“The place was cool as is, nestled and cove-like.”
Club Watch: Catch a summer sunset at Dug's Dive
Chill out on a hot summer day and enjoy the waterfront scene at Dug’s Dive
A sunset stop at this lake-side restaurant and bar makes a summer evening feel well spent. Old rock sounds of the Doors and Beatles drift from the bar at Dug’s Dive. Cheery waitresses keep beer and gin and tonics coming while sailboats in the distance slide along the horizon.
Watching light change to shades of pink from a deck perch made me grateful for the simple five-minute dash it takes to get there along the Skyway from downtown.
Don’t wait. Dug’s starts to shut down by 10 on weeknights and 11 on weekends. Showing up between 6:30 and 7:30 p. m. worked a few times for scoring an empty table for prime sky and people watching: The place, which stays open until October, started to fill up and boaters came in from the Small Boat Harbor out front.
Some customers do sit inside at the curved bar near the front door, but most are outside or on the bar stools along the porch rail.
Drinks, crispy homemade bean burgers ($5.50) and meaty crab cakes ($9) with chipotle lime aoli came fast. A glass of wine is $6 and beer $3.50 to $4.50.
For such a swell blend of water, scene, drink and food, the place isn’t that packed. Dug’s seems undiscovered.
Those in the know are a mix, from young beer drinkers with cropped slicked hair and leg tattoos to the medium-aged in a summer skirt sipping a sweet, fresh strawberry daiquiri. Older men in after a day on the water had beers at the bar. A gray-haired couple sat happy with wine and a plate of steaming mussels.
This summer’s rain spoiled the Dive’s efforts to get people dancing: Live music was canceled three Saturdays in a row. “When is summer going to start?” asked a discouraged soul. “This is really sad.”
Even so, from my recent string of early evening visits, the place was cool as is, nestled and cove-like. A friend looked over the slow turning windmills at the old steel plant at one end of the horizon to the little bay between the shore and the breakwater and said, “You get an intimate feeling.”
Curious, he’d prepared for his visit with online research into the original Dug’s: An infamous Civil War-era boarding house saloon in the downtown red-light canal district and a “dive” entrance with descending steps. Reporters left behind stories of murderous assaults, bad smells, drunks and “peals of laughter.”
Yet former-slave proprietor William Douglass was “a man about whom there is such an air of comfort, content and jolly good nature…you can scarcely help feeling a liking for him,” said an 1874 Buffalo Morning Express story.
Modern-day Dug’s, miles away from the original bygone spot, is more clean-cut than quirky. “Everything’s so nice, shiny, sparkling and suburban,” joked a friend glancing beyond the bar at tables with clean vinyl tablecloths.
Still, sitting outside with drinks and friends on a dusky, breezy evening led to good conversation— about what there was to like about the new Sacha Cohen movie “Bruno,” existential life quandaries and the obvious cook-from-scratch philosophy of this Dug’s proprietor, Tucker Curtin.
At about 10, the staff put chairs upside down on the tables. A friend finished her pinot grigio and readied to leave, smiled and said, “I like it. I like the sunset. I think people should come here more.”
Dug’s Dive
1111 Fuhrmann Boulevard,
Buffalo
Scene:Perfect for a drink at sunset with boaters and landlubbers, while watching passers-by.
Drinks:Fresh strawberry daquiris. Bottled beer, wine, an array of liquor.
Dresscode:Shorts and jeans.
Music:1960s and ’70s rock.
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