Local & State Headlines

Man turns brother’s dream into reality

• A local restaurant owner is living the dream his brother never realized.

Carlton Fletcher

ALBANY — Xavier Morris has always loved to cook. While friends played video games and such in their free time, Morris and his older brother, Billy, would spend time in the kitchen watching their mom, Corine, cook.

The two brothers always dreamed of opening a restaurant together.

“Billy-Boy” never realized the brothers’ shared dream; he died two years ago. But three days before his death, he called Xavier to his side and told him, “Never give up on our dream.”

That has been Morris’ daily motivation as he’s worked to make his X-Treme Wings one of metro Albany’s most unique dining establishments. It’s not enough to serve wings grilled fresh on the restaurant’s premises, “Zay” and his expert crew offer a dizzying variety of 50 flavors to choose from.

“We have as many as 80 flavors but we list 50 on the menu,” Morris said. “Someone will come up with an idea for a new flavor, and we’ll try it out. We do what no other restaurant would think about doing.”

And a growing number of customers have taken notice. Since X-Treme Wings opened at its current 2125 Newton Road location just over a year ago, there are more and more regulars coming in to get their fix of mild, hot, XXX-treme hot, lemon-pepper, teriyaki, hot garlic, Jamaican jerk, Cajun ranch, fiesta, mesquite, garlic parmesan and the 10- spice mixture “dirty” wings.

“I always wanted to own a restaurant,” Morris, a former cable guy with Mediacom, said. “We were having a party, and I started cooking up wings with all kinds of different flavors. I’d been thinking about a barbecue restaurant, but everyone said I needed to do wings.

“Once I opened the restaurant, I’ve gotten ideas from some of the shows on the Food Network. Next to my mom, the person I’ve most been inspired by is Paula Deen. Mr. Bill White (owner of White’s Seafood in Albany) has also encouraged me; I’d love to follow in his footsteps.”

Morris opened the first X- Treme Wings on Jefferson Street, but a “bad experience” there led him back to the cable business. He also worked at the local Hooters and Krystal restaurants and was a frozen-food manager at a grocery store before re-opening his restaurant at its current location. There, he’s been able to weather the ups and downs of the business.

In the next few days, Morris will move his enterprise to 202 East Oakridge Drive at a newly remodeled suite in the Radium Springs Shopping Center.

“We’ll be closer to Albany State, and I don’t expect to have the landlord problems I’ve had in the past,” he says. “We’re going to cater to the colleges in the area — ASU, Albany Tech, Darton and the others — and we’re going to operate our hours around the football season.”

Kenneth McAfee, a former cook at Albany’s Wings ’n’ Things who left that job because he was convinced that Morris would make a go of his venture, Curtiz Lewis and Morris’ sister, Helen Morris, cook up the specialties at X- Treme Wings. Amanda Kail is the cashier, and Arlisha King takes care of business matters.

“Zay used to eat with me at Wings ’n’ Things, and he always said when he opened his own restaurant he wanted me to come work with him,” McAfee said. “I always said I was ready when he was, and here it is five years later and here I am. I like the atmosphere here.”

Lewis, who’s been cooking with Morris for 22 years, and Helen Morris also contribute to X-Treme Wings’ ever- expanding menu that also includes sandwiches, salads, to- die-for baked beans and the infamous deep-fried bologna sanwich.

“There were four young girls in here laughing about the bologna sandwich on the menu and I overheard them,” Xavier Morris said. “I brought them a sample, and the next few days they were in here every day ordering one.”

The move to the Radium Shopping Center is just one move the energetic Morris has planned. Next up is a concession trailer that will make his business portable, and he’s in talks with an associate to open a sports bar at the former Harvest buffet location on Dawson Road.

But probably closest to Morris’ heart is his dream of one day opening a barbecue restaurant he plans to call Billy Boy’s.

“I want to do that for my brother,” he said. “He never gave up on our dream to the day he died, and I want to keep that dream alive. I’ve got a helluva crew here, and I think big. I dream big.”

That, Helen Morris says, is what has always been expected of her baby brother.

“Growing up, our daddy always said ‘That boy’s going to make something of himself’,” she said with a touch of family pride.

As he’s shown with his efforts so far, only the foolhardy would bet against him doing just that.

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