Delaware Ave. & Allen St., Buffalo NY 14201
Web: Allentown Art Festival
Phone: 716.881.4269
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Buffalo Cannoli Desserts Festivals Hot Dogs Italian Sausages
"In addition to running through Delaware and obscuring restaurants such as Merge, the Allentown Art Festival abuts Virginia Street, home to Mother's, Fat Bob's, and Scarlet."
As long-time fans of Buffalo's Allentown Art Festival, we make our annual trip in mid-June for the art, not the food, but there's always an initial question: what will we be eating and drinking there? The official Art Festival website provides no culinary guidance, so we decided to assemble this brief pictorial guide to help prospective attendees learn what's available. In short, temporary stands set up on Delaware Avenue offer plenty of fun but generally unhealthy carnival fare - arguably major attraction number two for Festival-goers - but there are also many sit-down restaurant options either on the Allentown route or immediately adjacent to it. Almost anything sold from the temporary food and drink stands can be had for $5 or less, while meals at sit-down restaurants are obviously more expensive. Here are your options.
Sausage and Hot Dog Stands: Amongst the most numerous food options at the Art Festival are various hot dog and sausage stands, some of which offer a healthier cooked carrot on a bun as a healthy alternative. Most of the stands feature Sahlen's hot dogs and various Italian sausages; a notable centrally located large stand and seating area offers Mineo & Sapio sausages from Buffalo. The smell of these spicy sausages lures us over every year.
Fried Food Stands: Aunt Sue's Golden Curly Q Fries is but one of many stands focused on frying up vegetables or desserts at the Allentown Art Festival; it's also one of the biggest. Most of the others either conspicuously advertise Fried Dough - sheets of deep-fried, sugared dough - Funnel Cakes, or items such as Oreos. It's quite possible that Fried Dough and its variants are amongst the most popular items at the Festival; we always see lots of people walking around with it.
Cotton Candy, Candy Apples, and Popcorn: These classic fair foods are in abundance, starting near Delaware and North and continuing down the road. Beautiful red and blue candy apples, caramel apples, and oversized bags of cotton candy are being assembled at these booths as you watch; the rolling of red candy apples in copper bowls is actually a lot of fun to witness. Beware the delicious but extremely gooey caramel apples ($4).
Other Hot Foods: Scattered booths throughout the Art Festival include The Lobster Hut, the rare booth offering semi-upscale food in the form of lobster sandwiches, a couple of pizza stands offering what look like slices made hours earlier, and Red Osier roast beef sandwiches. The surprisingly numerous Red Osier stands notably also have frying tables set up to make fried bologna and onions.
Italian and Related Desserts: Russ's Bakery and Angelo's Italian Pastry are two of the businesses set up with beautiful display cases of Italian sweets, including everything from Cannoli to Pasticotti to numerous cookies. Still making its great pastry hearts, Russ's Bakery has at least two large stands at Allentown, and we enjoyed one of its cannolis ($3.50) this time. A central Allen Street-area stand called Brendan's Strawberry Shortcake was offering its signature product, and another stand nearby was offering Cannoli Ice Cream.
Shaved Ice, Lemon Ice, Italian Ice and Lemonade: Though we only spotted a single Shaved Ice stand at the Festival, it was doing a great job of offering the authentic Hawaiian experience, filling large and specially made plastic cups with customers choice of two flavored syrups from a long list of options. Far more common were booths selling freshly squeezed lemonade, "New York Style Lemon Ice," and Italian Ice; if you don't see them elsewhere, they're easy to spot at the intersection of Delaware and Allen.
Sit-Down Restaurant Options: In addition to running through Delaware and obscuring still-open restaurants such as the vegetarian Merge, the Allentown Art Festival abuts Virginia Street, home to Mother's, Fat Bob's Smokehouse, and Scarlet. Fat Bob's always has its dining room and a large backyard communal seating area open during the Festival at daytime; Merge is open at lunch, and other places are only open for dinner.
Allen West Festival Options: Held at the same time as the Allentown Art Festival, the much less exciting Allen West Festival happens to occupy the stretch of Allen Street from Elmwood Avenue to Wadsworth, tapering off dramatically at the Wadsworth end. Restaurants such as Fiddle Heads, Gabriel's Gate, Jim's SteakOut, Lagniappes, Sample, Steel Crazy, Sweet Tooth, and the Towne Restaurant are all in this vicinity and open for business; Sample, Sweet Tooth, and Lagniappes all had small booths at Allen West as well. Most interesting was Lagniappes, which was offering Alligator and Crawfish items.
Notably, the opening hours of these restaurants vary during the Art Festival; with the exception of the Virginia Mother's and Scarlet locations, which are evening restaurants, we've listed ones that were open at lunch time as we walked the Festival. Normally only open at night, Sample actually opened for business at lunch time to accommodate the crowds, leading us to pay it a visit. Thus, even if you're going to Allentown to check out the great art, you may just discover your next favorite restaurant there, too.
