People who do not live here think Buffalo is winter. People who live here know that the payoff for the winter is a summer that the whole city spends outdoors, on purpose, with a slightly frantic energy, because everyone can count. Patio season is short, and every restaurant with a patch of pavement puts tables on it.
Ours is out front, in the sun, in front of the stainless steel. Here is how to use it.
Why breakfast is the best patio meal
Most patio talk is about dinner and drinks. But breakfast outside is the underrated version. The light is better, the air is cooler, the street is quieter, and nobody is waiting for your table because it is 8:30 on a Thursday and the rest of the city is at work. A stack of pancakes and a coffee in the morning sun is a small vacation that costs less than a parking ticket.
What to order outside
- Pancakes. The Classic Stack, with blueberries if you want the Triple-D version. Pancakes were designed to be eaten slowly in the sun.
- The Bagel & Lox Platter. Cured salmon, capers, red onion, cream cheese, on a bagel we baked that morning, with a fruit cup. The most summer thing on the menu.
- Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Always, but especially outside.
- A milkshake at 10am. Sun on your face, a strawberry shake, and no obligations. On Wednesdays they come two for one, which is a good reason to bring a friend to the patio.
- The grilled pita or hummus dip, if it is later and you want something lighter. Both are on the lunch side of the menu and both are built for a table outside.
Patio etiquette, diner edition
Same rules as inside, roughly. Seat yourself if there is a table. Bring sunglasses; the building is polished stainless steel and it reflects. And if the weather turns, which in Buffalo it can do between the eggs and the coffee, we will move you inside without a fuss. That is one of the advantages of a diner: the counter never closes.
Five months of summer, and the city spends every one of them outside on purpose.
The rest of the day outside
If the weather is good enough for breakfast on our patio, it is good enough for dinner on someone else's. The Steer, directly across our parking lot, has a rooftop patio and a Main Street one, and they wrote up their own view of patio season in Buffalo. Breakfast outside here, dinner outside there, one parking spot. For anyone visiting, the full one-day plan works even better when both patios are open.
When it ends
Sometime in October the tables come in, and the neon starts looking better than the sun. That is fine. The dining car was built for weather; it has been sitting outside since 1952. Come in, take a booth, and wait for May with the rest of us.