Entries from Buffalo Chow tagged with 'Chains'

The Olive Garden, Or, When One Door Closes, Another Opens

As you've probably heard by now, Buffalo Chow is shutting down. Readers asked why, and so we posted the following "epic" series of messages to our @buffalochow Twitter account on the evening of June 13, 2011, responding to general and...

Posted on June 15, 2011

Update: Five Guys In 2010 + Replies From Other Top Chains

We were thrilled by the response to this week's list of Ten Great Chain Restaurants Buffalo Should Pursue: readers added many great suggestions, including Yard House, Mongolian BBQ, Legal Seafood, California Pizza Kitchen, and Joe's Crab Shack, amongst others, but...

Posted on December 19, 2009

Top 10 Great Chain Restaurants Buffalo Should Have

Locally owned and operated restaurants are great - except when they leave big gaps in local food expectations. How many years has Buffalo gone without a truly awesome Mexican restaurant? Considered Burger King or Wendy's to be the pinnacle of...

Posted on December 14, 2009

Chipotle Opens In Buffalo (Well, Amherst); Here's Why We Care

We're going to have more to say soon, but the big food story of the week is one we've been discussing on Twitter: after a soft launch yesterday, national Tex-Mex chain Chipotle officially opened its first restaurant in Western New...

Posted on December 11, 2009

Nagoya Chow: Yamachan's Chicken Wings + Miso Dishes

Nagoya is Japan's fourth-largest city, and though one mightn't guess as much from its staid streets, it's obsessed with miso. Known best for its role in the common Japanese soup, miso paste - actually, pastes - are made from fermented...

Posted on November 18, 2009

At Carrabba's Italian Grill in Amherst, A Nice Menu, Fine Food

In the world of chain Italian restaurants, there's a middle ground between the ubiquitous low-end Olive Gardens and the uncommon high-end Maggiano's - a territory occupied by mall and plaza places such as Bravo! Cucina Italiana and Carrabba's Italian Grill....

Posted on October 19, 2009

Yogen Fruz: It's Not Pinkberry, But It's Frozen Yogurt in Buffalo

If you've been reading Buffalo Chow for the last year, or even the last month, you know that there's a frozen yogurt craze sweeping the United States, and that we're huge fans of the reformulated "Italian" recipe, popularized by several...

Posted on October 4, 2009

O.C. Chow: The Changing Face of Chicken, Korean + American

Buffalonians take for granted their status as originators and purveyors of a globally-recognized chicken dish - the "Buffalo Wing," as it's now commonly called - and though there are surely thousands of other ways to eat chicken in Western New...

Posted on September 22, 2009

U.B.'s New Jamba Juice + Earlier Good Korean, Indian Options

Every two or so months, Buffalo Chow's editors have a "which restaurants is WNY missing" discussion, and three weeks ago, Jamba Juice's name came up on our list. A purveyor of smoothies that can double as full meals, this 729-location...

Posted on September 17, 2009

Starbucks, Or, On The Destruction Of A Famous Brand

Just as business textbooks will one day include detailed case studies on Apple's unbelievable come-from-nowhere, conventional wisdom-bucking successes with the iPod and iPhone, they'll also likely discuss the rise and fall of Starbucks, a company that seemed to be hurtling...

Posted on September 17, 2009

Is Wendy's Content To Be Number 3, Or Thinking Bigger?

Oh, to be back in the 1980's, the halcyon days of fast food - when "burger wars" made the covers of national magazines, and big chains fought to see whose oddball character - Wendy's old "Where's the Beef?" lady, Burger...

Posted on August 11, 2009

Burger King, Or, Who Has Buffalo's Best Fast Food Burger?

One of us is originally from Buffalo. The other grew up in Southern California. We may have different opinions on which drive-through chain is best - she says In-N-Out Burger, he says Carl's Jr. or Chick-fil-A - but let there...

Posted on July 31, 2009

Chicago Chow: Smoque, Grand Lux & McDonald's Bistro

A restaurant you've probably never heard of before, even though it's been on TV. One that you may know by association with its older, more famous sibling. And a third that you'll know for sure, but probably have never seen...

Posted on July 1, 2009

Yes, It's a Chain, But Bonefish Grill Offers Seafood & Class

Chain restaurants aren't bad by nature, and over the past 10 years, certain upscale chains such as The Cheesecake Factory have demonstrated that patrons can benefit when smart people popularize winning formulas of decor, food quality, and pricing. Amherst's location...

Posted on May 29, 2009

Canada's Coffee Culture Makes a Splash on Main St., U.S.A.

Suburbanites may have been waiting for months to patronize Williamsville's still unfinished Main Street location of Buffalo's well-liked Spot Coffee, but now there's an attractive alternative just down the street: at the end of March, Coffee Culture seemed to have...

Posted on April 26, 2009

For T.G.I. Friday's, Glory Days of Flair & Food, Fading Fast

Restaurant critics have ignored chain restaurants for years in favor of local ones, a practice so pervasive that the Association of Food Journalists warns new freelance reviewers to ask their publications in advance whether chains are off-limits. At Buffalo Chow,...

Posted on April 20, 2009

Chain Barbecue, Done A'ight: Montana's & Smokey Bones

What Western New York lacks - and it does - for authentic barbecue joints, it makes up for with chain restaurants with decent enough renditions to accept in their absence. Case in point: Montana's on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Tonawanda,...

Posted on January 23, 2009

Finally, Quaker Steak & Lube Opens in Its Ancestral Home

Outsiders aren't supposed to rival, or even approach local Buffalo favorites when it comes to making authentic chicken wings. Hundreds of places have tried, and there are surely days when we think we've tried too many sad wannabes to stomach...

Posted on December 12, 2008

Cheesecake Factory, the Rare Untainted Chain Restaurant

Everything you need to know about The Cheesecake Factory can be summed up in a single sentence: the desserts are memorably outstanding, but you could skip them and still have an excellent meal. If you've been reading Buffalo Chow for...

Posted on August 3, 2008

Blizzards & Buster Bars: Dairy Queen's Creamy Delights

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...

Posted on July 29, 2008

Panera Bread: Picture-Perfect, Fine-Tasting Lunches

In the Kappabashi district of Tokyo, Japan, there are stores that sell nothing more than plastic models of food, designed to look as good or better than the real items on offer at local restaurants. American restaurants use no such...

Posted on July 19, 2008

The Steakhouse Burger, a Meaty Jewel in Burger King's Crown

The arguments between Californians and New Yorkers over the country's best hamburgers would be the stuff of legend if the topic wasn't widely considered to be so trivial. Californians typically claim, in a very matter-of-fact way, that In-N-Out's burgers are...

Posted on July 2, 2008

Red Lobster: A Forgotten Seafood Chain Claws Upwards

Perhaps because Western New York has historically seen great things from small restaurants, some of the area's locals have taken perverse pleasure in bashing - or just ignoring - larger ones run by national chains. Over the course of our...

Posted on July 2, 2008

Bravo: Hold the Applause, It's Chain-Quality Italian

In a region that's completely packed with family-owned Italian restaurants, some people might laugh at the very thought that a quality Italian meal could be found at a shopping mall. But Bravo! Cucina Italiana, located inside the recently opened upscale...

Posted on May 18, 2008

With Californian Influence, Just Pizza Reinvents Buffalo's

We do not, as a rule, lightly add new pizza parlors to our list of "favorites." To go further, perhaps 15 years have passed since we've had such a great pizza in Western New York that we'd consider it as...

Posted on April 22, 2008

Dippin' Dots: Ice Cream as Melting Ball Bearings

We are not going to attempt to glorify a twenty-year-old culinary invention that, when snarkily summarized, consists of turning big vats of cheap ice cream into small, expensive balls of ice cream. We can't even tell you that we prefer...

Posted on April 20, 2008

For a Chain, Original Pancake House Seems So Local

Lines have spilled onto the sidewalks of the Main Street location of The Original Pancake House for years, and in a pre-Internet era, Buffalonians might reasonably have assumed that Williamsville's quintessential breakfast shop was a local phenomenon. It's not -...

Posted on March 3, 2008

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