Buffalo's public transit gets underestimated, mostly because there is exactly one rail line and people assume one line cannot be useful. But that line runs up Main Street from the waterfront to the University at Buffalo's South Campus, which happens to be the exact corridor where a lot of the city's eating and drinking is.
If you live along it, or you are visiting and staying near it, it changes what an evening can look like.
Why it matters more than it sounds
Three reasons, in ascending order of importance.
Parking stops being a factor. Not a small thing downtown on an event night, and not a small thing near campus during the school year.
Winter. Buffalo winters do things to street parking that have to be experienced. A train that runs regardless is worth a great deal in February.
Nobody has to be the designated driver. This is the real one. A group that can take the train to dinner is a group where everyone gets to have a drink, and that quietly improves the whole evening.
The best thing about the Metro Rail is not the ride. It is that nobody at the table has to volunteer.
The stretch worth knowing
The northern end of the line — the University Heights section — is the most useful for eating, because the stations sit right among the restaurants rather than a walk away from them.
The LaSalle and University stations bracket the stretch of Main Street where most of the neighborhood's food is, and the walk between the two is short enough that you can get off at either and be fine. That is unusual for Buffalo — a stretch where the transit and the restaurants are genuinely co-located rather than theoretically near each other. More on the neighborhood itself in our guide to eating in University Heights.
Further south the line runs through downtown, past the arena and the ballpark, which makes it the sensible way to handle a Sabres game or anything at Sahlen Field. For a show at Shea's, dinner up here first has its own arithmetic.
Practical notes
- Check the last train. Service does not run all night, and Buffalo bars can. If you are planning a late one, know your last departure or have a fallback — bar hours and transit hours do not match, much like bar hours and kitchen hours do not match.
- The downtown portion is at street level and free through the surface section; the northern portion is underground and fared. Worth knowing before you are standing at a machine.
- Give yourself margin in bad weather. The train handles snow better than the roads, but the walk at either end still exists.
- It is a good airport-hotel-dinner chain if you are visiting and staying downtown but eating up north.
Visitors, especially
If you have family in town — for a graduation, a wedding, a hospital stay — the train solves the rental car problem entirely for the evening. This comes up constantly with families visiting UB, where campus parking during a big weekend is its own ordeal and the train is simply better.
An extension north toward UB's North Campus has been studied and would meaningfully change the northern end of the line. Construction timelines have moved before and will move again, so treat it as something to watch rather than something to plan around.
Where we are on it
We are at 3151 Main Street, in the middle of the University Heights stretch, walkable from the Metro and from South Campus. Which means you can get here from downtown without a car, eat properly, have a drink, and get home the same way.
Directions and hours are on the contact page. We are a stop up the line from most of the city, and the bar runs to 2am Thursday through Saturday — check your last train before you commit to that.