SUNDAY NEWS: Alibaba Kebab adds 4th on Transit Road, Amherst

*Anand Kattu’s sons held the ceremonial ribbon for cutting at the Transit Road grand opening of Alibaba Kebab.*

Quick-serve Indian restaurant Alibaba Kebab opened its fourth location last week, in Premier Plaza on Transit Road in Amherst.

Serial entrepreneur Anand Kattu rolled the dice on his first restaurant at 900 Williams St., at Fillmore, with the Buffalo Central Terminal on the horizon. That was 2017. It turned out that people were willing to drive to the East Side for fresh garlic naan, butter chicken, and rice boxes lavished with garlic mayonnaise and mint chutney.

In a time where most restaurant concepts are stable or shrinking, Alibaba Kebab aimed for the convenience food market, offering a robust online ordering system and staying open until midnight for munchies seekers.

Kattu seems to be on to something. Alibaba Kebab number two opened at 827 Military Road, Kenmore, in 2023. Store number three at 1100 Southwestern Blvd., West Seneca, in 2024.

“Anand, like so many people from other countries, came to America 24 years ago looking for a better opportunity,” said marketing manager Chris DelPrince. “Like every entrepreneur that comes here with nothing, they try many businesses and try to survive.”

Kattu said his expansion of Alibaba Kebab was deliberately slow, to ensure proper customer service at new locations. Before they open a new restaurant, Alibaba Kebab cooks work together at other locations, getting training and experience that new customers at the new location aren’t being served by brand new cooks.

After all, Alibaba Kebab has a reputation to uphold, he said. “We want to make sure you get the same quality wherever you go.”

*Clockwise from top: deep-fried pork hock, shrimp sinagang, roast pork belly in peanut kare-kare, pork and squash pinkabet, at Lutong Pinoy.*

REVIEW: A snowball’s throw from the northern terminus of the Nexus bridge to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Lutong Pinoy offers a brilliant broad-spectrum array of Filipino cooking in a peaceable, sparkling dining room. Deep-fried pork hock with shatteringly crisp skin,, grilled milkfish, funky shrimp sinagang, and roast pork belly in peanut kare-kare, eggplant, and green beans. (For patrons, later this week.)

ASK THE CRITIC

Q: Do you think Visit Buffalo Niagara should have paid to get in the Michelin guide with other Great Lakes cities like Cleveland? We have so many great restaurants.

Joyce S., Buffalo

A: No. If that seems odd coming from someone with a 15-year track record of promoting Buffalo’s restaurant community, please allow me to explain.

Visit Buffalo Niagara, Erie County’s tourism marketing agency, was considering paying Michelin inspectors to evaluate restaurants in our fair city. For $450,000 over three years, Michelin inspectors would include Buffalo restaurants in its rounds.

The December Buffalo News story about Michelin possibilities bore this headline: Cost keeps Buffalo restaurants from Michelin honors.

Pay the money and you get stars. Which is not what Francesca Bond’s story actually says. (Somewhere, Milt Joffe is quietly disappointed but not mad.)

What was holding VBN back, CEO Patrick Kaler said in the sixth paragraph, was not actually a lack of money. It was the lack of guaranteed return on investment. You could pay the money and get nothing. Zero stars. Cost among issues in Buffalo Michelin star drought would have been accurate.

Paying Michelin is a gamble, not an investment. In Florida, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater paid Michelin $180,000 for 2025-2026. Total stars? Zero.

In Massachusetts, Meet Boston and the Cambridge Office of Tourism paired up to fork over a cool $1 million over three years. Beantown got one (1) star.

(Spinal Tap manager: But I wouldn’t worry about that, it’s not a big restaurant town.)

Then yesterday, The Buffalo News headline put it this way: No star power here: Visit Buffalo turns aside overture by Michelin – Buffalo could have joined Michelin’s new Great Lakes restaurant guide. Visit Buffalo turned the offer down

Milt Joffe would’ve furrowed his brow, not good.

Buffalo did not turn down an offer to appear in the guide. It never got one. It turned down an offer to have a chance to appear in a Michelin guide, which is crucially different. Just ask St. Pete.

Bond’s articles make the distinction clear. The headline writers should read them.

Worst case scenario, Buffalo spends $450,000 for the headline: “Zero stars for Buffalo in Michelin Great Lakes Guide.” What that sort of marketing own-goal would’ve done for morale in the Buffalo restaurant trenches is something that remains happily theoretical.

To anyone bestirred to argue the notion that Buffalo’s restaurants might not qualify for Michelin stars, two questions: Do you know anyone more relentlessly positive about Buffalo restaurants than yours truly? And, how many Michelin-starred places have you patronized?

(As ever, please tell me how wrong I am, at andrew@fourbites.net.)

More reading from Michael Chelus of Nittany Epicurean:

Mr. Galarneau told us about the delicious Yemeni dishes at Almandi Restaurant [Four Bites]