Buffalo's food reputation is three things long: wings, beef on weck, and fish fry. All three are real and all three are worth the trip. But a person with one day here who eats only those three will go home having missed the diner half of the city, which is the half that is open in the morning. So here is a full day, timed, with no wasted meals.
7:30am: breakfast at a real diner
Start at a counter, not a hotel buffet. Buffalo has a strong diner culture and one of its best-known examples is a 1952 dining car on Main Street that has been on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives twice. Order the blueberry pancakes, which are scratch-made and the dish Guy Fieri came for, or the Souvlaki Breakfast if you want something you cannot get at home. Drink a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Then order a glass of loganberry, because you are in Buffalo and it is the local drink, and nobody outside the region has heard of it.
10am: walk it off
Main Street runs the length of the city. Head south toward downtown for the architecture (Buffalo has more Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan than most people expect) or north for the University at Buffalo's South Campus and the streets of University Heights. Either direction, you will be hungry again by one.
1pm: fish fry
Fish fry is a Friday tradition here, but a proper place serves it every day, and you should have one at lunch so dinner stays open. Beer-battered haddock, hand-cut fries, coleslaw. We serve ours three ways; get the beer-battered for the full experience. If fish is not your thing, the lunch alternative is a double smash burger, which is the diner's answer to the steakhouse burger you will meet later.
2pm: a milkshake, for the road
Hand-dipped, spun on a spindle, twenty-one flavors. A chocolate malt if you are a traditionalist, loganberry if you have committed to the theme, and the whole board is on the menu. If it is summer, take it out to the patio. We close at three, so this is your last call at the diner.
Wings, weck, and fish fry are the reputation. Breakfast is the half of the city you'd miss.
4pm onward: cross the parking lot
This is the part visitors do not know. Directly across our parking lot, owned by the same family, is The Steer, a restaurant in Buffalo, NY that opens at four and does the evening half of the city's food. This is where you eat the other two things on the list.
- Buffalo wings, in the city that invented them, at a bar that has been pouring since 1969. Ask for them hot and get the blue cheese, not ranch. This is not negotiable in Buffalo.
- Beef on Weck: rare roast beef on a salted, caraway-crusted kaiser roll with horseradish and jus. It never left Western New York, which is exactly why you have to have it here.
- A dry-aged, wood-fired steak, if you want the meal to become an occasion. The beef is dry-aged in-house and cooked over a real wood fire, and it is the reason the place is called The Steer.
Then the saloon, which pours until 2am Thursday through Saturday. The two restaurants were built to hand you off to each other, and this is the day it was built for.
Day two, if you get one
You will wake up needing breakfast. We open at seven. Order the corned beef hash this time, and a coffee, and consider staying a third day.