location, location, location -- absurd visions; foot traffic; Vera; BRK&B

i have a vision of Buffalo...where every empty storefront gets filled with a bar, or a restaurant, or a coffee shop, or a deli that slings the best sandwich you ever had.  And every construction project includes some new restaurant venture, and every expansion is to widen kitchen space, lengthen the pine, or add seats to a dining room.  i have this vision of Buffalo, connected by the foot traffic of the hungry, the thirsty, the curious, the stumbling drunk, who are not satisfied to simply camp out at the corner watering hole, but move in a constant scavenger hunt for the best food, the most interesting ambiance, the weirdest drink, the most dramatic company.

what i want, really, is to be in a city full of bars and restaurants.  i want them to replace everything.  i want them instead of salons, instead of pet shops, instead of storefront churches, instead of places for people to live.  i know, that sounds a little weird.  While Buffalo is a city already full of bars and restaurants and coffee shops and taco houses and wing huts, having been an out of work service industry guy on numerous occasions, it seems as though the options for a quality working experience are farther and fewer than the options for a quality dining experience.  I had great souvlaki at Mythos. they've won awards. never would i ever work there.

i guess its that if every storefront were filled with purveyors of food and beverage, the percentage of really quality establishments would naturally increase.  don't confuse my use of the word quality to necessarily correspond with words descriptors like  'upscale' or 'fine dining' or 'formal' or 'expensive.'

as an elmwood villager, proximity is important in choosing a workplace as well.  who wants to mess with driving?  with cabs? with (gasp) public transportation?  lately, this has become more of a concern regarding where to spend my non-working time and my hard earned money.  i know a bartender whose thoughts on the subject are clear:  "i don't go anywhere i can't walk out of."  this has been my motto for years, although i never thought to put it as succinctly as he did.

while i know people don't mind driving and destination spots, it is a bit of an inconvenience to factor in transit time, parking, gas, not to mention limiting beverage intake on account of your transportation.

i guess what i am getting at is that it seems that business, particularly of the food and beverage sort, break out in clusters.  and that the reason for that also seems to be that foot traffic tends to retain (or contain) spenders.

which brings me to some of the recent goings on in the Buffalo restaurant scene.

Its not breaking news that Vera, and the Goldmans' new Black Rock Kitchen & Bar have just opened in Buffalo, and if you want you hear about their food, i suggest taking a gander at the BuffaloEats blog for reporting on the respective cuisines.  I have yet to visit Vera myself, and i was impressed with the menu descriptions at BRK&B, but what i am most concerned with in this post are their locations, and what they mean for local business.

In the case of Vera, it is not so far off the beaten path -- sushi people have been frequenting that location of Kuni's for some time now.  but Lexington does seem to remain a bit of pocket unto itself.  people don't walk down Lexington unless they have a destination on Lexington in mind.

But maybe Vera is a step in realizing my absurd vision of Buffalo, on some level.  I'd like to see it draw that walking crowd of foodie hunter-gatherers onto Lexington.  I'd like to see Lexington turn into the branching of arterial flow that would pump eaters and drinkers all the way across Richmond and into Rhode Island.  My hope for Vera is that it becomes an anchor for a trendy crowd to hang around that generally unadorned sidestreet.  any foot traffic is good traffic, and Kuni's i think stands to benefit from the opening of Vera, particularly as Vera seems crafted to be a drinking destination in addition to being an eatery.  i don't know what the proprietors of Vera intend for the future of their bar, but i could see them and their clientele in a centrifugal relationship between both the Essex Street Pub and Left Bank.  and if The Place and Kuni's take the right cues, they could stand to expand their offerings, extend their hours, and garner the revenue of folks who'll already be stomping around in the area.  The Place has a dilapidated, exclusive charm i'm surprised more hipsters haven't appropriated yet.  perhaps it's too corny to consider the diner-like atmosphere and aged clientele to really be ironic yet, but it could get there. Across Richmond,  Left Bank could stand to dial their stuffy image down a notch, while Prime 490 could at least let people know they're there.  And if the rumor was ever true that the Essex was going start offering bar food, now would be the time to do it.


the Black Rock Kitchen & Bar i'm a bit more worried about.  is worried the word? maybe not.  i guess i'm withholding judgment.  i'm hesitant. their Amherst Street location is way off the beaten path, and not one i ever take unless i'm headed to Wegmans.  People seem to hail it as a milestone of Black Rock's revitalization, but i'm not yet convinced.  would i like it to be? sure.  i don't have any doubts it will do well.  As Allen Street Hardware's "sister store" i would almost venture to say that kind of endorsement is enough, and if the Goldmans are running it, even better; they'll make their money.

the problem for me is that its not that there aren't other eating and drinking establishments within walking distance of BRK&B, but the type, and the crowd to which those establishments cater. I want to believe in the same centrifugal potential for Amherst Street that i believe could be practical on Lexington, but i dont' know if there will be much cross pollination between places like Casey's or Sportsman's Tavern and BRK&B.  even Voelker's is a stretch, with all of its kitschy, townie bar appeal.  the real questions isn't whether foodies with patronize BRK&B -- that's not what its success will be built on.  they'll have no problem drawing people who like food, who have the money to eat out constantly, who will tell their friends and parents and out of towners to go there for the unique and fun dining experience.  the question is whether the young, riotous, bar-hopping, bicycle riding, anti-establishment, trendy crowd that has made Hardware a success will feel like migrating all the way to Amherst Street where BRK&B is the only bastion of its kind.  the fact is that places as successful as Hardware -- and every other hole on Allen -- make their money on the booze.  Part of why people enjoy Allen Street is the ability to hop from place to place once the scene feels stale.  This will be harder to do on Amherst Street unless some of the establishments there realize the potential that BRK&B is offering.  Either a revamp and re-imaging of some of the places on Amherst is in order, or the Black Rock is going to be a very sophisticated but lonely destination.

Or, it just might not matter.  who knows.  its interesting what crowds find appealing once they end up in a certain area.  that people are abandoning Chippewa in droves for destinations on Allen and Elmwood might just naturally shove patrons into a more northerly destination like Amherst Street.

at any rate, there's no way to tell other than to watch.
i prefer to to do so with a drink.
here's to seeing my vision unfold.
cheers.

the Dining Roomer

It has been said that Buffalo is not a small town, it's a large room.  

Think of the last house party you went to.  It's three in the morning.  Hey, there's that guy who always takes his clothes off at parties.  There's that girl you made out with in the phone booth at the Pink last summer.  Oh, you're out of the beer that you BYO-ed.  But at least there's still some hummus and a slice of pizza left. 

And the no-clothes guy gets up and starts peeling away layers, and your friend offers you one of his Labatt Blues while you tell him about the make-out girl and are mowing down on ethnically disparate cuisine, and all is as it should be in the large-room-sized-world.

But it's when all is not as it should be -- and the bathroom is locked for some ungodly purpose, and a partygoer has turned the kitchen sink into a vomitorium, and your ex shows up with your other ex's ex, and you are forced to pee outside, and your bestie is huffing floorwax in the next room -- it's then that the novelty of this "large room" is brought home.  And becomes interesting.

houseparty antic metaphors aside (finally), the Buffalo community is a dynamic one, for all of it's smallness.  I suppose that's the reason why it feels like 13th grade, sometimes.  Street cred is built on the same balance that all good storytelling is based on -- authenticity, drama, and the question of when to keep silent, and when to reveal.  Ultimately, here, it's not what you know, and it's not who you know -- it's what you know about who you know.  Each person has their own niche, their own web of intrigue, their own collection of only vaguely subsurface secrets.  And we're a city of poor secretkeepers.  Our large room is the meet up of a giant knitting circle.  Of course we've got cliques and subsets and genre communities, but they all knot up through one crossroads.  Perhaps it's my own bias, my vision that is limited by the scope of my profession, but there isn't a better position to be in to get to know that knitting circle and all its threads than in the service industry.  It's like a living local newspaper;  arts & entertainment, business, government -- what section do you want?  They all go out to eat.  They all go to the bar.  They all shuffle through some form of the service industry, and industry workers hear all, see all, and know all.  Or, at least some version of it. 

It's amazing, the things you can learn from what you hear in a large room.

I am just a fly on the wall.