When the voting closed on Feb. 8, Rick Dahms thought he had fallen just short of victory.

For the previous four weeks, he had been battling it out online through a local radio station's Web site to achieve chicken wing supremacy in Chicagoland.

Now his Off Broadway Pub, in Brookfield, was in the final two. And, as online voting closed at noon on that fateful Monday, he was trailing The Fifty/50, a Chicago sports bar, by four percentage points.

At 2 p.m., sitting nervously in his car, he tuned into The Score, the sports talk radio station, for the official announcement of just who had the best wings in Chicago. Dahms hadn't been counting on the text-message votes. Off Broadway ended up beating The Fifty/50 by 200 votes, courtesy of text messagers.

"I was a little nervous, because of being 4 percent down," said Dahms, a resident of LaGrange Park. "That's kind of hard to make up."

The prize for winning? Well, apart from the warm glow of victory, Dahms said that as the contest continued and Off Broadway survived the early rounds, business began picking up.

"Actually I'm very overwhelmed," Dahms said. "It took a couple of weeks to get going, but the last couple of weeks we've been up in business."

Chicken wings have been a menu favorite at Off Broadway for 18 years. When Dahms bought the business eight years ago, he knew to leave well enough alone.

"If it isn't broke, don't fix it," said Dahms of Off Broadway's wings.

Dahms said he became involved in the contest simply by picking up his phone. The contest director at The Score called around to local places to gauge interest in being part of the contest, and he agreed.

In addition to The Fifty/50, another independent business like Off Broadway, he was up against some corporate behemoths in the wings trade - Buffalo Wild Wings and the Wing Stop, which also made it to the final four.

Making it the semifinals came with another nerve-wracking experience - a live afternoon drive-time radio interview with Score hosts, Terry Boers and Dan Bernstein.

"My nerves were a little rambunctious," Dahms said. "That three minutes felt like 15."

But Dahms got some unsolicited support from Bernstein who told him, "I don't want to steer the voting, but I thought Off Broadway had one damn fine wing."

Dahms sent out e-mail blasts and text messages to customers to tell them about the contest and urging them to vote. He also made sure customers at the business also voted. And it wasn't like he could just have customers stuff the ballot box; only one vote per computer or phone number was accepted.

"It wasn't like your normal Cook County voting," Dahms joked.

Dahms said he's working on a "wing sling" to thank customers who voted Off Broadway the best wings in the city, though details haven't been worked out.