Entry · catalog no. 4075
lemon pepper wet
/ /ˈlɛmən ˈpɛpɚ ˈwɛt/ /LEM-uhn PEP-uhr WET
phrase · Atlanta, Georgia · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
An Atlanta chicken wing order: lemon pepper seasoning plus sauce, rather than lemon pepper dry. Depending on the shop this means wings tossed in buffalo or a lemon-butter sauce and then dusted with lemon pepper, or dry-rubbed wings finished with extra sauce poured over the top. Used as a fixed order phrase at the counter and, by extension, as shorthand for Atlanta itself.
“Ten piece, all flats, lemon pepper wet, blue cheese on the side.”
Origin & Attribution
Lemon pepper wings are Atlanta's, made and made famous in the city's Black neighborhoods, wing counters, and clubs from the 1980s and 1990s onward — American Deli, which opened in 1989, and J.R. Crickets are the names most often given. Wet is the later modifier, an ordering habit rather than a menu item: at J.R. Crickets the sauced-and-seasoned wing was on the board in the early 2000s under an in-house name, and customers kept asking for it as lemon pepper wet anyway. The phrase went national on 6 September 2016, when FX's Atlanta aired "Streets on Lock," written by Stone Mountain native Stephen Glover, in which Paper Boi is handed an off-menu box of them at J.R. Crickets. The restaurant added it to the actual menu the following year. The order predates the show; the show is only why the rest of the country knows it.
1989
American Deli opens in metro Atlanta, one of the counters credited with the lemon pepper wing
2016
FX's Atlanta airs "Streets on Lock" on 6 September and the order goes national
2017
J.R. Crickets formally adds lemon pepper wet to its menu
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Atlanta, Georgia · 2000s
Spoken by
Black Atlantans — wing counter regulars, club crowds, rappers, and the Atlanta rap economy around them
$LEMONPThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2000
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Atlanta, season 1, episode 2, "Streets on Lock," written by Stephen Glover, dir. Hiro Murai, FX, aired 6 September 2016
television episode
■
Matt Walljasper, "If FX's Atlanta made you order J.R. Crickets's Lemon Pepper Wet wings, you're missing out on half the story," Atlanta Magazine, 31 May 2017
magazine article
■
Jewel Wicker, "J.R. Crickets adds 'lemon pepper wet' to menu after 'Atlanta' episode," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2017
newspaper article
■
+ Cite a sourceAkila Sankar McConnell, A Culinary History of Atlanta, The History Press, 2019, p. 131
book
See also