What makes Buffalo-style pizza different
Not New York. Not Detroit. Not Chicago. Buffalo quietly developed its own pizza style, and the rest of the country only started noticing in the last few years.
The Steer Journal
We have been feeding this neighborhood on Main Street for a long time, and people ask us the same questions on repeat. What is beef on weck, actually. Why does Buffalo lose its mind over a fish fry. How far ahead do you have to book a room for forty people. So we started writing the answers down.
Buffalo Food
The dishes this city argues about, explained by the people who cook them.
The National Buffalo Wing Festival, explained
Two days, dozens of vendors, and a great many chicken wings at Sahlen Field. A short guide to doing it properly — and to what happens in this city the rest of the year.
A Western New York food glossary
Buffalo has an entire private vocabulary for food, and locals use it without noticing. If you have just moved here, this is the decoder ring.
What is beef on weck?
A roast beef sandwich on a salted, caraway-topped roll, dipped in its own juice. Easy to describe, nearly impossible to find outside Western New York, and very easy to get wrong.
Why Buffalo eats fish fry all year, not just during Lent
Most American cities do fish fry for the six weeks of Lent. Buffalo does it every Friday of the year. The reason is a rule the Catholic Church quietly changed in the 1960s — and a city that never got the memo.
The Buffalo wing origin story doesn't add up
Every Buffalo restaurant repeats the same 1964 invention story. Newspaper ads from the year before contradict it, the family told it two incompatible ways, and another Buffalo restaurateur has a claim that went ignored for fifty years.
What is a Stinger?
Steak and chicken fingers. On the same roll. With hot sauce and bleu cheese. Buffalo's least reasonable sandwich is also one of its best, and nobody can agree on who started it.
The Neighborhood
University Heights, Main Street, and the rest of our corner of Buffalo.
Date night in Buffalo: planning dinner for two
A good date night is mostly logistics done quietly. Here is how to plan one at a Main Street steakhouse and saloon, including what to order when one of you eats steak and the other does not.
Dinner before a show in Buffalo: how to plan the evening
Pre-theater dinner fails for one reason: people plan forward from the reservation instead of backward from the curtain. Here is the backward version, with honest travel times from our end of Main Street.
Patio season in Buffalo is short. Use it.
Roughly five months, and the city treats every one of those evenings as a limited-time offer. There is a reason Buffalo patios fill the first genuinely warm day of the year.
Dinner without a car: eating along the Metro Rail
Buffalo is a driving city with one significant exception. The Metro Rail runs the length of Main Street, and if you plan around it you can have a full night out without anyone volunteering to stay sober.
Where to take visiting family near UB
Your parents are in town for two days and they want to take you somewhere that is not a dining hall. This is the problem, and it recurs about four times a year.
Where to watch the Bills in University Heights
Not everyone can get to Orchard Park, and honestly not everyone should. A guide to doing a Bills Sunday properly from the north side of the city.
What's actually open late in Buffalo
Erie County has one of the latest last calls in New York State. That does not mean you can get dinner at midnight. Understanding the gap between bar hours and kitchen hours is the whole game.
Eating in University Heights
The stretch of Main Street around UB South Campus is one of the few Buffalo neighborhoods where you can get off a train and walk to dinner. Here is how it actually works.
Private Events
Practical guides to booking a room, feeding a crowd, and not losing your mind.
Banquet hall or restaurant private room? How to choose in Buffalo
People search for banquet halls when what they need is a room for forty with a kitchen attached. Here is the honest difference, and the guest count where the answer flips.
Planning a bridal shower at a Buffalo restaurant
The maid of honor gets the job, the cost is split three ways, and the bride wants it to feel like her. Here is how to plan a shower in a private room, from the date to the mimosas.
Planning a First Communion or christening luncheon in Buffalo
Buffalo runs on parish calendars. Every spring the communion luncheons arrive in a wave, and baptisms come around all year. Here is how to book the meal after the sacrament.
Booking a private room for a corporate dinner in Buffalo
Client dinners, team dinners, the end of a quarter. The company is paying and somebody's assistant is organizing. Here is what to settle before the calendar invite goes out.
Planning a youth sports team banquet in Buffalo
Hockey, soccer, lacrosse, baseball: every season in Western New York ends with a banquet, and one parent gets handed the job. Here is how to run it without a spreadsheet meltdown.
Planning a baby shower at a Buffalo restaurant
A restaurant shower means nobody cooks, nobody cleans, and the host gets to attend her own party. Here is how to plan one, from the invitations to the questions to ask before you put a deposit down.
Planning a banquet menu for vegan and non-vegan guests
Feeding forty people where six are vegan is not a special case any more. It is most events. Here is the host's checklist, from the RSVP question to the call with the kitchen.
How to compare banquet quotes in Buffalo
Two quotes for the same party can differ by hundreds of dollars and still be the same price. Here is how to put them on one page, what each line means, and what our own banquet terms actually say.
Planning a retirement party in Buffalo: dinner, speeches, and guests
A retirement party has two audiences in one room and a speech schedule nobody planned. Here is a timeline that keeps both under control.
20, 50, or 100 guests: how to size a room
The single most useful thing to get right when booking a private event is matching the headcount to the room. Get it wrong in either direction and the evening feels off before anyone eats.
Booking a birthday dinner for a big group
A birthday dinner for six is a reservation. A birthday dinner for sixteen is a logistics exercise, and the difference catches people out every time.
Booking a company holiday party in Buffalo
If you are reading this in December, you are late. The good December dates in Buffalo go in October, and the people who book them are the same people every year.
Planning a funeral luncheon in Buffalo
You are usually arranging this in two or three days, while handling everything else. This is the practical information, laid out plainly, so you can make the calls and move on.
Booking a UB graduation dinner
Six thousand graduates, each with a family, all trying to eat within a few miles of campus on the same weekend. Booking early is not optional.
How to plan a rehearsal dinner in Buffalo
It is the one wedding event nobody researches until late, and the one people remember most fondly. Smaller, louder, and considerably more relaxed than the wedding itself.
From the Kitchen
How we actually cook it, and why we do it that way.
Vegan comfort food in Buffalo: what to order when you want a full meal
Not the argument for why a steakhouse has a vegan menu. The ordering guide: what each plant-based dish is made of, what it tastes like, how filling it is, and which one to pick tonight.
How to read a Buffalo beer list
A tap list is a menu that assumes you already know things. Here is what the words mean, what Western New York is actually good at, and how to order without guessing.
Taking kids out to eat in Buffalo
Every restaurant says it is family friendly. What that means in practice varies enormously, and you find out about forty minutes in.
Eating gluten-free at a steakhouse
A steakhouse should be an easy win if you avoid gluten. It usually is — but the traps are not where people expect, and most restaurants are vague about the one thing that matters.
What's actually on a saloon cocktail list
Cocktail lists have a way of making people order the same thing forever. Here is what the classics actually taste like, and which Buffalo drink you cannot get anywhere else.
A steakhouse with a real vegan menu
Most steakhouses hand vegans a plate of vegetables and call it hospitality. We think that is a failure of imagination, and we have the lentil meatloaf to prove it.
How we cook steak over wood fire
Wood burns hotter and dirtier than gas, and dirty is the point. A short explanation of what actually happens to a steak over a live fire, and how to order one properly.
3151 Main Street · Buffalo, NY