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Mira, the broadly Mediterranean restaurant opening on Elmwood Avenue next week, is Buffalo’s most-anticipated restaurant in years. Exhibit 1: Last week, in the first 45 minutes reservations were open, 600 parties booked tables, said chef-owner Manuel Ocasio. Service begins Nov. 6. Ocasio and pastry chef Gina Nalbone are newlyweds with restaurant skills honed in some […]

Making bare commercial restaurant space feel homey is an art. Walking into DaNando for the first time, I took in the view: gilded mable-topped tables, mirrors in ornate baroque frames, and golden pillars topped by leafy plants, and thought, “this looks like an Italian grandmother’s house.” My second thought was “Someone’s trying too hard.” Then […]

Buffalo Restaurant week suggestions, Big Big Table fundraiser Oct. 17 If apple cider season is your favorite time of year, you need to know about Cherry Bank Farm Cider Mill. Since 1948, three generations of the Kelsch family have made cider pressed from neighboring orchards’ bounty in Sanborn. Dale Kelsch is running the show these […]

Pawpaws for sale in Eden, Raise the Roots and Pepper Palooza coming up You could say Rebeca Fong-Reynolds has ice cream in her genes. “My whole life, my dad Ernesto has been obsessed with ice cream,” she said. “My mom comes from Alausi, the second most famous town in Ecuador for helados, ice cream popsicles.” […]

At Old First Ward Community Center, Sept. 27 is time for art Old First Ward Arts and Heritage Festival’s third edition kicks off noon Saturday, Sept. 27 for a free day of art, music, and food demonstrations. Ten local bands are playing throughout the day. Fifteen art and music workshops, including Buffalo Improv, bookmaking, the […]

Join Providence Farms community potluck Saturday, Kith & Kin for gluten-free If you savor local flavor in general, or dry cider specifically, The Cider Project ought to be your cup of tea. Dry cider made from apples grown within 15 miles of Buffalo, Cider Project was born when a Buffalo girl had to stop drinking […]

Reiner and Galarneau in conversation at The Rails apartment complex Restaurant crews that survived the Covid pandemic are coping with a new horror that is making them reconsider their life choices: customers who apparently lost all memory of how you should behave in a restaurant. There have always been hard-to-please people. Since the world reopened, […]

Ian Evans and Jon Litz found themselves leaving Las Vegas to spend more time with their families in Buffalo. After they moved home, they figured, why not start with juice? Today, Immersion Juice offers fresh cold-pressed juice from organic fruit, vegetables, and herbs in Buffalo’s Ellicott Square Building, and its Orchard Park location. Plus Hamburg […]

Galarneau live in Springville, Buffalo; borek at Flat 12, actually Parker’s Great British Institution, known mainly for sausage rolls and savory pies in the British tradition, has figured out how to deliver legit fish and chips nationwide via parcel delivery services. Atlantic cod is dredged in batter and fried to almost-done, then flash-frozen, along with […]

Art’s Cafe in Springville hosts me to hold forth on Four Bites, cheese-pulls, and more When I returned to Buffalo in 1997 to accept a reporting job at The Buffalo News, I thought I had a job for life. Everyone in the newsroom did. Fortunately, in 2000 the English Department at the University at Buffalo, […]

Persian restaurant opens in Amherst, where to eat Balkan cevapi Saturdays through October, an international farmers’ market sprouts in the parking lot of the M&T Bank parking lot at 130 Grant St. Founded in Orchard Park in 2019, Providence Farm Collective has given immigrant farmers a way to return to the land, feed their families, […]

Bye’s Popcorn is back in Olcott Beach, vegan that delivers in Niagara Falls Take a ride on an apple-powered time machine to revel in the fantastic flavors of great-grandma’s apples. Last year, six basic flavors made up 87.5 percent of American apples. None of them are bad. Except for Red Delicious, of course. They’re just, […]

She Gathers platforms women in food in North Tonawanda, Buffalo places visitors should hit When you want to give the gift of chocolate, you probably know where to buy sponge candy. But where can you find a chocolate labubu with a heart of Dubai chocolate? Recently popular in the United States, Dubai chocolate is a […]

Conchas are back, 16th St. Mary’s Egyptian Festival approached in North Tonawanda Scott Gypson moved to Nashville to launch his musical career, and toured the nation for a decade, as a professional bassist. After getting a whiff of barbecue cooking, he ended up switching his outlet for creative expression and people-pleasing. Now you can get […]

Learn to make ice cream at Waxlight, or hit Lake Effect Ice Cream’s pint sale Today is the last day for the 2025 Niagara County Fair, which will be remembered for diverse reasons by the 50,000 or so people who have visited the Lockport fairgrounds. I’ll remember 2025 as the year the fair brought Burmese […]