Delaware Avenue & Niagara Square, Buffalo, NY
Web: Taste of Buffalo 2008
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Buffalo Desserts Drinks Festivals
Unlike most big meals, which start with appetizers, end with desserts, and are punctuated by a drink or two inbetween, our visit to the 2008 Taste of Buffalo was marked by a hugely disorganized feasting on whatever happened to be nearby and interesting at a given moment. Our desserts consequently started within minutes of arrival and ended as we were leaving and trying to use up tickets; similarly, we had our first drinks early on, continued mid-way through, and stopped just in time to be safe to drive home. Here are some of the most memorable sweet treats we tried.
Merritt Winery: Normally, we don't start drinking right away, but Merritt Estate Winery's large booth was prominently advertising an Icy Sangria Wine Slush, served purplish red in overflowing plastic cups. Sweet and tart, the Sangria Wine Slush is harder to make at home than you'd imagine - even if you start with a nice bottle of Sangria - and tasted like a pinot noir Icee. It was great in the day's emerging heat, but not our favorite alcoholic beverage of the day.
Warm Lake Estate: Our favorite alcoholic drink of the day came from Warm Lake Estate in the Niagara Escarpment. The Glace Noir, a 2004 Pinot Noir, was an absolutely delicious, full-bodied port that tasted as oak-aged as it was advertised to be. Even served in a small cup, it warmed and coated the mouth and throat with a syrupy sweet grape flavor that we'd be thrilled to have at the end of any meal. Our wine country tasting tour can't come soon enough, and will likely start here.
Niagara Landing Wine Cellars: We also really enjoyed the sampling menu at Niagara Landing Wine Cellars, which for only a few tickets let us pick from a collection of flavors and try small cups of three preferred options. The best of the bunch was the Blueberry Wine, which managed to fuse together blueberry, cherry, and light vanilla flavors, while a Raspberry Rosebud provided a tart contrast. We should have cleansed our palates between them with the clean, dry Riesling, but instead took it at the end. Oops.
Cup of Joe's Restaurant: Another early sweet snack, Cup of Joe's Pizzelles - a flat waffle-like cookie with baked-in anise flavor - were both authentic and unremarkable, identical in flavor to the cookies we pick up once a month at Wegmans. To the extent people hadn't tried them before, the Ridge Road, Lackawanna-based Cup of Joe's made the sampling cheap and easy, offering two or five Pizzelles depending on how many tickets you wanted to shell out, but there was nothing here to make people drive out the Lackawanna to try the local version.
Ms. Goodies: We sort of made a mistake when it came to Ms. Goodie's: we were intrigued by the Junkyard Dog Sandwich, a loaded-up catfish and cole slaw sandwich wrap from this Bailey Avenue, Buffalo restaurant, but passed on it in favor of trying the Banana Pudding. The Junkyard Dog won a Taste of Buffalo award, but the Banana Pudding - served in classically inexpensive fashion with a couple of Nilla Wafers tossed in - was plenty tasty, too.
Sweet Tooth: Our favorite dessert of the day? Unexpectedly, it was this Raspberry Sacher Torte from Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo's Sweet Tooth, which had a few different desserts on offer but hooked us visually - at the end of a long day of eating, no less - with a big, heavy slice of glistening chocolate sponge cake that featured a chocolate butter cream, dark chocolate ganache, and fresh raspberry puree. Given all that we'd eaten, we expected the Torte to be impossible to finish, but found ourselves licking the last moist crumbs off the fork, and ganache from our finger tips at the end. If the rest of Sweet Tooth's desserts are anything like this, perhaps it's worth the drive to Elmwood to check it out.
Not Fully Shown: Our favorite non-alcoholic drink of the day came from the Clarence Center Coffee Company and Cafe, which offered an amazingly fresh, fruit-filled Mango Smoothie. We ordered too small a portion - the mini rather than the full-sized cup - and regretted cheaping out after our first sip. (Updated August 5, 2008: We've subsequently reviewed the Mango Smoothie, with photographs, on Buffalo Chow.) The last thing we grabbed on the way out was from the Bavarian Nut Company, which featured a bunch of freshly roasted nuts, as well as some Cinnamon Glazed Almonds that we had to bring home. We weren't disappointed, but then, we're suckers for these candied nuts, and plan a visit to the Company's shop in Clarence soon.
Our previous coverage of the Taste of Buffalo 2008 can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.
