This episode of Food About Town features Andrew Galarneau's new guide to Buffalo dining, Four Bites (@fourbitesfood) Where to Eat in Buffalo: 2026 Edition. This pocket-sized book highlights 175 noteworthy eateries, including both beloved staples and hidden gems that you need to check out. Chris Lindstrom and Andrew chat about the vibrant food scene in Buffalo, emphasizing the importance of supporting local and immigrant-owned businesses.

References:

fourbites.net - talkingleavesbooks.com - millersthumbbakery.com (@millersthumbbakery) - Mira (@mirabuffalo) - Grange Community Kitchen (@thegrangecommunitykitchen) - OR Falafel Bar (@orfalafelbar) - Yalley's (@yalleysrestaurant) - Moriarty Meats (@moriartymeats)

Mentioned in this episode:

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I'm Chris Lindstrom and this is the Food About Town podcast.

Rochester.

Well, why Rochester?

Chris Lindstrom was a hoot.

He was just so much fun.

He never stopped talking.

I mean, it was great.

Here's a good idea.

Have a point.

It makes it so much more interesting.

For the listener and we don't need.

Any characters around to give the joint atmosphere.

Is that clear?

Because I'm a pro.

That's what pros do.

I'm a professional.

Look it up in the book.

But now, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back.

And we are back with another episode of the Food About Town podcast.

And geez, it's a blustery day here in Rochester.

I don't know how it is in Buffalo.

Andrew Galarno, how is it in Buffalo this morning?

It's a frozen wasteland of tundra like existence.

So what I'm saying is, same as usual, no, we're in the middle of, you know, we're in the middle of this cold snap here and supposedly there's another cold snap coming.

Next month is supposed to be even worse.

So I think hunkering down would be kind of a good way to put it.

I think that's a completely reasonable place to be right now.

I mean, that said, you know, I'm still doing my business going around.

Every week I try to hit two or three places to eat that I'd never been before.

And you find out who your hearty companions are when you can get somebody to dig out their car and go visit a Burmese restaurant in Lancaster that they've never been to before.

Fortunately, there are many other hardy souls out there with me who just want to bring out the truth about how great Buffalo is as an eating town.

Well, and if you are looking to get out inside this blustery time, support real local businesses, small businesses and a lot of immigrant owned businesses.

Andrew has a book out right now.

Tell people where they can go buy it and where they can subscribe to four bytes.

The only place where you can hear and see Andrew Gallarno doing foodstuffs.

Fourbytes.net F O U R B I T E S.net is my continuation of my food coverage of the Buffalo scene.

And so far doing okay.

Mostly restaurants, some bakeries, some food Stores, specialty places@fourbytes.net shop or a bunch of places in the Buffalo area, including Talking Leaves Bookstore, Buffalo History Museum, Miller's Thumb Bakery, and Read It Neat Bookshop, a culinary bookshop in Buffalo on Main street, among other places.

That's awesome, man.

So I, I know you've.

You've done.

Have you done guides before, right?

I have not.

This is.

Okay, so I have.

I've been doing Words for money for 40 years, and this is the first thing with my name on it that I could sell people.

It's my first book, and I'll tell you what it feels.

It feels different, man.

It feels different when you're like, I did this.

Would you like this?

Would you pay me for this?

They give you money.

It's.

It's a different feeling.

I'm working on a book that I hope to finish in March because apparently there is no book in the book catalogs that you can order and put in bookstores about chicken wings.

Really?

I was made for this.

I was going to say especially.

Especially with how many people.

I mean, it's, you know, in.

In the year of.

All of the content creators of which you and I are now part of that infrastructure.

We are content creators.

Is how many people have gone and done the.

We've gone to 20, you know, 20 chicken wing places in Buffalo or Buffalo wing places, of course, as they call them.

20 chicken wing, you know, 20 buffalo wing places in Buffalo over a weekend.

And this is the best.

I'm like, a lot of these people haven't lived this and haven't been through.

Been through the trenches and seen the evolution and all the different options that have come and gone.

We welcome their wing tourism.

It's never too late to join the wing party.

I mean, but, you know, for me.

I can do that.

And then, you know, that will replace the subscription stuff, and maybe I can make a living out of this.

What I learned was, I mean, I'm making about, I guess, estimating $20,000 a year from subscriptions right now, which is great.

It's not a full living, but it's great.

And what I learned is that in today's uncertain times, no one wants to buy a digital subscription.

No one wants to buy another Thing that they're going to pile up in their email inbox and make them feel bad about paying for and not reading.

It's a tough toug sell.

So, you know, hardcore are going to sign up.

They want my reviews, they want the cooking stuff, they want to support my project.

But what I found out is that if you can just offer people a book or something else, it's a different revenue stream and it's also a different thing in the world.

You know, it's a thing people give each other.

You know, it's not, it's.

It's less than a cocktail in a fancy restaurant.

And you know, you can thumb through it, it's small, it's six by four, actually.

It's also less than 10 cents per place that's highlighted in it.

I mean like that, each of those, each of those pieces of like of documentation, whether it be, you know, describing the place or other things.

Like each one's less than 10 cents.

Like that's expertise, like at a bargain price.

Well, and as I explain in a little bit in the forward, so this is backed up by me, if there's something wrong in this book or you see something wrong, you get a hold of me, I'm on the case, I will fix it.

Yeah.

I mean, you can't fix a printed book.

But, you know, this is a real ongoing search for the best things involving food that make you happy to be living here because they're extraordinary.

So, you know, you mentioned this is the first time doing a book.

How did you find the process of deciding how you wanted to highlight this many places?

And how did you decide on the format of how you wanted to tackle that?

Because there's many ways that, you know, newspaper, you know, people in the newspaper industry have done this for many years.

You know, like the old collection of, collection of essays kind of thing.

And you're just republishing what's already there or recreating many things or updating or doing those things.

How did you make those decisions?

Well, let me describe the genesis of the book specifically and then you can ask questions if I'm not hitting the details you want.

So it's September.

I get a text from my girlfriend Jen.

She's in Cleveland.

She's paging through this guide, Cleveland Eating.

And she's like sending me furious texts.

Why haven't you done something like this?

You've got all this stuff.

You're the guy.

What is wrong with.

You know.

And I was like, well, it's, it's It's September.

I mean, I couldn't possibly get this done and get it out there for the Christmas shopping season.

And then I ran into another friend of mine whose name is Hannah Gordon Gordon Publishing.

She is much younger than me.

I met her when she was originally an in.

She was an intern at the Buffalo News when I was working there.

We've been friends and collaborators and some things going forward.

So I happened to mention what Jen said to Hannah, and she's like, oh, yeah, no, you totally can.

And I'm like, september.

She's like, you get me the files by the end, the beginning of November, you can have a book.

And I'm like, Because for me, the content.

And having the content has never been the problem.

Yeah.

I every day have about 27 things, more than I could work on than I have time.

So given that challenge, I started pulling stuff together.

And originally I was thinking, you know, 100.

100, nice round number.

And so I started at long last.

Now, remember I told you, like, I just made my first spreadsheet.

Yeah.

Well, even more shamefully, I have.

Chris, I have about 120,000 photos and videos of food.

Yeah.

And before I tackled this book project, they were largely not organized.

Oh, that's a.

That's an effort.

I've done it before in folders.

They weren't in anything.

So I had no.

Look, I was a poor steward of my own digital resources, and I had just thrown it all in a pile.

So to get this book done, I had to, like, straighten out my.

My life from a content perspective.

I had to make all these folders and do all this filing, because what.

What I did in this book was produce people about 600 photographs, mostly original, some source from other places, but 99.9% mine, to try to illustrate each one of these places.

So it was a.

Not only a conceptual thing, but an organizational challenge that I had to meet and overcome to be, you know, like an adult content producer.

I'm sorry.

In some ways, I mean, I'm 59 years old, but in some ways, I'm still a little tiny baby who doesn't want to file things.

Well, guess what?

So I had to conquer that.

And then basically, the process works.

I send my stuff in Google Documents to Hannah.

She formats that into the book form in the proper forms.

She sends it to.

Let's see, Ingram Content is where we had it printed, and you just pay to have books made.

Yeah.

So I was like, all right, we're going to do this.

And then I was like, oh, My God, we need a cover.

So I. I really enjoy cover work.

I.

So I had a lot of experience in working about uncovers and various other things and some print work.

So we worked on the COVID and then I sent a draft of the COVID to Kimberly Buzzati, who is the proprietor of Read it and Eat Bookshop.

And she has proved so invaluable for me to be entering into the book world.

Because first of all, she said, well, the original.

This is the.

This is the final.

The original one.

She's like, hey, you're writing a guide to food.

I'm like, yeah.

She's like, andrew, you have no food on your cover.

And that's how the chicken wings got there.

Yeah.

Because now you're looking at.

You're like, hey, buffalo wings.

So that's Kimberly Bazati.

She also advised me on the nice little neat little format.

We really want to go for a pot.

We want to.

We.

We don't want this book to sit on your coffee table.

It could fit in a pocket purse, what you got.

And the other thing she said was, you know, 13.99 is a good price.

Because I'm like, I don't know.

How the hell do I know, Right?

So she gave me that advice.

So it was like, okay, so we sent this in, we got it back.

So it ends up costing, you know, $7, 750, something like that, with shipping to get the book delivered.

Wow.

So I don't have to up to some publisher, get an agent, try to convince somebody this is worth doing.

I did it.

Yeah, more or less.

And I went out and, wow, I sold them.

People like it.

And I even got a second edition printed up where I was able to fix most of the grievous errors that were in the first edition.

Sorry to all the readers out there.

And.

But no, you correct your errors, you move forward.

And so now I'm selling books on the website.

I'm selling books in personal appearances.

Like, I will read from the book.

I will talk about journalism or social media or anything else you have, because using my 25, 25 years of an experience as a lecturer at the University at Buffalo, I'm not afraid of people.

I will show up and talk about whatever you want.

And if you want to buy a Book.

Great.

Well, I mean, this is.

These are like the easiest interviews I could possibly think of doing because I could just like, how about a topic?

And then you can just.

You can just go off for, you know, for time and like, it's that skill set of being able to have that audience and have, you know, being able to give them that information and to, hey, hopefully entertain them for a few minutes.

And it doesn't have to be straight from the book because that's the flexibility of having that skill set of being able to communicate in a good way.

Well.

And I come from the place of being a community reporter, a community journalist, my entire career, which is about going out and talking to people who you've never met before, asking them what's on their minds or what they think, and trying to figure out what can I do to help this community be better informed about things that they care about or things that they should care about and to find, you know.

So for the last 15 years, it's been mostly food restaurants, the food ways.

From the, the immigrants who are essential to picking the apples along the Lake Ontario shore, to the farmers whose businesses rely on them to, you know, the distributors and the end consumers.

Stores, restaurants, eaters, all of those are of interest to me.

And I try to bring out things I think people want to know, need to know, or will make them feel better about being where they are.

Because one of the greatest frustrations in the recent years of my professional life has been how difficult it's been to get the message out to the world outside of the 716 that you can do some extraordinary eating at extraordinary prices.

Oh, there's no doubt.

And so this, the book is like another tool in getting that out.

Like people who would never in a million years have subscribed to four Bytes.

Somebody sends this to them or they see it and it's like, oh, well, I got my message to them.

But in a, In a way that all, no matter how good my electrons on the digital whatever are going to be, they were never going to see it.

You know what?

You know, your mom is not gonna like, see this on YouTube or anything else, but if you give this to your mom and she pays you, like, oh, that's nice, we should go there.

Absolutely.

And, well, I think that's.

That's the joy of it too.

And like, having that many places means there's an entry point for most everybody.

It's not.

This isn't purely, you know, this isn't purely a certain genre.

This is giving everybody an entry point.

And hopefully they're going to learn something about the area that they live in or the area they're visiting, because people should be traveling to visit Buffalo.

So some people.

One reaction to some people who don't know me that well have been like, wow, I didn't know there were 175 places.

So there are about 750, more or less, depending on how you want to count places that you can eat in western New York.

And what I have done specifically is avoid the trope of saying, here's the best places, top 10, top whatever, as though it's a contest that is a staple of any sort of, you know, community criticism.

Hey, here's the places that you should.

Here's the best places.

I don't try to do that because what's best for me is not necessarily best for my incredibly diverse audience.

So what I do is I say, these are the places I think you should know about and here's why.

Some of them are budget deals, other ones are places your mom would be really happy to go for Mother's Day.

And these are my favorites.

I am not trying to be, you know, God, emperor and declare everyone knows these are the top 10.

Whatever.

It's like, look, this is me, this is you.

Let's find out what works for you.

There's lots of, there's room for everybody.

Well, and I think that's something you and I have talked about a lot over time is like a lot of our, a lot of our passion drives to, you know, small minority owned restaurants, you know, the restaurants of immigrants, the restaurants of, you know, people who are expressing either their, their culture, their hospitality or other things.

And you know, we, we've always lived in that balanced world of we are communicating our love for these things, but we're never the arbiters of authenticity.

We are hopefully telling a little bit of a story and getting people excited.

And that's, I think, to me has been one of those things that has calcified my head over the last year was how much the job is to excite people instead of educate them is to get them to want to, not just to be excited to try this stuff, to be delighted by novel, you know, the novel thing that's new to them.

Yeah, because we can nerd out about the details.

We can nerd out about the history and the, and colonialism and all the things that are affecting, you know, the people that created all these amazing cuisines.

But we're also, in the end, that doesn't necessarily get everybody to want to enjoy It.

And it's that delight, that excitement that is, in the end, what we can offer, because that's what we feel about a lot of those things too, is excitement and delight.

Yeah.

And, you know, I have changed my target as a critic.

Like, look, what should you.

What should I offer people?

Considerably over the years I've been doing it.

And now I really think the primary role that a critic like me has in a community isn't necessarily to say, is X better than Yes.

I think, look, the people in our community and everywhere else are overwhelmed with information.

Yeah.

Too much coming at them all the time.

So I had to realize that some of the maybe more esoteric or things that interested me because it's like, wow, I've been doing this forever and I've never seen this before.

Let me explain my nerdship to you about how excited I am.

That's really not what you should be doing as a critic.

What you should be doing, in my view, is putting in the work to let people know how wonderful where they live actually is.

Yeah.

This is the work of alerting them to.

I didn't know that.

If I went a mile down the street and turned left and went in that parking lot and go in there, I can get.

I can get this.

I can get this.

Wow.

Like, right around the corner, like, almost on the way.

I mean, sensitizing.

Like, people don't under.

People don't know what's available within a mile of their house in.

In a.

In a more of an urban setting.

Okay.

Certainly if you're out in a rural setting, there's only very few restaurants, and you come to know them well.

But so many times I. I am.

I'm.

I am finding a place that's new, and I'm like, holy Toledo.

I just need to know.

I just need people to know that this is here.

Because there is very few other avenues for a new business to be discovered.

Yeah.

If you didn't drive by, see something on social media and get moved by it or something like that, these little businesses are opening up, withering away and disappearing without ever coming to the greater attention of the community.

And that's where I wanted to get in there.

Be like, look, if this person and their family have gone.

Gone through all this trouble and all their expense, maybe they have one shot.

Yeah.

To really spend the money, get a place open.

Well, you know what?

My job should be to let everybody know what these people are doing.

Maybe their shot source.

Maybe they're shot, flunks and they have to close it.

I Can't control that.

But what I can be helpful in is alerting people to, like, did you know that if you go here, you can get this?

Really just breaking it down for people.

Well, and I do have to say, like, that's.

That's where I've always enjoyed our conversations.

And I do have to thank you for.

I don't know if we've done it on the podcast since I think you and I have met and talked about it, but I wanted to thank you for your help for our run that we did in Buffalo for Nominate.

I really appreciate, you know, I really appreciate your, you know, your guidance and some of your expertise in pointing me in some directions and giving me a starting point to find some of those places in a city that I didn't know that well.

Even though I grew up in the area, because I grew up in the country, I had the distinct pleasure of running Nominate in Buffalo for, Geez, a little over a year and being able to go and try so many of.

So many places that I didn't know anything about and being able to dive into the research both with, you know, some of your lists and doing my own research into, like, hey, I'm interested in this cuisine.

Let's look at the entirety of the city of Buffalo and the surrounding areas and see if it exists.

And if it does, is it good?

And I just want to try and see if it's good.

That was super valuable to me, and I learned so much about.

I learned so much about Buffalo because of that, and I think that's one of the.

Also the great joys of doing, you know, the project forced me to do that.

But if you just want to go and enjoy something amazing, you're going to end up learning something about the city that you live in or the city that you're visiting, because you have to go everywhere to.

To enjoy greatness.

Like when, like, you sent me to.

You sent me to Burmese spots.

And I have to say, it blew my mind when I had that.

It was.

It was one of the few things that you have, and you're like, oh, I am so excited.

I'm so excited that I'm trying this today.

And like, the thing that surprised me most doing that there was when we brought.

We were working with.

I think you recommended Family Tie, which they treated us amazingly.

They're great people, and we use them, I think, two or three times, because the people who we brought these.

These meals to were so excited, and a lot of them had never tried it before, and that just feels amazing.

To say I was learning about it for the first time.

But you live in this area with one of the most exciting Burmese scenes in the country, and you get to, you get to now be able to go get this in your hometown.

You know, one of the things that, you know, I have to say, piggybacking off of what you view said, I would have to say that it's how I learn about Buffalo.

Yeah, I didn't understand the Yemeni.

The Yemeni culture, you know, in Buffalo, I don't know, a lot of people still were remembering the Lackawanna 6 and all that stuff after 9, 11.

And that's what they think about.

That's what they thought about Yemeni.

But it wasn't until I didn't, even though I should know better, I didn't really start learning about Yemeni culture until I was able to go to a Yemeni restaurant with a Yemeni friend, Ferris Soleil.

He took me in and he showed it to me.

He's like, well, this is why we do this and this is why we do that.

And then it was like, oh, you know what?

Now I can write about this food before I could tell you what it looked like and what it tasted like, but now I can tell you what it means.

And the difference is tremendous.

And by following the signs of new restaurants is how I have come to learn about the city that I had been covering for 25 years.

Yeah, but you know what?

I never had to talk to a Burmese person, which means get an interpreter and talk to a Burmese person.

Right.

You know, and I ended up finding about all the different ways that people got here and then when they got here.

Why did you decide to make this and what does this mean in your life?

And all of that adds a, just a richness to understanding your community.

If you understand what your neighbors are eating and try.

Doesn't seem like such a strange, hostile world anymore.

Those people who don't speak your language don't seem so weird anymore when it's like, oh, this is delicious.

Thank you.

You should come over to my house.

We'll make you something super American.

Make you some, some chicken fried steak or something.

And that experiencing someone else's food makes you less scared of them.

Yeah.

And I gotta say, like, you know, it's.

So I was actually gonna bring up your mini food as well, because we have one place in our city.

We have one, like.

I know Buffalo is very dense and has a lot of different options, including like big places that have, you know, banquet halls that are, you know, The.

The hub of the community that is, you know, celebratory and, you know, lets you, you know, hang out and just enjoy things.

But I remember, you know, having it and tasting like, wait, why.

Why is this this way?

Why is.

Why is this food this way?

And it's another one of those places that is such a melting pot of colonialism and the areas around it.

And I tried the bread for the first time.

It was, I think, stewed lamb dish.

I think is called salt lamb.

You know, it's like one of the core dishes of.

Of the cuisine and served with bread that looked like it came out of a tandoor.

And it did.

And I was like, wait, why.

Why is this.

Why is this bread out of a tandoor?

That doesn't.

That doesn't make any sense.

There's no bread out of 10 doors in West Asia or Middle East.

I'm like, why is this this way?

I'm like, oh.

The British had colonized Yemen for many years and brought Indian.

Brought Indian workers in.

And then it hybridized.

And it's how, you know, the devastation of colonialism also sometimes brings these hybridizations in food that tell the story of history.

And in the end, it's also delicious.

I have another example in that vein.

In Amherst, near the University of Buffalo north campus, is a restaurant called Falafel Bar.

It's run by an Israeli guy named Oded Ravenpur.

It's my favorite place to get falafel and hummus and things like.

That place is a delight, by the way.

It's so good and best chicken shavarma in town.

Because he uses dark meat, he uses thigh meat.

Marinates it, grills it up and then does that so it's still got the moisture instead of all that chalky, dry chicken shawarma that we might be used to over here.

Anyways, another dish he has on his menu is a sandwich called sabich S A B I C H is how it's spelled, at least on his menu.

And I'm.

And I'm eating it, and it's just pita pocket stuffed with salad and hummus and chopped hard boiled egg and fried eggplant.

And over the top is this yellow sauce that is tangy and it's got all these spices.

And I'm like, what is this?

The sauce on the top is called amba A M B A. I look it up, it's made.

The base is green mango.

It's actually Yemenite, Israeli from, like, northern Africa.

That's where it was originally concocted.

As a sauce.

And the sabik itself was actually something that was a genius move actually created in Iraq by Israeli, by, by, by Jews in Iraq who made this.

And they brought all different parts of their diaspora together into this little sandwich.

And you can get it in buff, you can get it in Amherst, New York and marvel at like how these people from all the world came together and made just this bomb ass sandwich.

And it makes you think about the globe and the world and trade and then, you know, you have to go wash your hands because it's kind of a little mess.

But that's what, what, what better kind of mess is there?

Then we just got to delight in this, this, you know, snapshot of history in a delightful, in a delightful bite.

Yeah, well, and you had to eat anyway, so hey, why not?

So I think we'd take a quick break for, for the audio side and we'll be back to talk more Four bites with Andrew Galarno.

175 places in a easy to pocket and carry around book.

You can beat it up, get stains on it because we want you to use this and really enjoy what Buffalo has to offer.

So going back to, you know, the selection of the book now you mentioned, you know, 700 plus places when you were trying to decide.

Oh, go ahead.

I, I started out saying to myself, you know, I think 100 would be good.

Yeah.

So then I made a list of the first hundred ones that I wanted to put in there and then I started looking through other things and I'm like, well, you have to include this and you have, okay, it's not going to be a hundred.

And eventually I had to cut myself off because, well, my publisher needed the thing and there are still places that I would have liked to have put it in the book that I couldn't put in the book because I couldn't get appropriate photography in time.

But I'm really happy with the way it came out.

A couple places I just got in, actually I held the book for a week because there was one restaurant in Buffalo that I have been watching coming showing up, shaping up for two years and I, it was so close.

And I was like, you know what?

Screw it, I'm gonna hold the book.

I'm not gonna send it to the publisher until I get this in there.

And that place is Mira M I R A.

It's on one of Buffalo's main commercial drags on Wood Avenue.

It replaces a formerly Built out version of panos.

So Mira M I R A.

It's been extensively redone on the inside and the food is fantastic.

It's run the chief.

The, the owners out front are Manny Manuel Ocasio, a super talented young chef who I had had the pleasure of seeing develop since he was 18 years old in the kitchen of the black sheep, a blessed memory.

And his wife Gina, now Bone pastry chef.

So they are the, the partners out front.

He's cooking, she's baking.

And they have come the closest to developing that sun dappled Mediterranean oceanside place.

You just walk in and everything is like amazing in Buffalo.

I'm excited to talk about this.

So weird.

So.

And wonderful.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this because I did get a chance to go around around Christmas time, I think when I was visiting, when I was working back home selling Christmas trees one weekend I got a chance to go.

I got a chance to go and try it out.

It was a solo diner.

This, this place also has some ties to the ties to the Grange as well.

Correct.

So Mira comes out of the Grange organization in that, my understanding is Brad Roll and Ms. Divanovitch, who Karen Divanovitch, who did the Grange Community Kitchen, which has for years been my declared favorite restaurant in western New York.

For a variety of reasons out of that organization, these other young couple came up working up through the system and they are partnering with them in Mira.

So yes, Mira is certainly financially and quality level, a part or an offshoot of the Grange Community Kitchen.

Karen Divanovich is a really talented interior designer.

She's the one who made the inside of that place.

Well, feel like you're not in Buffalo.

Okay, I said it.

Yeah.

I gotta say, like, you know, going there, I was, I was really delighted.

And the, this place was swamped that night.

I mean, it was, it was busy.

Like, no bar seats.

No, like the standing, like the communal table near the bar was packed.

I had to wait for a single spot over there.

But I got to say, like the whole experience, considering how completely mauled they were, like they were still delivering on hospitality.

They were still delivering on.

They were still delivering on all the things you really want a place to deliver on.

I really enjoyed the fact that they made like, like the cocktails were really well thought through.

Like everything.

It wasn't, it didn't lack thought in any of the things I had.

And there was at least one dish that, you know, I won't say everything was like a jam packed 10 out of 10 or anything, but I had A dish that, like, completely, completely blew me away.

And that's like, what else can you ask?

Right?

Like, when you go to a place that you have something that delights you, something that makes you think a little bit, something that is, you know, not quite, you know, not quite what you're used to.

Like, what a great thing that you get to have something like that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the extent to which every element of each dish is thought through and just delightful.

You know, we all like a creme brulee, but who doesn't like malted chocolate milk, too?

So, I mean, you know, just little playful things.

Anyways, I am really glad that restaurant is open finally.

And if you want something nice in Buffalo, I would say try to make a reservation at Mira first.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna say the dish that I had was.

I think it was the crispy octopus with smack cucumbers and tomato aioli.

But like all.

With all those tiny amount of words, they had also created this astonishing hybrid of, you know, Lebanese ish area, west Asian area spices, and made a Szechuan chili oil out of that.

And it was just so deftly made.

And the seasoning was perfect.

And that's a dish I'm not gonna forget because it was so, so well thought through.

So I'm really glad you brought that up because that's one of the places I went that was like, oh, this is exciting.

It's exciting dining.

And that's.

That's a great thing to feel excited.

Yeah.

I mean, that's on a level where I haven't seen restaurants opening like that in Buffalo.

I don't know if there was another one that has just got all the little things going together right off the bat.

I mean, I know there can ever be hiccups, but, hey, what they're doing there is extraordinary.

And it's partly because both Gina and.

And Manuel have spent a bunch of time traveling in the Mediterranean, eating in the Mediterranean, seeing and thinking, and then coming back and working in high level restaurants.

First of all, in Philadelphia, the star group.

Oh.

And then coming.

And I mean, and that's where.

That's where they.

They made their bones.

And then they come to Buffalo, and they have been able to spend several years at the Grange doing.

Trying to apply the techniques, the flavors, the sensations that they picked up in their world travels to western New York.

Things for western New York people.

Yeah.

The results are extraordinary.

Yeah.

And I think that's.

That's also a.

That's knowing your audience and knowing that as well.

But there's also the other side where, hey, we want the purity of.

We want the purity of, you know, a cultural thing.

And I've seen recently you've posted about a post about a West African restaurant called Yale's that I'd never got a chance to try.

I had.

I had worked with and enjoyed a place called Buffalo Suya over on Main street that I was Nigerian, that I quite enjoyed.

But I didn't get a chance to eat at Yale's when I was doing my adventures, doing Nominate there.

But it seems like you've been smitten by that, and rightfully so, based on everything I've seen.

Well, and here's this goes back to exploring the world by exploring the restaurants in your town.

First time I went to Yali's, I enjoyed the food and, you know, and I had.

But I didn't know about it.

Then I got a chance to go back to Yali's with some people who.

Who are actually from Ghana, some visiting guests.

And it was that meal where they're explaining and they're walking me through the various ingredients that it really clicked in for me because I didn't have enough information and context about what I was seeing and eating to really be able to tell the world about it.

But once, you know, you sit down, you.

They tell you about the various dishes.

I honestly think that Yali's fufu with peanut soup would really do a lot of people good if they just tried it.

I think a lot of Americans, when they think of the word African food, they're still thinking of, like, cartoonish things and all the news reels about starving people.

Yeah.

And what.

And it keeps them away.

Maybe it keeps.

I don't know.

But I go, you.

I go in there and fufu is pounded cassava.

It's.

If you imagine, like, mashed potatoes as, like, something a little stiffer, but as an eating tool, like, like, you know, in Italian dining, talk about the scarpetta, the end of the bread that you use to scoop stuff up with.

Well, fufu is like that.

You grab off a little bit.

You slatten it out with your thumb.

You scoop up some food, and it is delicious.

And that peanut soup.

And take one spoonful, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Because I'm American.

Peanuts, to me, the flavor in my head is peanut butter.

Peanut butter is actually a combination of peanuts, oil, sugar, salt, and various other things.

When you taste the peanut soup, you remember that peanuts are a legume.

They grow in the ground, and they have a whole different Flavor when you're not trying to make them the other side of a jelly sandwich.

Yeah.

And that soup is also fired up with.

I actually, once I got a chance to talk to them about their food, there's a little bit of habanero or Scotch bonnet in that soup.

So there's just this, like, this lick of heat, and it's tastes like peanuts, but better, like, nuttier, more like a vegetable, and less like a snack that's going to make you fat.

I'll be honest.

And this.

So the soup and the fufu together, I'm like, what a revelation.

Like, honestly, a revelation.

Like, wow, this is delicious.

And people should know about this.

And that's my thing.

I'm like, I get stuck in.

In places and I'm like, I need to explain this to people, because this is remarkable.

Well, and I gotta say, like, that was like, when we got a chance to work with both a Liberian place and a Nigerian place here in Rochester, and then Buffalo Suya in.

In Buffalo.

You're really looking into, you know, the history of the West African diaspora.

Obviously, so many foods that we consider to be, you know, American are really West African dishes interpreted through, you know, colonialization and the ingredients that exist here.

One of the things that.

That dish was one of the ones that had that spark for me, because I did some research into multiple dishes that came from, you know, what you would say are, you know, the West African dishes, that dish is the root of gumbo.

And that's the part that as soon as I tasted it, I'm like, oh, God damn it.

Like, I already read about and already knew it.

But as soon as you taste it, you have that.

You know, that.

That ratatouille moment, you know, that.

That.

Where that's.

It's like, oh, everything clicked.

And sometimes you have that.

That taste memory or that.

That memory of comfort that you didn't know where it came from.

And then you taste the root of it, and it's so special.

Like, it's such a great dish.

And then you're like, oh, wait, where do my favorite Jamaican dishes come from?

Oh, it's an interpreted West African dish.

You know, we had what is at a chicken at a place which was with peppers, and it turned out it was basically like pepper steak, which is served in Jamaican restaurants and all places like that.

It's so.

It just opens up this clarity of, why do these things.

Why do these things that we love exist?

And it's because of so many of those dishes, and it's just.

It's Amazing.

I want to give a shout out to jollof rice.

Oh.

See, before I started going to African restaurants, I didn't understand Jollof rice is like one of these pride dishes.

Like, there.

There are contact, you know, Nigeria, we have the best jollof rice.

No, we have the best jollof rice.

And I have learned that the best way to get a bunch of people from Africa arguing is saying, well, who's got the best jollof rice?

I love it.

It's like chicken wings.

I mean, it's like everything else.

Like, yeah, if you've never had joe loaf rice, you don't understand.

So you've eaten a lot of rice in your life.

You've eaten rice pilaf.

You've eaten.

What do you call Mex rice with some tomato and stuff like that.

The kink to jollof rice, what makes it really just remarkable and delicious is that jollof rice is a dish where they have figured out how to get this whole blend of spices with some chili and some other things, how to get it to just coat, like, perfectly cooked, firm, not mushy rice.

So every little grain of rice is like this tic tac of flavor that's got this thing on it.

And I don't know how they do it, but it is fantastic.

And how the different parts of Africa, the different cooks, what they want to bring to it.

Some are going to use more chili, some might bring the turmeric, they might bring some other warming spices, you know, to just stumble across or, you know, find myself in the middle of this huge intercontinental food discussion.

Yeah.

Like, who has the best Joel of rice?

I don't know.

It makes.

Not only is it delicious, it makes me feel connected with what's going on in the world because, like, I know about jollof rice now.

Well, and then you see, like, oh, that's exactly like dirty rice in New Orleans is obviously a take on that dish.

It's.

It's that interpreted version of it.

And it's so funny that you mentioned that pride while.

While we were working here.

And we worked, you know, first with a Liberian restaurant called Camara's West African.

And, you know, food was amazing.

And then we worked with a Nigerian restaurant.

Like, oh, we worked with another West African restaurant.

And they're.

They said, oh, they are Liberian.

We are Nigerian.

Our jollof rice is way better.

And I'm like, It was.

It was.

I think One of my absolute favorite moments of the entirety of doing the project was when we ran into.

When we had those discussions and they were just.

It was that competitive.

But, like, hey, we're so proud of what we do.

Like, we're so proud to bring this to you that we think we're the absolute best at it.

I had that discussion multiple times from, oh, like this Lebanese place versus the Syrian place, you know, Liberian versus Nigerian.

And there's, you know, a lot of people, you might not see the difference, but there is this pride and this deep love for bringing the absolute best of these dishes to you.

I love that the Jolof rice thing has the, you know, it's.

It's the same thing as if you're in Buffalo and you're like, oh, your town has the best pizza, huh?

Yeah, really?

Really?

You have the best pizza.

You don't know what you're talking about, bro.

Let me get you some Buffalo pizza.

You see the difference?

I mean, it's.

I mean, it's one of the great things.

It's one of the great interconnections of food and community and conversation.

Arguing about who has the best what.

Because it matters, you know?

Yeah.

Because not that it matters in that there.

I'm saying that there is one true champion.

You should have pride in your place.

You should have pride in your food and where you're from.

And tapping into that in other cultures and other communities is.

Man, that's like dessert.

That's just great.

Yeah.

So has there been anything.

So I. I highlighted that because, you know, I saw some of your recent posts.

Is there anything else you, like, you've been fascinated with recently?

And then I'll.

I have a question about a specific place that I'm looking to go to in my next trip to Buffalo.

But is there anything else that's been like, really delighting you recently?

I could mention a few things.

First of all, Western New York now has a legitimate Peruvian restaurant.

It is in Fredonia.

Okay.

So that's about 30, 40 minutes south of the city of Buffalo.

I just want to tell you it is absolutely worth the drive.

Peruvian food has got so many Central American, Latino crossover things, but also Chinese.

Huge influence.

One of my favorite Peruvian dishes is something called lomo saltado.

And lomo saltado is a dish that came out of the Chinese community in Peru.

In Peru, they love them some beef, and they love them some.

Some.

Some.

Some fried potatoes.

So lomo saltado is a stir fry of thickly cut steak in like, a soy sauce with onions, fresh tomatoes, and then it all gets in garlic, and then it all gets put over French fries.

So this, you got this like soy beef gravy leaking down into the French fries.

And you're eating it and you're picking up the french fries.

You can get that in Fredonia.

And here's the thing.

When I heard there was a Fredonia where that Fredonia had a Peruvian restaurant, honestly, I'll be honest, I rolled my eyes.

I'm like, really?

Yeah.

What kind of weak thing has got somebody going there anyways?

But you don't know.

And that's why you shut your mouth.

And you go, absolutely.

Shut your mouth.

Go.

I went there and I was like, blown away.

Ceviche, okay?

When we hear ceviche, a lot of us are thinking of Mexican ceviche, which tends to be kind of tomatoey, a little bit spicy, ketchup, broth, sort of.

So Peruvian ceviche is lime juice, olive oil, oregano, cumin, garlic.

And I would drink that shit.

Oh, yeah.

Excuse me.

It's so good.

And it arrives.

And they always serve it with sweet potato because that's the way they do it back there in the, you know, various.

Whether it's fish, shrimp, shellfish in that sauce.

And we hoovered that plate and I was like, okay, and one more, I'm going to mention ahi, the galena, which is chicken and hard boiled egg in a creamy sauce with ahi chili, which is not a. Super.

Not a super hot chili.

And it makes things a little bit yellow.

It's just this, it's comfort food.

Comfort food.

Creamed chicken with hard boiled egg and a little bit of chili in it.

Amazing.

So I'm like, okay, this doesn't make any sense.

Why would there be a real Peruvian restaurant?

And Fredonia.

Yeah.

All apologies to the Fredonia people.

It does have a SUNY university there.

And then I track the guy down and talk to him and it turns out this guy is a lifer in the Hilton restaurant chain.

Oh, okay.

For years and years and years, he ran not only a restaurant in Las Vegas, but he was on the, the team that flew around helping set up the hotel kitchens everywhere else.

This guy was an executive chef.

Oh, wow.

In this major hotel thing.

And he finally decided to sell the piece of the restaurant he had in Las Vegas and just settle down and find a little place for himself.

This guy went to looked up things on Zillow commercial properties.

He traveled to 12 different communities.

He was in New Jersey, he was in Virginia, he was in Maryland.

And he was looking for a place for his place.

When he went to Fredonia, he found this place.

He was like, this is the place, huh?

So through, I don't know, the randomness of the universe, Fredonia, New York, has an absolutely wonderful, real Peruvian restaurant.

And see, when.

To me, when I found out that I was like, this is my thing, like, you would not expect it.

So everyone has to know about this.

Yeah.

And it has just been a delight and for me to be able to find something that is really remarkable that people don't know about, because people don't know about much because they're flooded with so much garbage.

Guys, this is a wonderful place that we live.

You can go here and get this.

From a family restaurant run by people who really know what they're doing.

You make yourself happy, you support their family.

Isn't this a town you want to live in?

Yeah.

And, like, also serving that community, like, I can't imagine, like, that feeling for, you know, even, like, the kids.

Right.

The kids in Fredonia, you know, any of those kids that have, you know, South American roots, that.

The fact that they can have some of that food and feel that comfort and feel that joy of having something that brings that to you, like, that is like, how.

How amazing is that?

And like, you.

And you've mentioned to me before, like, hey, some of those.

You know, those.

The original places in Buffalo that had those Chinese menus for Chinese people around UB that gave that comfort to that community and hopefully delighted everybody else at the same time.

That is like, that combination is where I love to sit, and I love that story, and that's the kind of thing that makes me want to.

Oh, next time I'm driving, we're driving to Pittsburgh for something, stop there and eat there instead of somewhere else.

Let me just throw in that this restaurant is one mile off of the Fredonia exit on the thruway.

Oh, perfect.

Or the.

I'm sorry, it's not the thruway.

It's the.

It's the 90 at that point.

Yeah.

One mile.

One mile detour off the thruway.

Lomo saltado, baby.

Man, I love aji amarillo sauce or aji verde sauce.

Like, it's like those.

It's such a.

Well, it's.

I love the brightness.

I love the vinegar.

I love the spice, and I love that hybridization because it's that culture that has.

Hey, we are.

We have a lot of Chinese immigrants in our country, and it's become part of the core.

And to see that is.

That's the stuff where it's like, oh, yeah, this is our culture now.

Yeah.

When I sat down, it struck me as an idea Once.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could do a Buffalo?

A to Z. Yeah.

A to Z. Afghan, Burmese, Colombian.

You know, I couldn't do it, Chris.

Couldn't do it.

It's tough.

Which.

Which others did you miss?

Not a lot of countries that begin with.

Oman is the only one.

Not a lot of Omani restaurants.

And Z's a toughie.

Yeah.

X you can get.

X you can get.

I mean, Xian food.

Actually, there is a restaurant, CN Famous Foods.

Xian.

Famous Foods.

That would do the X. Oh.

And if you're not sticking to cuisines.

We could do it.

We could absolutely do it.

Yeah.

See for.

Oh, Zareshk.

So Zurash is a Persian word that means a little barberry.

Okay.

And Zuresque is the name of a new Persian restaurant, the only Persian restaurant in Buffalo.

It's about two miles from the Amherst campus, started by two UB students who are Iranian and met in a UB library while they were studying and fell in love and opened a restaurant.

And it is.

It's got a brief menu.

Yeah.

Short menu.

But each thing is made with loving care.

It's delicious.

And you can get Kubide in Buffalo.

And I love that they wrote.

They wrote the first paragraph of the.

Of the discussion for you.

Like, oh, we had the perfect meeting to.

Created this thing.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They didn't put that in their marketing.

I dug that out of them.

Really?

Because every time I.

Every time I talk to a restaurant owner or somebody who's talking about opening a restaurant, I always take a full biographical sketch.

Yeah.

Where were you born?

Where'd you go to high school?

Where'd you grow up?

And then we walk our way forwards until we get to the restaurant.

And once you hear people tell their life stories accumulating in what they're doing now, then you can finally begin to measure the extent of the achievement and where it comes from and understand it so much better.

I always take a biography before we know a restaurant because we want to know, how did this come to be?

Yeah.

And the answer is so often in the lives of the people.

Well, and that story, too, like, the fact that they weren't using that at all in marketing is like, that's a story people want to hear.

People love that.

Like, it's.

Well, that shows you about them.

They're nice, they're shy.

They're just kids who want to make a restaurant.

Me, I'm coming along looking for anything I can do to jab in the eyeballs of a largely inattentive public to get them to pay attention for five freaking seconds about this amazing thing that's right down the street.

So I do want to finish off with a place that, you know, I was texting you ahead of time that next time I come to Buffalo I want to visit because I've never actually been.

And as I've been dabbling with, you know, not being purely vegan at this point, I want to go visit more yardies meats for the first time.

Oh my God.

Let me tell you about this place.

Tom Moriarty, Buffalo boy.

For some reason he fell in love.

Oh, not for some reason.

He told me this.

He.

So he's a buffalo boy saint.

Got to spend a year as an exchange student in Spain.

He came back all like, just in love with the food and what they're doing there.

So what he did next was.

Did he open a restaurant?

No, no, no, no.

This guy went to France because what he decided was he wanted to be a French trained butcher.

The difference between French butcher styles and American butcher styles is American meat cutters run animals through band saws and get slices of things.

That's how you get steaks.

French style.

You take an animal, you take an animal apart, muscle by muscle, component by component.

You end up with different cuts of beef.

And he worked in France for a year apprenticing to become an officially trained French butcher guy.

And while he did that for money, he worked in a little local restaurant that was a family restaurant, no one in the fancy places.

And when he came back, him and his wife Caitlin, they opened a little spot that was originally only open by appointment only.

And he decided his place was going to be French, like more French style butchery of locally raised animals.

He was going to take apart local animals and sell them to people you so you could get a cut of locally raised something in your town instead of just getting the same old stuff from the commodity meat stockyards and what that has grown into.

Now he's on Elmwood Avenue and they have a butcher shop on one side and the other shop is a cafe, Cafe bar Moriarty.

And it serves things that are from the butcher shop.

Like for instance, the what my favorite now, beef on whack.

In Buffalo they call it the bis and whack.

It's, you know, beef and they make the roll themselves and it's a caraway, but they don't use horseradish, they use a horseradish.

Cream sauce, which is a sort of deviation from the meta, but I'll allow it.

I'll allow it like it matters what I say.

It's delicious.

And you bite into that sandwich and you realize how smart it is to buy your roast beef sandwich from somebody who's a butcher, who's taking care, all the care.

And on the butcher side, though, the butcher shop, some people just go into the butcher shop.

Don't go to the cafe.

That's okay.

Butcher shop.

You walk in, I don't know, 20 cuts of beef, including, you know, stuff you can't get cut from local animals.

Picanha, right?

Picanha, favored by the Brazilians.

A cut of top sirloin rimmed with fat.

It's a very specific way the meat was cut to get it to be that way.

You can get picanha at Moriarty, but you can also get 16 kinds of sausage they're making themselves.

You can get a quart of duck fat.

If you want to make duck at potatoes.

Like they're making their own bacon.

You go into the freezer, they have stuff that you can just thaw out and stir fry where they've taken meat and, and, you know, given it.

Like, oh, here's a Thai curry pork stir fry.

You can pull that out of the freezer, thaw it out, frying pan.

Like, what they've done is they've not just selling meat, they have really filled out all the, you know, meat centric type things.

And to this day, they will even do custom stuff for you.

That's amazing.

If you've ever seen those big pies, English meat pies, they're like about 4 inches tall.

Cold water pie.

And you caught them and you could see the layers of meat.

If you call him ahead of time and ask him to make one, he'll make one for you.

Yeah, why not?

How wild is that?

Yeah, it's, you know, I. I loved, like, we had a.

We had a place that lived in that world called McCann's Local meets here.

You know, I'm familiar.

Unfortunately, no longer exists.

Shout out to Kev McCann and all the, you know, the team that was working there.

And I really, that, that buffon work, that was what I wanted to travel for.

I saw the pictures and, you know, it's on my list.

Just on my buffalo list.

I'm like, man, I just want to go across some of these things off my list to see, you know, to see the expertise of somebody who's doing that work from, you know, from nose to tail, like doing that Real work of using the maximum of an animal you can use, because that's the ethical thing to do when you have the opportunity.

Well, and they are doing all the stuff, so.

And making.

They're trying to be an auxiliary producer for principled home cooks.

Do you want stock?

Do you want.

Around Thanksgiving, you can come in and buy gravy.

And it's all made there from local animals.

That's their thing.

That's what they do.

And I know this might sound a little bit of precious, but here's what it comes down to.

It just tastes better.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

And I want to just take one little asterisk here for it does not show this.

What they're doing there at Moriarty is not.

But it's not showy stuff.

One of.

I am always delighted whatever they have.

It's uniformly excellent, too.

Great.

But one of the most profound dishes I can tell you about that I had in there, and this is from their European roots, or for the menus of European roots, I had a dish of bacala, which is salted cod and beans.

That was.

Was just some salted cod that had been drained and then simmered.

And then it was white beans dressed with good olive oil and some parsley.

And I'm sitting here, like, housing this thing, going like a little bit of dried fish and beans.

Why is it so good?

Yeah.

And then, you know, that's what they have.

Have brought to buffalo.

That.

That.

I mean, if you've traveled in Europe and you wandered into that sleepy little Spanish local cafe and you just ate this, like, amazing thing, and you're like, I should live in Spain.

Okay, great, live in Spain.

But you can also go to Moriarty.

Yeah.

Because that's.

That's not oat cuisine.

That is.

That is peasant cuisine.

But that is what people love.

That is the thing that people truly, deeply love is food that brings that.

That comfort.

But it's just execution and maximizing flavor over being.

You know, and hey, I know you and I both enjoy fine dining, and we like the creativity and the execution of those things.

But there is something special.

And, hey, we're taking these relatively simple ingredients, and we are making them as good as they possibly can be.

And that's.

That is also high end execution.

That's high end technique.

Even though it's simple, but it's technique that matters.

To make something amazing.

To impress people with salted fish and beans, you need to be a good cook.

Yeah, right.

You're not gonna.

Moriarty is like the polar opposite of the Truffle oil people, right?

Oh, you know what will really impress them?

I'll put some truffle oil on this.

Like.

Oh, sweetie, no.

Oh, no, no, don't, please.

Toxic alert.

Toxic alert.

Don't do it.

No fun.

Andrew, tell them again where they can go buy that book.

And you should buy it4bites.net f o.

U r b I t e s.net shop or in Buffalo at places like Talking Leaves Books, Read it.

Neat Bookstore, the Buffalo History Museum, and oh, and if you happen to be going to Miller's Thumb Bakery, which is like a whole nother episode that we need to talk about, please, they are selling my book there as well.

God bless them.

And if anybody wants to get a hold of me, andrew@fourbytes.net is my email.

Send them.

I love to hear about things I don't know about, and especially where I've been wrong.

Hey, and next episode, well, we just decided next episode is a bakery episode.

So you and I are going to schedule this right after.

Oh, and we're gonna do bakery of all different kinds next time.

I have such wonders to show you.

Oh, I'm so excited.

So we'll be back next time with more with four Bites but also Food About Town and the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

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Oh, no, here comes McKenneth.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

I love how confused and delighted Andrew is by all of my outro music.