From its booming city center to its buzzing West Side, Buffalo — once considered too dicey to even walk around — feels like a city on the cusp of something big.
Abandoned industrial sites are getting transformed into nightlife venues. Young chefs are heating up a restaurant scene that’s both adventurous and unpretentious. A long-neglected waterfront has been reborn as Canalside, a 21-acre park with concerts, sporting events, festivals, and a sandy playground for kids. It’s a brilliant reclamation of the majestic Erie Canal.
And the unthinkable is happening in Buffalo’s underappreciated downtown: People are choosing to live there.
“Downtown has just exploded,” says chef/restaurateur Mike Andrzejewski, whose hip Seabar sushi joint (475 Ellicott St., seabarsushi.com) is widely credited as a catalyst of downtown’s renaissance. “People are coming back for the first time I’ve seen in 57 years of living here.” A relatively low cost of living also means smart, creative people are choosing Buffalo over hyperinflated New York or L.A. — and pursuing dreams of an artisan bakery, third-wave coffee shop, or indie gallery, all here in abundance.
For a visitor, that means discovering an energized city that feels like a next-big-thing neighborhood — but retains some of its second-banana humility. Even with all of the green hair, tattoos, and geometric glasses I saw in happening ‘hoods like Allentown and Elmwood Village, there’s remarkably little attitude in this city in Western New York.
Buffalo’s rise and fall tells a particularly American story. The Erie Canal made it a 19th-century powerhouse, with steel and wheat driving global trade. The good times lasted until the 1920s, with the Great Depression, suburban flight, and dying industry strangling the city over subsequent decades.
An unintended bright spot: Like Cleveland, Buffalo was so broke that it lacked resources to demolish empty downtown buildings, including spectacular examples of 20th-century architecture. An astonishing stock survives, like City Hall, a 1932 Art Deco masterpiece; Electric Tower, a glistening Beaux-Arts gem; and the Lafayette, a French-Renaissance treasure designed by Louise Blanchard Bethune, the nation’s first female architect. Restored to its original grandeur after a multimillion-dollar renovation, it’s now one of the city’s most sought-after lodgings, Hotel @ The Lafayette (391 Washington St., buffalobrewerydistrict.com/lafayette).
Along with downtown, Buffalo’s West Side beautifully illustrates the transformation taking place here. On one hand, a huge influx of immigrants is infusing the West Side with a new sense of possibility and purpose. This part of Buffalo feels as international as Queens. Burmese and Cambodian restaurants, run by refugees, abut Ethiopian and Jamaican joints. At the West Side Bazaar (25 Grant St., westsidebazaar.com), a kind of global mall created by a local nonprofit, new arrivals hawk foods and crafts of their homelands.
At the same time, entrepreneurial locals are transforming the neighborhood with eateries that would feel at home in Brooklyn — but are friendlier. At Five Points Bakery (44 Brayton St., fivepointsbakery.com), a vacant lot has been turned into a woodsy café with a cult following for daily breads and breakfasts. Blocks away, worker-owned BreadHive (402 Connecticut St., breadhive.com) is conquering Buffalo with luscious baked goods and a message of fairness. “Equality gives people dignity,” co-founder Allison Ewing told me.
Buffalo’s renaissance is also elevating its restaurant kitchens. Try Buffalo wings if you must — locals get theirs at Gabriel’s Gate (145 Allen St., gabrielsgate.page.tl) in Allentown — but don’t miss out on culinary talent that’s making Buffalo a thriving food destination.
At Black Sheep (367 Connecticut Ave., blacksheepbuffalo.com) on the West Side, the plates are as serious as the atmosphere is laid-back. Nightly offerings might span hand-made pierogi, flawless Korean fried chicken, and revelatory roasted beets. Mandatory desserts include lush sticky toffee pudding.
Likewise, Buffalo Proper’s (333 Franklin St., buffaloproper.com) raucous bi-level space and hopping bar scene make a friendly setting for its immensely rewarding eats. There, I savored a beautiful plate of roasted carrots with house-made ricotta; decadent red-wine-poached egg with potatoes and scallion in shiro miso; and an exemplary half-chicken with braised greens.
It’s not just new attractions that make Buffalo worth visiting. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1285 Elmwood Ave., albrightknox.org) opened in 1862 as the nation’s first modern-art museum. On a walk through the bright, open galleries, I saw a mind-blowing constellation of work — Picasso, Gauguin, Kahlo — without the mobs of Manhattan museums. The landmark Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House Complex (125 Jewett Pkwy., darwinmartinhouse.org), built a century ago in leafy Parkside, stands as a stunning example of the architect’s work. It’s getting restored to its original patina after years of neglect.
Buffalo’s rough edges haven’t been entirely smoothed. I was still warned away from neighborhoods like the East Side. And empty storefronts pock some downtown blocks. But momentum’s in the Nickel City’s favor.
A local hotelier is transforming a former psychiatric hospital — and Gothic Revival landmark — into the Hotel Henry (400 Forest Ave., hotelhenry.com), an “urban resort” set to open next spring. The Albright-Knox just announced a 60,000-square-foot expansion by starchitects OMA. And the buzz keeps getting louder at Larkin Square, a one-time factory transformed into a lively entertainment and business district
Buffalo was once called the Queen City, and it may well earn its crown again.
If You Go…
Delta and JetBlue offer daily nonstop service to Buffalo from JFK from about $215 round-trip. Delta offers daily nonstop service to Buffalo from LaGuardia from about $275 round-trip.
Eat:
– A new hotspot on an emerging strip of Elmwood Ave., MTK (Midtown Kitchen) serves hearty salads and bar food in a cavernous industrial-chic room. (451 Elmwood Ave., mtkbuffalo.com)
– As he revealed on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” host Guy Fieri loves Lake Effect Diner (3165 Main St., curtinrestaurants.com), one of America’s last dining-car style restaurants. A must: House-cured corned beef on homemade Kaiser roll.
Stay:
Around-the-clock butler service is a signature of The Mansion on Delaware Avenue (414 Delaware Ave., mansionondelaware.com), a grand home on Buffalo’s Mansion Row converted to 28 ultra-comfortable rooms. From $295/night.
More info: visitbuffaloniagara.com
