Taste of Buffalo reflects how things have changed ... and remained the same
“The effort to bring patrons downtown to reignite that enthusiasm for their hometown is still kind of our core mission,” said Matthew Reis, chair of this year’s Taste of Buffalo.
In July 1984, Downtown Buffalo craved a taste of prosperity. The fact that it included pasta and ice cream was, of course, a bonus.
People crowd Delaware Avenue at last year’s Taste of Buffalo. The gastronomic extravaganza has evolved
from serving chicken salad and fruit cups at its inaugural festival to Cheeto shrimp burritos and vegan mac and cheese this year. Buffalo News file photos
Main Street emptied of its mammoth department stores. The suburbs, blooming with new residents and malls, were king. So, how do you solve a problem like a fading downtown?
Edible bribery.
The inaugural Taste of Buffalo had an appetizing premise. Come downtown and you’ll be rewarded with the opportunity to taste all that Buffalo has to offer – or at least, food samples from 30 restaurants – in one spot during one afternoon. Souvlaki. Strawberry shortcake. Eggplant parmesan. Calzones. Stuffed grape leaves. Ted’s Hot Dogs. Shrimp scampi. “Mile High Mud Pie” – aka ice cream cake.
For one overcast weekend, 115,000 attendees transported downtown to its heyday before the city’s population took a nosedive. “Slowly but surely, it’s coming back,” said one downtown restaurant owner during the first festival. “At least we hope so.”
Forty-one years later, downtown has not come back. Its pre-pandemic momentum slowed, then backslid. Downtown restaurant owners told The News earlier this year that they lost between 20% and 40% of their customer base since 2019.
But every summer, as steady as fireworks on the Fourth of July, the Taste of Buffalo returns. White tents pop up. Food trucks roll up. The streets balloon with pedestrians forking bites of fried PB&J and tacos into their mouths while the Tums sirens offer the only relief to an afternoon spent eating your way through Buffalo’s food catalogue. It looks like an old photograph of a Gilded Age Buffalo … if everyone was wearing khaki shorts, moisture-wicking polos and Bills hats.
Corey Hunter flips pierogis on the grill at Babcias Pierogi stand at the Taste of Buffalo in 2024.
Buffalo News file photo
Organizers, meanwhile, continue to innovate in the hopes of bringing more people downtown. “Hot Ones,” the successful YouTube show that asks A-list celebrities to eat increasingly hot wings while they cry and choke through an interview, is collaborating on a hot sauce competition at the Taste of Buffalo.
Some of the buzziest restaurants and chefs, such as the James Beard-nominated Southern Junction, cook complicated recipes under “Rockstar Kitchen” pop-ups.
“The effort to bring patrons downtown to reignite that enthusiasm for their hometown is still kind of our core mission,” said Matthew Reis, chair of this year’s Taste of Buffalo.
Buffalo’s food evolution – as seen in bites
The food served at the first Taste of Buffalo was fairly simple. There was chicken salad and fruit cups, fajitas and Polish sausage. Many of the participating restaurants were Italian and sold foods like mozzarella in carrozza (fried cheese sandwich) and carpaccio, but you could also get shish kebab and Japanese vegetable tempura.Compare that with the 2025 menu – which features a Cheeto shrimp burrito, vegan mac and cheese and complex NY-style pizza topped with miso-black garlic tomato sauce, pickled carrot, shallots, Szechuan pepper, toasted peanuts and chili oil – to see how the local food scene has evolved.
The Taste of Buffalo’s evolution from fruit cups to Cheeto burritos wasn’t a straight line. It didn’t take long for the festival to develop its taste for creative and unusual foods. I searched The Buffalo News archives to see how festival food has morphed, as the city has changed, over the years.
Things were relatively tame until the fourth Taste of Buffalo, when G. Williker’s restaurant debuted marinated teriyaki shark and swordfish sandwiches. (“Buffalonians with traditional tastes” could still get wings from the Hyatt Regency and beef on weck from the Holiday Inn.)
That isn’t to say that beef on weck is safe from experimentation. In 1990, Lancaster restaurant LaTulip’s Klondike served buffalo on weck sandwiches made with buffalo steak raised in Ellicottville.
The 1995 Taste of Buffalo menu was more exotic than anything available this weekend. Lockport’s Quail Ridge Public House served quail, alligator and rattlesnake. Its menu drew both “gasps of disbelief and surprised smiles.” (Of the quail, the restaurant owner said: “When they see the bird on the grill, they feel guilty because it’s so little. When they don’t see it on the grill, they don’t feel turned off by it.”) Those eating vegan pizza at this weekend’s festival may beg to differ.
The 2000 Taste of Buffalo had a patriotic blue cornbread with black raspberry butter – and a visit from Hillary Clinton, who longed for a beef on weck.
Unfortunately, this year’s menu doesn’t have the chicken wing cupcake topped with bleu cheese frosting and a chicken wing from Grand Island’s Baked Cupcakery, nor the sponge candy cannoli from Panero’s that were available at 2016’s Taste of Buffalo.
Cousins Ashley Perez and Nicole Pena, owners of Caribbean Taste, serve jerk chicken pastelillos during a preview event at Tops on Tuesday.
They are among 12 restaurants that will be participating in the Taste of Buffalo for the first time. Derek Gee, Buffalo News
The Taste of Buffalo has not only grown wackier. It’s also become more diverse as the city’s demographics shift. This weekend, you’ll find rasta pasta with jerk chicken from Caribbean Taste, Puerto Rican bacalaitos (codfish fritters) from El Coquito, butter chicken tikka tacos from India Gate, paneer pakora (fried cheese) from New Jewel of India and an Australian pavlova from the Moldovan immigrants at World of Desserts.
As much as things have changed, they’ve also remained the same. You’ll still find pizza, ice cream and pierogis at the Taste of Buffalo.
This year, thanks to Anchi A La Carte, there’s even chicken salad
