COMMENTARY
Janice Okun: Appreciate our great restaurants
This is an unabashed count-your- blessings column. I think the time has come for one. And frankly, I was inspired by Jeff Simon’s piece Tuesday in which he decried Buffalo’s shoddy reputation in the media and elsewhere. (And in our own consciousness too, let us not forget that.)
A lot of the good things about us never seem to be said.
Simon talked about what happened back in 1958 when the UB football team turned down a bid to the Tangerine Bowl because, at the time, bowl rules prohibited mixed-race football games.
My take has nowhere near that significance. But just consider mine a small voice shouting in the bad rap wilderness: We’re also great because the food in our restaurants is great.
I know that. And I hope you know that. But nobody else in the country seems to.
A while ago, I got a call from a New York City food writer whom I won’t name because she is about to sound like an idiot.
This woman was planning a visit to Western New York and she wanted to know where to eat. I gave her a few suggestions. And do you know what? She e-mailed when she got back to Manhattan to tell me how good the food was.
“I can’t believe it — in Buffalo, New York,” she wrote.
Naturally, I got furious and fired back a nasty answer. Sometimes, though, even I am amazed by our restaurant world.
Here we are one of the poorest cities in the country and we have such a wonderful variety of places to eat.
Upscale restaurants, yes. A totally incomplete list would include Oliver’s, Daniel’s, Tempo, Hutch’s, Rue Franklin and the very clever Sample. None of these is exactly cheap, although they cost a lot less than comparable restaurants do in other cities. And all have great chefs in their kitchens who cook up sophisticated menus.
Then there all those mom and pop places that are casual and provide what people like to describe as comfort food. Just a few examples: Mulberry’s, Ulrich’s, The Place, Eckl’s, Creekview.
They present good meals prepared with love and pretty much from scratch.
We’ve got international (though we could use more of it). A fair amount of Greek and Asian and a lot of Italian — everything from the expected red sauce dishes to clever risottos and stews.
How to explain this largess? I can’t, and neither can anyone else I spoke with. Community historian (and restaurant owner) Mark Goldman admitted it.
“No one can answer that,” he said. Former president of the local restaurant association Bob Syracuse drew a blank, too, but pointed to a local cadre of professional people who have a great interest in food.
So what else could it be? The presence of the university? Our geographical location midway between the sophisticated lavender scented cuisine of the cutting edge East Coast and Midwestern meat and potatoes stuff?
Our strong ethnic background, which gave us appreciation of good food in the first place? You figure it out.
The Food Network and its ilk are not the answer. We were eating distinctively here long before Food TV got so popular. We had distinctive food — good bread and charcoal-broiled dogs and, yes, chicken wings — while the rest of the country was still eating Wonder Bread.
I say let’s be grateful for this culinary mystery. Let us shout about it from the housetops.
And let’s patronize all these locally owned good places when we’re hungry and give thanks to the kitchen god.
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