The plates that define Buffalo: what they are, and where to eat the canonical version.
The plates that define Buffalo. what they are, where they came from, and where to eat the canonical version.
Deep-fried unbreaded chicken wings tossed in butter and Frank's RedHot, served with celery sticks and blue-cheese dressing. The signature Buffalo dish, invented at Anchor Bar in 1964.
Where: Anchor Bar, Duff's Famous Wings, Gabriel's Gate, La Nova Pizzeria, Bocce Club Pizza
Price: $13-22 (10-piece order)
Thin-sliced rare roast beef piled on a kummelweck roll (a Kaiser-style roll topped with caraway seeds and pretzel salt), the top half dipped in beef au jus and served with horseradish.
Where: Schwabl's, Charlie the Butcher's Kitchen, Duff's Famous Wings, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Price: $12-18
A Buffalo specialty confection: golden honeycomb toffee aerated with baking soda, then dipped in dark or milk chocolate. The honeycomb is brittle, melts on the tongue and has a hollow lattice inside.
Where: Watson's Chocolates (Elmwood), Fowler's Chocolates, Parkside Candy
Price: $8-15 (per pound)
Deep-fried Polish doughnuts stuffed with rose-hip jam, prune butter, custard or raspberry filling, dusted in sugar. Eaten on Fat Tuesday (Polish Mardi Gras) and Easter season at Buffalo Polish bakeries.
Where: Broadway Market, Paula's Donuts (Williamsville), Paula's Donuts (Sheridan Drive)
Price: $3-5 (per paczki)
A regional pizza style with cup-and-char pepperoni (the rounds curl up and char at the edges), a slightly thicker crust than New York style and Buffalo Sahlen's-brand cup pepperoni from Western New York.
Where: La Nova Pizzeria, Bocce Club Pizza, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Price: $15-22 (large pizza)
Hand-breaded haddock or beer-battered fish, deep-fried and served with German potato salad, coleslaw, rye bread and tartar sauce. A Buffalo Catholic Lenten staple available year-round at most taverns, peak through Lent.
Where: Wiechec's Lounge, Schwabl's, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Price: $15-25
A Sahlen's-brand frankfurter charcoal-broiled to order, served on a soft roll with Ted's homemade hot chili sauce, mustard, onion and pickle. Buffalo's signature regional hot dog since 1927.
Where: Ted's Hot Dogs
Price: $5-9
Polish smoked pork sausage and stuffed dumplings, typically with potato-cheese, sauerkraut-mushroom or farmer-cheese fillings, served pan-fried with butter and onion. A Buffalo East Side Polish-American staple.
Where: Broadway Market Pierogi Vendors, Wiechec's Lounge
Price: $10-18
Spaghetti baked with marinara sauce and a thick blanket of mozzarella and Parmesan, served as the canonical Buffalo Italian-American dish. The version at Chef's Restaurant downtown is the model.
Where: Chef's Restaurant, Ristorante Lombardo, Tappo Italian
Price: $14-22
A non-carbonated raspberry-and-blackberry-hybrid fruit drink, deep red and sweet-tart, served from the soda fountain at Buffalo hot dog stands and taco counters. The local soft drink of Western New York.
Where: Ted's Hot Dogs, Mighty Taco, Anchor Bar, Broadway Market
Price: $2-4 (per fountain pour)
Deep-fried unbreaded chicken wings tossed in butter and Frank's RedHot, served with celery sticks and blue-cheese dressing. The signature Buffalo dish, invented at Anchor Bar in 1964.
History: Teressa Bellissimo of Anchor Bar at 1047 Main Street fried a batch of chicken wings late one Friday night in 1964 for her son Dominic and his friends. She tossed them in butter and Frank's RedHot Cayenne Pepper Sauce and served them with celery sticks and blue-cheese dressing from the salad bar. The dish spread from Anchor Bar to Duff's (1969 wing addition) and then nationwide, becoming an American institution.
Where to try it: Anchor Bar, Duff's Famous Wings, Gabriel's Gate, La Nova Pizzeria, Bocce Club Pizza
Watch out for: Egg, Dairy
Thin-sliced rare roast beef piled on a kummelweck roll (a Kaiser-style roll topped with caraway seeds and pretzel salt), the top half dipped in beef au jus and served with horseradish.
History: Beef on weck is Buffalo's other native dish, with Schwabl's in West Seneca serving it since 1837. German immigrant bakers brought the kummelweck roll (kummel for caraway, weck for the Austrian-German word for roll) and the city built a sandwich around it. Charlie the Butcher in Williamsville and Eckl's in Orchard Park run the suburban canonical versions; Bar Bill in East Aurora is the day-trip favorite.
Where to try it: Schwabl's, Charlie the Butcher's Kitchen, Duff's Famous Wings, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Watch out for: Gluten, Mustard (in horseradish)
A Buffalo specialty confection: golden honeycomb toffee aerated with baking soda, then dipped in dark or milk chocolate. The honeycomb is brittle, melts on the tongue and has a hollow lattice inside.
History: Buffalo sponge candy traces to Fowler's Chocolates, which has made it since 1910, with Watson's Chocolates (1946) and Parkside Candy (1927) the other canonical makers. The chocolate-covered honeycomb toffee is a Buffalo-Niagara regional confection that rarely shows up outside Western New York, anchoring the city's gift-shop and holiday-confection trade.
Where to try it: Watson's Chocolates (Elmwood), Fowler's Chocolates, Parkside Candy
Watch out for: Dairy (milk chocolate), Soy lecithin (in chocolate)
Deep-fried Polish doughnuts stuffed with rose-hip jam, prune butter, custard or raspberry filling, dusted in sugar. Eaten on Fat Tuesday (Polish Mardi Gras) and Easter season at Buffalo Polish bakeries.
History: Paczki are Polish Lenten doughnuts traditionally eaten on Tlusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday) and Ostatki (Fat Tuesday) before Lent. Polish immigrants brought the tradition to Buffalo's East Side in the late 19th century. Broadway Market bakeries Chrusciki and White Eagle carry the tradition, with Mazurek's now wholesale-only after closing its storefront. Fat Tuesday paczki orders run into the thousands.
Where to try it: Broadway Market, Paula's Donuts (Williamsville), Paula's Donuts (Sheridan Drive)
Watch out for: Gluten, Egg, Dairy
A regional pizza style with cup-and-char pepperoni (the rounds curl up and char at the edges), a slightly thicker crust than New York style and Buffalo Sahlen's-brand cup pepperoni from Western New York.
History: Buffalo-style pizza developed alongside the city's wings and Italian-American culture, with La Nova (1957) and Bocce Club Pizza (Bailey Avenue, 1959 location) the canonical homes. The cup-and-char pepperoni is the regional signature: the small cured pepperoni rounds curl into cups and char at the edges in the high-heat oven.
Where to try it: La Nova Pizzeria, Bocce Club Pizza, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
Hand-breaded haddock or beer-battered fish, deep-fried and served with German potato salad, coleslaw, rye bread and tartar sauce. A Buffalo Catholic Lenten staple available year-round at most taverns, peak through Lent.
History: Western New York's heavy Catholic population (Polish, German, Irish, Italian immigrants) built the Friday fish fry tradition around Lenten meatless Fridays. The dish predates the wing by decades and remains the city's most-ordered Friday-night dinner from mid-February through Easter. Wiechec's, Romanello's and corner-tavern fish fries anchor the tradition.
Where to try it: Wiechec's Lounge, Schwabl's, Pearl Street Grill and Brewery
Watch out for: Gluten, Fish
A Sahlen's-brand frankfurter charcoal-broiled to order, served on a soft roll with Ted's homemade hot chili sauce, mustard, onion and pickle. Buffalo's signature regional hot dog since 1927.
History: Greek immigrant Theodore Spiro Liaros opened Ted's Hot Dogs on March 24, 1927 in Buffalo. The Sheridan Drive location opened in 1948 and became the flagship. The Sahlen's frankfurter, the charcoal-broil technique and the homemade hot chili sauce are the canonical Buffalo hot dog combination, still family-owned across nine Western New York locations.
Where to try it: Ted's Hot Dogs
Watch out for: Gluten, Mustard
Polish smoked pork sausage and stuffed dumplings, typically with potato-cheese, sauerkraut-mushroom or farmer-cheese fillings, served pan-fried with butter and onion. A Buffalo East Side Polish-American staple.
History: Polish immigrants settled Buffalo's East Side from the 1880s, building the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood and the Broadway Market (1888) as the anchor. The kielbasa and pierogi tradition survives at Wardynski's Famous Meats, Broadway Market vendors and the city's Polish festivals (Dyngus Day on Easter Monday, Polish-American Arts Festival).
Where to try it: Broadway Market Pierogi Vendors, Wiechec's Lounge
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
Spaghetti baked with marinara sauce and a thick blanket of mozzarella and Parmesan, served as the canonical Buffalo Italian-American dish. The version at Chef's Restaurant downtown is the model.
History: Chef's Restaurant at the corner of Seneca and Chicago downtown opened in 1923 and built Buffalo's signature Italian-American spaghetti parm. Lou Billittier became sole owner in 1954 and the Billittier family carried the room for a century. The dish is now a Buffalo institution and the canonical version a generation of locals associate with downtown.
Where to try it: Chef's Restaurant, Ristorante Lombardo, Tappo Italian
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
A non-carbonated raspberry-and-blackberry-hybrid fruit drink, deep red and sweet-tart, served from the soda fountain at Buffalo hot dog stands and taco counters. The local soft drink of Western New York.
History: The loganberry drink originated at the Crystal Beach Amusement Park on the Ontario shore of Lake Erie, where Buffalo families crossed by ferry from 1888 to 1989. The fruit, a California-bred raspberry and blackberry hybrid from the 1880s, was blended with sugar syrup and water as a hot-day cooler. Two Buffalo brands still pour it: Aunt Rosie's, launched 1987 by Pepsi-Cola Buffalo Bottling, and PJ's Crystal Beach, which slowly overtook Aunt Rosie's in recent years. Johnnie Ryan from Niagara Falls bottles the cane-sugar version Mighty Taco runs on every fountain.
Where to try it: Ted's Hot Dogs, Mighty Taco, Anchor Bar, Broadway Market
Buffalo's signature dishes include Buffalo chicken wings, Beef on weck, Sponge candy, Paczki, Buffalo-style pizza (cup-and-char pepperoni). See our signature dishes chapter for where to eat each.