We recently spent a lovely weekend as tourists in my home city of Buffalo with our friends Steven and Andrea. The weather was unusually warm this particular December weekend which eliminated any anxiety about reliving the previous Christmas blizzard driving experience. Here was our itinerary:
We departed the Adirondacks mid-day Thursday. Typically it takes 6 hours or so to drive straight through down Rt 3 to Watertown then Rt 81 to Syracuse and over Rt 90 to Buffalo, or at least it always has when we’d go visit family. Instead, we broke up this drive with a stop in Weedsport (Exit 40 off Rt 90) with a visit to Lunkenheimer Craft Brewing. We had visited this little brewery in a tiny non-descript town on the Erie Canal previously when working on my nephew’s house nearby. Greg’s family is scattered through central NY so these little towns are very familiar. Tripadvisor says there’s a museum of racing cars in the area, The Dirt Museum (which, at first glance, makes you think this a museum of dirt in a small farming community). Otherwise, Lunkenheimer Craft brewery is the highlight of the town. Greg, Steve, and Andea enjoyed a beer each while I sampled their home-brewed cherry coke. The beer is worth stopping for so I am told. The theme of our trip, you may notice, is that we will be visiting a lot of breweries throughout the weekend. You may assume Greg will always go for a DIPA or a NEIPA. I’ll opt for seltzer or a nice cocktail on the menu. We resumed our drive and shortly thereafter arrived at our overnight stop at the Del Lago Casino in Waterloo, NY. We have driven by this large hotel and casino many times. It is located just off 90 at Exit 41 in the middle of nowhere (although if you know the area there is an outlet mall a few miles away which I may have stopped at a few times). To our surprise, the hotel was very nice, clean, and updated (the complex is just a few years old) and the casino was not smoky-smelly and was not busy at all. We ate dinner at the sports bar ordering bar food (pretty good Buffalo wings) and sugary sweet drinks or beer. We lost a few bucks playing slot machines and then headed to our very comfy beds.
The next morning after a takeout pastry breakfast from the hotel we headed up Rt 414 to Rt 104 W to make a stop at the Bebernitz homestead in Ontario, NY. The farm Greg grew up on is now run as a Cobblestone Hops farm by his lovely niece Cheryl. We visit occasionally to help out in the spring with training the hops vines or in the late summer with the hops harvest or for attending any of the many parties they host there throughout the year, but this time was just a quick visit to show Steve and Andrea what hops farming is all about. It fit in very well with the beer theme of the weekend, hops being a very important ingredient in beer, especially IPAs. Cheryl gave a nice tour and we walked the fields (now dormant in the off season). Of course, there was some beer tasting this morning as well. After a quick hug with Cheryl and a brief visit with Greg’s brother who lives in the cobblestone house on the farm we got back on the road, driving through Rochester and back onto Rt 90W to Buffalo.
We stopped first at our hotel, the Hyatt in Snyder north of the city, and then headed to lunch at Brightsmith Brewing in Williamsville. Greg and I had visited here before (as well as Ration Ales down the road) and liked the vibe here. The outdoor area was closed for now so we headed inside. Beer, of course, was imbibed but also very tasty Smitty wings (chili honey garlic flavoring) and Cheek on Weck sliders, so good and very similar to Buffalo’s typical Beef on Weck sandwiches. We then headed down to the AKG, the Albright Knox Art Gallery, in the beautiful Delaware Park area. Delaware Park is a large city park (350 acres) designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1800’s and has gondolas and paddle boats in the lake, Shakespeare in the Park performances in the summer, as well as the Buffalo Zoo- the nation’s 3rd oldest zoo. The Albright Knox Gallery was originally housed in a grand marble Greek Revival building with stately columns since the mid-1800’s and has been expanded recently and rebranded as the AKG. The collection is substantially contemporary art (not my fave) but with a very nice collection of old masters, impressionists, and sculptures showing the progression from old to new. My favorite collection was an exhibition by Narsiso Martinez (https://buffaloakg.org/art/exhibitions/narsiso-martinez-these-hands-de-estas-manos) displaying migrant worker portraits on flattened fruit baskets. The juxtaposition of the cardboard canvases with advertisements and migrant portraits painted on the surface was beautiful and meaningful (to me). The large mural, also painted on cardboard boxes, was staged to look like a dollar bill with the center portrait not of George Washington but of a female migrant worker looking over her shoulder. Of course, you have to visit the mirrored room as well. After our 3 hour visit to the AKG we headed over to the nearby Richardson Hotel. The Richardson Hotel was a former psychiatric hospital built in the 1800’s and incorporated the newer model of mental health treatment utilizing crafts, outdoor activities, open spaces, and rest. The hospital was expanded but the older buildings, including what is now the hotel, were closed in the 60’s and basically abandoned until recently. The original administration building was recently renovated and opened as the Hotel Henry, closed, and then reopened as the Richardson Hotel. It is a grand old building with extremely tall ceilings and ornate woodwork. We enjoyed cocktails and beer at the bar after visiting the hotel museum on the first level. We then headed to dinner downtown at Toutant. Andrea recommended this restaurant from a visit they had made in the past and it was well worth it! Southern food in an old, preserved, 3 story brick building; what’s not to love? Greg had gumbo, I had jambayala, and Steve and Andrea shared fried chicken. The biscuits are to die for. More beer was had. My brother Ed surprised us with a visit since I had been updating him on our whereabouts. Dinner was great and then we headed to the entertainment area of Elmwood and Allen Streets to visit Pausa Art House for a Jazz show. Parking was remarkably easy (we were lucky). We sat at the bar and ordered a few drinks (meh cocktails) and people watched as we waited for the show to begin. The musicians were young and the music seem forced and rocky, but I’m no jazz expert. Greg was fascinated by the bass clarinet, which he had never seen before. We skipped out at intermission despite the admonition of the club owner and headed back to the hotel. And that was the end of Friday’s festivities.
Saturday morning we enjoyed the hotel’s free breakfast (not awful but not gourmet) and headed out. Since it had been years since Steve and Andrea had been to Niagara Falls, we headed there. It was sunny and nearly 50 deg and the park was empty. Parking was free, the barricades which in winter usually keep you from getting to close and iced over, were removed and we enjoyed the site with a visit with Santa thrown in for good measure. Niagara Falls is always a wonder, whether you’ve seen it once or a hundred times. Next we headed south to visit my mom’s house and a tour of Geri-land, driving under the Peace Bridge along Rt. 190 to Buffalo and then down past the defunct steel mills and over the RR tracks to Blasdell. I had warned Steve and Andrea that part of the weekend would inevitably be about me since this is my “neighborhoo”. Since my family is getting my mom’s house ready to sell I just wanted to check on progress and also leave some Christmas presents for my sibs. After a quick stop at the house and down to the “crick” (aka “creek”) we popped into Premier Liquor in Orchard Park for their huge selection of alcholic beverages. We picked out a couple of cases of wines we can’t seem to find back home and then began the beer drinking portion of the day. We drove past the Buffalo Bills Highmark football stadium on our way to Wayland Brewing in Orchard Park. Greg and I had been there recently but this time we also had lunch. The Cajun wings were not to my liking and my chiliquiles were not up to my standards. The weird green tile bar was disconcerting but otherwise the indoor section was bright and airy and it was warm enough for people to sit outside and play bocce or hang by the firepit. My sister Terry stopped in for a visit as she lives nearby. Next, we headed downtown. At this point, I intended to stop in and show off the Our Lady of Victory Basilica and National Shrine in Lackawanna but I completely forgot! This church is worth visiting, the murals and architecture are beautiful and the story of Fr. Nelson Baker and his accomplishments in the early 1900’s are amazing: formation and construction of an Orphanage, Unwed Mothers’ Home which eventually became OLV hospital, OLV Schools, and the Basilica, meanwhile everything is fueled by a natural gas well that Fr. Baker had designated for the drilling onsite! Also nearby is the Buffalo and Erie County Botanic Gardens, lush and green with amazing tropical plants. Anyway, we had beer on our minds (at this point I became the designated driver) and continued on to Briar Brothers Brewing on Elk St, just around the corner from where my dad grew up. As with many of the breweries in Downtown Buffalo, Briar Brothers is located in an old brick building with silos where they processed and stored malt and ancient conveyor systems for moving the malt into the silos. There’s a trendy retro barber shop replete with red leather chairs within the premises and a small museum displaying the history of the malt operation. We played a few games of Connect 4 and had a couple beers then my brother Ed and nephew Ed joined us for a couple. We then moved onto Resurgence Brewing on Chicago St, housed in an old brick machinery building that formerly made barrels. Now there’s a light and airy tap room with crystal chandeliers and huge brew tanks, a huge bar right next door to a climbing gym and a nearby distillery complete with a speakeasy. There’s just so many cool things to see in Buffalo. Next we moved onto the Hof Brau Haus, because it’s different: loud and raucous and busy busy busy. It was too early for the Oompah music and band members dressed in Lederhosen, but trust me, it would get louder and crazier as the night wore on. People are discouraged from dancing on the tables anymore but apparently you can still dance on the benches. Now we were starting to see many guests in Sabres jerserys as there was going to be a game that night against the Canadiens, which, btw, we were going to see shortly. But first, we said good bye to the Ed’s and headed to dinner at Osteria 166. We enjoyed really good Italian food at Osteria sitting adjacent to a huge table of friendly Habs fans. We left the car parked near the restaurant (and also near the Sheriff’s office) and since parking was free, we didn’t mind walking the 20 minutes or so to the Keybank Center for the Sabres/Canadiens game. Upon entering, both Andrea and I were disappointed to find out that we couldn’t take purses into the arena (shows you how much I get out these days). Neither of us felt like ditching our purses in the trash, which evidently other ticketholders had done, so Greg and Steve went into the game and Andrea and I hoofed it back to the car to leave our bags. It was a really nice, warm night so the walk was pleasant after we got over our frustration of being turned away. We uber’ed back to the arena and sat down at the end of the 1st period. I really do like hocky, my dad having had season’s tickets back in the day of the Sabre’s French connection (Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert) and also from my brothers both having played quite a bit. It’s been a minute since I’ve last watched a professional game but wow, things have changed. I guess they’re playing “European hockey” with less checking and more (inefficient) passing. As my brother Ed said “the Sabres don’t get going til the 3rd period” and indeed, they didn’t. Andrea’s eyes were glazing over so we departed before the overtime period and shootout which the Sabres eventually lost. It was fun nevertheless. And that was the end of our second beer-filled day in Buffalo!
The weather was wonderful for our visit to my hometown with rain just starting as we drove home on Sunday (btw, thanks to Greg for chauffeuring). It was a whirlwind visit to many familiar sites and with so much more that we didn’t get to see. If you go consider visiting some of these cool places: The Eternal Flame hike south of Buffalo, the Buffalo Transportation-Pierce Arrow Museum, the Steel Plant Museum, the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Buffalo City Hall tour, the Central Terminal, Shea’s Theatre, Canal Side, Riverworks, the Military and Naval Park, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House, the Burchfield Penny Art Museum, the Theodore Roosevelt Inauguration Site. I could go on. I can’t even begin to list all the great places to eat and drink but one of my favorite’s is Duende for cocktails near Silo City. Of course, get wings and pizza everywhere you go and try Beef on Weck. Or pierogis. Or Chiavetta’s chicken, Mighty Taco, Ted’s hot dogs, Paula’s donuts, anything from Chef’s, or sponge candy. Yeah. It was good.
My new reality 