5445 Transit Rd, Williamsville, NY 14221
Web: Dairy Queen
Phone: 716.689.1775
Rating:
[learn more]Pros:
A value-oriented, family-friendly dessert restaurant with a nice variety of ice cream treats, ranging from long-time classics such as the Buster Bar to newer ones including Blizzard shakes.
Cons:
Hot menu items, served at only some locations, are generally disappointing. Some of the ice cream items have been cut back a little in flavor relative to older versions we loved.
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"It's hardly unique to Buffalo, but it's as much a part of our dessert culture as any indigenous restaurant in the area, and the prices always seem right."
We can name a dozen foods that are essentially native to Western New York, but when it comes to desserts, the list is pretty short. Sure, we have our sponge candy, our pastry hearts, and a handful of not-really-ours things such as Buffalo Chips, also known as chocolate covered macaroons. Unlike chicken wings or Beef on Weck sandwiches, none of Buffalo's desserts requires a visit to only one place for a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience, which is part of the reason that a place like Dairy Queen - strictly speaking, a chain restaurant - can continue to be so viable and worthwhile in an otherwise picky region. Anderson's, Dessert Deli, Alethea's and other sweet shops have their times and places, but the local Dairy Queens still have a few things that continue to win us over.
The Story: Nearly 70 years old, the Dairy Queen chain originally focused exclusively on sweets, but has expanded over time to include new locations known as DQ Grill & Chills that also serve burgers and sandwiches. Presently owned by megainvestor Berkshire Hathaway, Dairy Queen also controls Orange Julius - another Buffalo Chow favorite because of its namesake beverage - and combines the two chains at certain locations, such as the one on the second floor of the Walden Galleria Mall. Most of the Western New York outlets, however, are just Dairy Queens, and that's a good thing: we're not very impressed by the Grill & Chill food, and though we wouldn't mind having more Julius locations around, when we go to a DQ, it's for the ice cream.
Highs: We could go down the list of Dairy Queen's many wonderful desserts, but we'll stick to just a few, starting with the Buster Bar. As one of the only single-serving items sold by the chain in boxes that can be taken home and eaten en masse, the Buster Bar is the equivalent of a chocolate-coated Mexican Sundae on a stick. DQ makes this concoction by taking a cup-shaped mold, filling its bottom and sides with a thin layer of chocolate, and then dropping in alternating layers of fudge, peanuts, and vanilla ice cream. Three layers of fudge and nuts are typically found inside - one at the top, one at the bottom, and one inbetween. For a few years, DQ tested a smaller, healthier Buster Bar that didn't taste as good; now it's back and closer to the original.
If there's one thing that the revised Buster Bar really missed, that would be the standard Dairy Queen ice cream, which was never meant to go low-fat. It's supposed to be creamy, which can't be achieved with the icier, watery tasting stuff that sometimes substitutes for soft serve in packages. Had Dairy Queen tried to pass the low-fat ice cream off in all of its other products, long-time customers would have lost their minds.
The easiest way to enjoy the original, creamy soft serve ice cream, which needs very little assistance to taste superb, is in a Dipped Cone - a once-proprietary hard chocolate shell that's formed by dipping the soft serve into a special quick-drying liquid chocolate sauce. There's an ever-so-slight fun crunch as you bite through the shell to get to the ice cream, this texture reason alone to have the cone dipped. Butterscotch and cherry dips are also available; we always stick to the chocolate one. A more aggressive way to enjoy the same ice cream is a Waffle Bowl Sundae - some prefer the Fudge Brownie Temptation, but we're partial to the Turtle, which blends caramel and chocolate sauces with a chocolate-dipped waffle cone bowl and some whipped cream. Breaking up the bowl before starting the sundae gives you the maximum chance to enjoy bites mixed with cookie, ice cream, and topping goodness. We'd say "pass on the whipped cream to save the calories," but seriously, with all that other stuff in the bowl, does a little whipped cream really matter?
The last key item on our list is the Blizzard, a sorta-milkshake version of blended ice cream and cookies or candy, served in a cup. It's like the McDonalds McFlurry, only with softer, better ice cream and a larger potential choice of ingredients. This month's promotional Blizzard happened to be a tie-up with the Girl Scouts, offering what purported to be a version based on the perennially popular Thin Mint cookies. We weren't blown away by the Thin Mint Cookie Blizzard Treat, which tasted to us too much like an attempt to glorify the cookie with a mix of plain vanilla ice cream and light mint flavoring rather than amplifying it with more powerful chocolate and mint flavors, but given how great most of the Blizzards are, one so-so version isn't going to stop us from trying others in the future.
Lows: We could go into the subject of the Grill & Chill restaurants in greater depth, but it will suffice to say that we're just not impressed by their added food items. The sandwiches and fries are basically throwaway items that are apparently designed to provide these restaurants with a reason for existing during the winter, when at least some of Western New York's locations have traditionally closed their doors. It might sound like hyperbole, but we'd be more likely to want an ice cream from Dairy Queen in December than one of the GrillBurgers shown here, or the french fries, which were also utterly forgettable.
The Verdict: When we want lemon ice, we go to Andersons; cake, we go to Dessert Deli; candy, it's Alethea's. For ice cream, especially ice cream coated in chocolate, we are still partial to Dairy Queen. It's hardly unique to Buffalo, but it's as much a part of our dessert culture as any indigenous restaurant in the area, and the prices always seem right. Skip the hot food items and you'll surely leave satisfied.
