More than 20 Long Island restaurants will roll out their best chicken wings this Saturday at Scout Fest ’26, a festival set for 1 to 5 p.m. outside The Spread sports bar in Lindenhurst. The event promises sauced and dry-rubbed flats and drumsticks from dozens of vendors, plus a wing-eating contest, a bounce house and face-painting stations for kids.
The gathering is organized around Ryan Bliss, who goes by the Wing Scout and hosts the event, according to the New York Post. Details on the date and location are corroborated by wbli.com, which confirms Scout Fest is coming to The Spread in Lindenhurst on Saturday, October 24, from 1 to 5 PM. The station’s report also lists more than 20 Long Island restaurants sampling wings at the event.
Per the same account, Scout Fest will also feature a cigar table, a DJ, pizza, 50/50 raffles and giveaways beyond the main wing lineup. The Wing Scout’s own event page, meanwhile, describes the day as featuring 20-plus wing vendors slinging their best, alongside a wing-eating contest, bounce house and face paint for the kids.
Ticket Prices Don’t Quite Match Up
Here’s where the story gets a little messy: the New York Post reports that Scout Fest admission costs $45. But the official event page at thewingscout.com lists general admission at $55, with $45 reserved for presale tickets while supplies last. An open-bar package is also listed on that page at $65 presale, rising to $75 on the day of the event. Anyone budgeting for the festival may want to check current pricing directly before heading out, since the two figures don’t line up.
Tickets are available through thewingscout.com, according to wbli.com’s report, which lines up with the Wing Scout’s own site pointing buyers there as well.
What Makes a Winning Wing
The Wing Scout brand built its following by breaking wings down into specific criteria, citing sauce-to-skin ratio, char on the crisp and heat that builds as key factors in its reviews, per the Wing Scout’s website. That same rubric likely informs the judging at Saturday’s festival, where attendees can sample the wings being judged and vote for their own favorites without an extra charge, according to the New York Post’s reporting.
Bliss has described Long Island wings as some of the best in the country and has called them underrated, per the Post. New York Post Long Island food writer Alex Mitchell, who is from Massapequa and is serving as a guest judge at the festival, described the Wing Scout brand as one of the hottest things on Long Island’s food scene, the paper reports.
A Crowded Roster of Judges and Guests
The judging panel named by the Post includes Mets radio personality Keith Raad, WFAN’s Shaun Morash, comedian Mike Keegan, Chef Mike of Jackson Hall, and Matt, a wing reviewer who owns the Best Wings Long Island social media page. The newspaper also reports that Joe Gannascoli, who played mobster Vito on The Sopranos, will appear at Scout Fest and promote his cookbook, A Meal to Die For.
For those looking to test their limits, the Post reports that attendees can enter the wing-eating contest for an extra $10, with the winner crowned Long Island’s wing-eating king. The paper also reports that Bliss plans to unveil a new Scout Sauce at the festival, which attendees will be able to sample and purchase, and that he has described the event itself as massive.
On Instagram, the account @thewingscout describes itself simply as being on a quest for the best tasting chicken wing, with its bio noting the account is run by the self-proclaimed official Chicken Wing Man. Whether Scout Fest ’26 lives up to its first-of-its-kind billing will come down to the wings themselves this Saturday afternoon in Lindenhurst.
