Buzz Blog

You have to marvel, walking into Mulberry Italian Ristorante in Lackawanna.

The ceiling is covered with red and white and silver Christmas ornaments!

At first Buzz thought they were ahead of the curve on Valentine's Day, but no, these were Christmas ornaments, so kudos and a big wassail to Mulberry for keeping that holiday cheer coming. It does look as if the colors will carry nicely over into St. Valentine's Day. For St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day they might have to rethink things.

Which begs the big question ...

Continue reading "Lackawanna restaurant has glass ceiling" »

Buzz was not a Wegmans shopper for a long time. But suddenly we have become a fan! We love the displays and the packaging and the prices on a lot of things are good. There will always be things we buy at Tops and things we buy at Aldi and things we buy at the Broadway Market, etc. But we get a kick out of Wegmans.

However.

What is with Wegmans customers?

Everyone at Wegmans acts driven and entitled and stressed out. It seems most of them are better dressed than the customers at the other supermarkets, and they stride around like stormtroopers. Just to ratchet the stress level up a little, there are those cobblestone floors, and the carts make a tremendous racket as they clatter over them.

The Wegmans carts have coffee holders and a lot of people have coffee in them. They don't smile and they barge past you without an "excuse me." And when you step aside to let them pass they don't glance at you or thank you. They just stride past as if it is their right. Every once in a while you find an exception but not often.

Buzz is not really that annoyed. We are more amused and fascinated. It is like a puzzle.

What is it with Wegmans shoppers?

We put the question to a friend, a colleague here at the The News, and she knew immediately what we were talking about.

"I think I know why it is," she said.

"Why?" we asked.

"There aren't that many Wegmans stores here," she explained. "So there's a kind of desperation."

In other words, people are aggressive and grabby because their Wegmans opportunities are limited and they have to get their ...

... while they can.

Buzz had never considered such an explanation before.

We like it!

Welcome, welcome, Trader Joe's!
We can't believe our luck.
But the store won't be the same without ...

... Two Buck Chuck.

(The poet thanks New York State law, which prohibits wine sales in supermarkets.)

Like rivulets of spilled champagne, the photos from New Year's Eve are trickling in.

How bad a year can 2013 turn out to be when it begins with (left to right): developer Mark Croce, crooner Nick Battistella and Mayor Byron Brown singing, together, "Auld Lang Syne"?

This picture, posted on Nick's Facebook fan page, was taken at the Statler Ice Ball.

Quoth Nick: "Mayor Brown was rockin' the house!"

A priest we know, the wonderful and witty Father John Mack, wonders this morning if there is such a thing as a food hangover.

A legitimate question, and the answer is  yes!

Got a food hangover? Do what Buzz did. Eat a coookie immediately. Eat two.

Hair of the dog!

Five reasons to join Gene McCarthy's Founders' Club:

1. Free 5 oz. of beer whenever you come in! The historic tavern on Hamburg Street in the Old First Ward promises, and we quote: "Your very own etched 21 oz. mug that you will be able to fill for the 16 oz. price." Club membership is $100 so you can occupy yourself on your barstool by figuring out how soon it will pay for itself.

2. You can drink that free beer at a bar so old and righteous that your glass tilts slightly, as shown in the News file photo above, taken on location.

3. You get an invitation to the grand opening when McCarthy's opens its brewery-in-progress.

4. You get the inside track on a special events.

5. You will have the honor of knowing you helped build that brewery. "Beer, like money, does not grow on trees," point out the tavernkeepers. "Unless you are making kriek [with cherries])." Far be it from us to leave McCarthy's up a kriek!

And finally, the best reason:

You get emails signed "Your Friends in Beer."

Irresistible!

Sweet Jenny's in Williamsville gives us the scoop.

Buzz always laughs at the Snooty Fox Lounge, the upscale bar on Delaware Avenue, pictured above in a snooty News file photo. We have always thought that name is just so clever.

Once there was some scavenger hunt for charity and one of the things you had to do was: "Get down on all fours and graze like a buffalo in front of the Snooty Fox." Ha, ha! We always remember that!

Naive as we can be, we always thought our Snooty Fox was the only one in the whole wide world.

A friend told us about a Snooty Fox near McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

It couldn't be true. We told her to stop hounding us. But lo, it is true, there is a Snooty Fox north of the border.

After that we went Snooty Fox hunting.

The Snooty Fox is a chain of consignment stores in the Cincinnati area.

There is also a Snooty Fox Tack Exchange, for riding apparel and so forth.

A "venerable" Snooty Fox pub closed last year in Indianapolis. Hmmm. Reading about that one we are not sure that a 29-year history qualifies you as venerable.

Well, it seems that the name is venerable, anyway.

Snooty Foxes run in a pack!

Waaaah, everyone we know is on his or her second or third Christmas tree and we have not even picked ours out yet!

And here it is what, 60 degrees? How are we to get into that Christmas tree spirit now?

The window of opportunity is shut!

But the door to Tops is open. Seriously, we love displays, and this one's a doozy. 

Frank Lloyd Wright thought he was something with his Tree of Life.

It has nothing on the Tree of Schweppes!

That was the irresistible heading on an invitation Buzz got for an intimate celebration last night at Buffalo's latest romantic hot spot, Polish Villa II. The iconic restaurant at 1085 Harlem Road in Cheektowaga is not only rolling out the barrel, it is rolling out an elegant new menu.

The Polish Villa II looks beautiful. Over the bar is an incredible ceiling, carved in Poland ...

... and perfect to look at when you loll your head back, enjoying that perfect sip of Sobieski. They also have authentic Polish paintings, one of which depicts Dyngus Day.

The beautiful people were there.

Here is, left to right, the comedian and Off Beat Cinema personality Airborne Eddy Dobosiewicz, the fashion photographer Cheryl Gorski and the dapper John Di Sciullo of WBBZ. Cheryl is celebrating the launch of her glitzy new Web site, Fashion Maniac.

Serenading the tables was the great accordionist Tony Krew.

The apex of the night came when Eddy made an impassioned speech about Polish cuisine. It is time, he said, that it is given the respect it deserves. The Polish Villa II, with its elegant menu (and yummy home-smoked sausages), does that.

"For thousands of years, Poland was invaded and partitioned by other countries," he said. "Now it's time for us to get back. It's our turn to do a little conquering. And we're going to do that with food."

The crowd applauded, with Krew leading the applause with blasts from his accordion. Eddy grew even more eloquent.

"If you like it, tell three people you were at the Polish Villa II and it was wonderful," he said.

"If you don't like it, tell 300 people you were at Pano's."