• News bites

    • 11.17.08

      The best of the second-best bacon

      The San Francisco Chronicle tasks its Taster’s Choice panel with ranking the turkey bacon brands. Short version? If your fork can’t touch pork, Oscar Meyer’s Louis Rich brand wins by, like, a lot. And if you shop at Kroger, definitely skip the house label. (via) (photo)


    • 11.10.08

      Carol Cooks Keller

      “It takes a special kind of nutjob to attempt every recipe in The French Laundry Cookbook,” Carol Blymire writes on French Laundry at Home, where she did exactly that. Start with her recap and retrospective, then work your way back through all the brilliant success and maddening kitchen sadism. (via) (pic)


    • 11.07.08

      Cakes we can believe in

      Zilly Rosen, a cake artist from OBK’s home base of Buffalo, NY, leaves us nearly without words with her 1,250-cupcake Obama portrait. Read how she did it at Cupcakes Take the Cake.


The making of foie gras torchon: Rue Franklin, Buffalo NY

The Rue Franklin’s foie gras torchon is an appetizer that takes teamwork, and two days, to bring to the plate.

Restaurant: Seabar City, Buffalo NY - The slideshow

A slideshow of sushi dishes at Seabar City, Ellicott Street, Buffalo NY.

Restaurants: Seabar City, Buffalo, N.Y. - Mike Andrzejewski makes “Buffalo sushi” seem slightly less ridiculous

Familiar sushi offerings are accompanied with touches of Buffalo comfort food like tacos and beef on weck at Seabar City, Buffalo N.Y.

Panaro’s, a Buffalo N.Y. restaurant that gets more than red sauce right

After Panaro’s had gotten so many things right, I let down my guard enough to order a cannoli.

Taste of Buffalo 2008: Finger food fiesta

Three hundred and sixty-three days a year, Buffalo’s street food options - edibles bought in public to eat while walking, talking, or, for the seriously coordinated, cycling - can be kindly described as limited.

Restaurants: Seabar City, Buffalo N.Y. - That’s right, I said ‘Buffalo style sushi’

Mike Andrzejewski is a Polish-American sushi chef. You got a problem with that?
When you tell people there’s free sushi, look out. My darling wife Kathy and I arrived at 475 Ellicott St., just north of the Washington Market, to find the street blocked off and a crowd of people milling about, with their eyes on [...]

Restaurants: Vargas, Buffalo N.Y. - The prince of Puerto Rican pork returns

Buffalo’s best Puerto Rican roast pork is back with Vargas restaurant’s reappearance on Niagara Street.

Restaurants: Scharf’s Schiller Park, Buffalo N.Y. - The good German:

The neighborhood has changed but Scharf’s Schiller Park in Buffalo N.Y. still serves up the same reliable German fare like wiener schnitzel, spaetzle and roast duck.

Sample restaurant, Buffalo, N.Y: A second bite on Allen Street

After returning repeatedly to Sample restaurant, our intrepid correspondent has gotten a taste for the Allen Street restaurant’s drinks, and oh yes the food.

Gem among Buffalo Thai restaurants: Saigon Cafe, Buffalo, N.Y.

Charbroiled yet flavorful, the beef satay set the tone for a satisfying spring lunch at Buffalo’s Saigon Cafe.
I love Saigon in the springtime.
My apologies to Cole Porter and the French (well, maybe just Porter). But as far as I am concerned, the only place to be seen or eat this spring is Saigon Café, 1098 [...]