t have split sauces allowed. 20 packs. I mean, do people really order 20 of the same flavor of wings? Who are these people?

These are the things that keep us up at night, friends.

But I guess I kind of half answered my own question within my own household, since Shane got 10 of the Garlic Fury wings.

But Shane also would probably eat an entire clove of garlic all on its own if given the opportunity – and maybe in some ways has, in all the times he’s ordered the garlic fries from Wing Warehouse that could be smelled from about 15 miles away. These wings smelled about the same as those fries, if that tells you anything. I tried to sit as far across the table as possible, but, well, our dining room is only so big, folks.

He also got an Italian Panini.

He was a little surprised when he opened his Panini, saying “that’s not how I pictured it.” Which leads me to believe he must’ve never ordered the signature sandwich at an actual Panini’s before – or, if he has, he must’ve been in one of his super hungry, “I could eat my arm off at this point” binges and maybe just didn’t pay any attention to what the sandwich looked like before he inhaled it – because that’s kind of their thing. Or maybe he was picturing the panini sandwiches from places not actually named after the meal. I mean, not saying there’s anything wrong with those Paninis or anything, but they definitely are different.

Also, he ate the whole thing – and his wings – so it seems he was pretty pleased with it all.

Oh, almost forgot, I also got an order of potato skins, because that’s something I haven’t ordered for a bit now.

We didn’t finish the potato skins. Shane has an excuse there, because he kind of already had a lot going on there with his meal(s) I guess. But I guess my excuse is more that … I just wasn’t as much a fan as I had hoped I would be. The bacon on the skins had a weird smoky smell to it, which kinda turned me off. And I never thought I would complain about bacon, folks, so we can definitely chalk this up to a first.

In addition to the bacon, I was also surprised to see random tomatoes on the skins. Like were those supposed to be there? Or are they like the bonus burnt French fry that sometimes creeps into your onion ring order?

But it’s good that I didn’t really need the skins to quench my hunger, since I liked both of my sets of wings quite a bit. Both were just a tad on the spicy side – which is not a bad thing at all – and liked that one was a dry rub and the other wasn’t, so yay me for making good choices. It’s actually hard to say which kind I liked better, but just given my affinity for dry rubs I would probably lean toward the six pepper. You know, if I had to make a choice and all.

All in all we were both super happy with our orders, and will definitely get carryout from Panini’s again. I’m honestly not at all sure how it’s taken us this long to order from there in the first place – because precovid it was certainly one of our favorite places to spend a weekend night out hearing a band or celebrating a birthday with friends – but, well, at least we learned our lesson, right?