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Buffalo - Part 2
More than just Buffalo Chicken Wings
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Dominick discovers all of the cultural and culinary diversity that Buffalo has to offer.
Saturday
Saturday was the 'Taste of Buffalo' food festival, which is, as the name implies, a gluttonous feast. For about a two-mile stretch of Main Street in downtown Buffalo, various venders are lined up downtown letting the public try the culinary wares. First, you start off by buying a book of tickets, which can be redeemed for the various dishes. Each ticket costs 50 cents, and the entrees range from two to six tickets. No tax or tip to worry about -- just give them your ticket and move on.
Taste of Buffalo does a great job of showing off the various types of foods found in Buffalo. It ranges from the typical Buffalo Chicken Wings, but also a few Portobello Mushroom dishes, Indian, Thai, Cajun, Italian, Seafood and more ... quite a range is displayed in the festival.
Overall, the festival is a great experience showing off a sampling of the culinary world Buffalo has to offer. Too often, people look at Buffalo as just a "chicken wing" town, which it is, but it certainly has dozens of other types of restaurants ranging from the baseball game type of fare to restaurants like Oliver's and beyond. If you want affluent, you can get it here. If you want greasy and drippy, you can get it here, too.
Anyway, after we filled up on a ridiculous amount of food, we went over for a tour of the Shea's Performing Arts Center. The Shea first opened its doors on January 16, 1926, as a movie and vaudeville house and has showcased such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, the Marx Brothers and Bob Hope. The theater has undergone a major restoration to bring it to the point in its past of when it had just opened. Architecturally alone, the lobby and hall are worth a visit -- the shows are a plus right there.
Go to the Shea Center to check out the ceilings, the chandeliers and the beautiful molding. There are certain parts of this theater where you can literally spin around and feel you have gone back in time to the 1920s.
We went back to the Hyatt, which is pretty convenient for such tours, because like a wagon wheel you can jump around the spoke from the center of downtown.
We changed in the hotel and then ran off to a new restaurant along Elmwood Ave called Nektar. Elmwood Ave seems to be the hubbub of activity for the area. New York City has Greenwich Village, San Francisco has, well, most of San Francisco to be hip, and Buffalo has Elmwood Ave.
Nektar advertises itself as a Martini bar but it lies. Lies, lies, lies. Yes, it serves martini's in martini glasses, but it serves quite a bit of varieties which take you to the land of cocktails. The real reason to go there, though, is for a drink and its flatbread. In the center of the bar, (in front of the restaurant), they have a wood-burning stove where they make flatbreads as you speak. What is a flatbread? Again, lies, lies, lies. A flatbread is essentially a European pizza, and a perfect version at that. Yes, it's bread, and yes, it's flat, but to me that implies, "The free thing they give you before you order dinner at a nice restaurant." This is a European style of pizza. As for the fresh part, the Chef literally makes it right in front of you. If you want more basil, just point and grunt. If you want more cheese, do the same. If you want more Ragu sauce, don't point, this isn't that type of place.
Anyway, as another juxtapositions of extremes, to follow that theme, we went from dinner to the steak house, Pettibones, which is located right in Dunn Tire Ball park, home of the AAA Buffalo Bison's baseball team. On its own, the restaurant can stand up quite nicely. Being located just off right field with a perfect view of the game, it has a great location. If you're going to go to the baseball game, I highly suggest heading here. Why? The prices are reasonable and priced comparable to their competitors outside of the stadium. The plus is that you get a good meal, right next to the game, and you get to see the players warm up right there.
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AAA Baseball's Buffalo Bisons | |
As for the game, it was much more exciting than some of the best major league games we've seen. The players have a passion and interest in the game that hasn't been lost by any coldness that might come from high stakes contract negotiations. They seem to be there to have fun and enjoy themselves much more then just fighting for their next salary raise. The fans really are into it and know all of the players as well as any major league audience feels about their teams.
Read part 1 | Read part 3 | Read part 4
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