Come Sunday afternoon, just around 2, expect to see the parking lot of the newly opened on East 22nd Street fill up.
Chances are there will be little wiggle room at the tables nearest to the 120-inch TV wall, which will be showing the highly-anticipated matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs.
Afternoon patrons dine in at Anchor Bar, home of the original buffalo wing, 7080 E. 22nd Street, on Oct. 31, 2025.
Anchor Bar owner Doug Perry couldn’t have picked a better time to swing open the doors to the 9,000-square-foot restaurant/sports bar dedicated to all things Buffalo.
And nothing is more Buffalo than the hometown Bills, which is why you might be hard-pressed to find a place at the bar come Sunday afternoon.
Those seats will be reserved for Tucson’s Bills Mafia, those diehard Buffalo Bills fans who like their Labatts cold, their wings hot with a side of bleu cheese — none of that ranch nonsense — and wouldn’t think of eating a roast beef sandwich that didn’t come on a salty kimmelweck roll.
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A plate of traditional buffalo wings from Anchor Bar, home of the original buffalo wing, 7080 East 22nd Street, in Tucson.
Perry had hoped to open Anchor Bar in the former Brushfire BBQ, 7080 E. 22nd St., earlier this fall. But permit delays pushed that back to last Wednesday in what Perry said was a soft opening; his crew is still finding their rhythm so things like takeout are still on hold.
But the 1,380-square-foot patio Perry and his wife/partner added is open, with misters and heaters.
And TVs.
There are 64 throughout the bar, most with 75-inch screens. The TV wall is made up of four 55-inch screens, the same size as the handful of screens mounted above the bar.
Not every one of them this Sunday will be tuned to the Josh Allen-Patrick Mahomes showdown, Perry said.
“We’ll be showing a lot of the games,†he said, but that TV wall will be reserved for the Bills.
The Anchor Bar, birthplace of the ubiquitous buffalo wings, has been a Buffalo institution since it opened at 1047 Main St. downtown in 1935. It is still there today.
The Tucson location, the first in Arizona, is the 15th since Anchor Bar started expanding in 2009. It is now in Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Illinois, Colorado and Virginia, and is soon opening its first outpost in North Carolina.
Cassandra Alfaro, a bartender at Anchor Bar pours drinks for afternoon patrons on Oct. 31, 2025.
Sunday’s Bills-Chiefs game, largely seen as a rematch of the 2025 AFC Championship game, starts at 2:25 p.m. and will air nationally on CBS and locally on most of the Anchor Bar’s screens.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
Reporter
Anchor Bar, birthplace of Buffalo wings, is coming to Tucson
