In college, I had the pleasure of working as a hostess in a premier New York City steakhouse known as much for its baby-sized gruyere popovers, served warm at the start of each meal, as its extravagant cuts of dry-aged black angus. At a media preview of SEAR, downtown Buffalo’s newest restaurant concept, I was surprised to find the popovers, and the refined steakhouse concept of which they were emblematic, had made their way to Buffalo by way of Chef J.T. Nicholson’s menu. Lest anyone be wary of a steakhouse modified by the word refined, rest assured the menu doesn’t…
Author: Caitlin Hartney
Gorgeous is not the way I would describe most dining experiences, but it is an adjective perfectly befitting my recent experience at Lait Cru Brasserie—the charming, wonderfully intimate but wholly unfussy French restaurant inside the Horsefeathers Building on Connecticut Street. Like any good brasserie, Lait Cru serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I made a point of stopping in to check out Le Soir (evening)n menu, when the sandwiches, tarts, and pastries of the day give way to hors d’ouevres and composed entrees. Lait Cru had me from the thoughtful wine list forward, where I found not one but three…
New local dining venue Patina 250, located on the ground floor of Delaware North headquarters at Delaware Avenue and Chippewa Street, will open to the public for dinner on Wednesday, September 14. Patina 250 is operated by Patina Restaurant Group, a subsidiary of Delaware North, making it the first Buffalo restaurant by the hospitality and food service behemoth. While the food and bar menus have yet to be finalized, guests can expect twists on and reverent nods to local favorites as well as dishes that showcase the restaurant’s cherry and oak wood-fired grill. In practice, that translates to house-made potato…
You might be tempted to believe Viking Lobster Company is closed for business when you first drive by it. Located at the corner of Tonawanda and Austin Streets, inside a repurposed, three-story home, it doesn’t show many signs of life from the outside. But press on, despite any initial misgivings. We did on a recent Friday night and were pleasantly surprised by our experience. After taking a few pauses to figure out which door to enter (the one at the top of the rough-hewn ramp!), we made our way to a time capsule of a dining room that portended the…
Last week, when a coworker and I were discussing places he could take his mother for dinner, we made mention of the obvious (to us), surefire venues—The Black Sheep, Ristorante Lombardo, Marble + Rye—and the less-top-of-mind but worth consideration, like Osteria 166, Coco, and Bacchus. One place that did not dawn on either of us, even for a hot moment, was Panorama on Seven, the restaurant in the Marriot at HARBORCENTER. Since that conversation, I had the opportunity to sample some of the dishes off Panorama’s new summer menu at the invitation of the restaurant’s director of food and beverage.…
After his family’s decades-old, Transit Road restaurant, Carmine’s, burned to the ground last year, Michael Jacobbi took the opportunity to capitalize on Buffalo’s continuing momentum to open a new operation within city limits. That restaurant, Giacobbi’s Cucina Citta, served its first meal to downtown patrons in late May. Located on Allen Street near Franklin, in a no-frills space formerly occupied by Presto, Giacobbi’s dishes up homey Italian-American fare in belly-filling portions. The menu is made navigable by a system of categories that includes small plates, meatballs, pasta, salads, breads, zuppa, artisan pizza, and entrees. Bread service is not complimentary at…
Billy Club, a handsome restaurant with a modern speakeasy vibe, is Allen Street’s newest addition, and a welcome one at that. Located just across the street from its aesthetic and atmospheric antithesis, Brick Bar, Billy Club offers a tightly curated food menu of eight small plates, five entrées,* and three desserts that is perfectly in line with its charmingly diminutive, minimalist interior. I happened by just a week into service to see what’s what and was charmed immediately by my pre-dinner cocktail, Proofing Water ($10), which boasted Scotch, Chartreuse, dry vermouth, and tea pot bitters. A highly competent bar program…
In a work-related brainstorming session to come up with a comprehensive list of craft cocktail bars in the area, I nearly came to blows with one colleague who tried to veto my addition of Més Que. “I don’t really think of Més Que as a cocktail bar,” he rapped in a dismissive tone. Despite my insistence that Més Que is, in fact, one of the best craft cocktail bars in Buffalo (and among my personal top-three favorites), he would not reconsider his notion. I won’t burden you with the gory details of what ensued, but let’s just say that I…
On a sun-soaked summer day in Western New York, it’s hard to resist the lure of the charbroiled hot dog stand. And often—maybe too often—the temptation to indulge in one of Buffalo’s premier summer culinary traditions has us fleeing the city for the likes of Old Man River, Mississippi Mudd’s, the oldest-surviving and definitively best Ted’s (the one on Sheridan Drive in Tonawanda), or any of the other burger-and-footlong joints in suburbs to the north, east, and south. I am not about to suggest that you don’t go to these places. They are nostalgia-inducing and awesome, and well-worth the drive…
Step inside Nye Park Tavern, and you’ll be hard pressed to believe that, less than a year ago, it was operating as Papa Jake’s—a popular tavern known for its deep-fried pub grub and distinctly divey atmosphere. Since purchasing the business, owner Mark Hutchinson—who also has a hand in Hutch’s, Tempo, and Remington Tavern—has thoroughly sterilized the interior. What was once dark is now light soaked, thanks to a bank of uncovered, east-facing windows. Booths that previously cramped the space have been removed. And every wall received a fresh coat of blue-gray paint that handsomely contrasts with the dark woodwork of…