Buffalo, New York. Photo by Canva
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Of course, I’d heard of Buffalo wings, that iconic food from western New York. But as a vegan, I had little understanding of this phenomenon. So, on my first-ever trip to Buffalo, I went on a vegan wing quest, enlisting the help of locals to learn what makes a good wing and to find out more about this city.
Like most things in history, the origin of Buffalo wings is debated. Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the Anchor Bar, is widely credited with inventing wings. In 1964, she doctored up the less desirable chicken parts with butter and hot sauce and sold them as a bar snack.
Other people recognize restaurateur John Young, owner of Wings n Things, as an early wing pioneer.
What are Buffalo Wings?
So, what is a Buffalo wing? It starts with a deep-fried chicken wing. But as Jason Mendola, owner of Elevator Alley Kayak, told me as we paddled by giant abandoned grain silos, “It’s all about the sauce.” That’s why vegan versions work just fine.
The traditional sauce combines butter, spice, and Frank’s RedHot sauce. Buffalo native Doug Lambert told me that wings are served with blue cheese dressing. “Not ranch,” he said. “Ranch is like sacrilege.
But you also usually get celery and carrots with buffalo wings. You dip those in the blue cheese, too. It cools you down.” All of these ingredients can easily be veganized.
Restaurants and bars serve many flavors of sauces with wings, such as barbecue, garlic parmesan, teriyaki, or honey mustard. “But the purists are like just straight hot wings,” Doug said.
How hot is hot? As far as Doug’s is concerned, classic wings incorporate just the right amount of hotness. Steer clear of sauces that claim to be “suicidal”—eating wings shouldn’t be some macho competition.
Strong Hearts
I ate my first wings in Buffalo at Strong Hearts, a fast-casual vegan restaurant serving approachable plant-based food like sandwiches, salads, and desserts that won’t mystify non-vegans.
Michelle Kearns, director of communications for Visit Buffalo Niagara, was my lunch companion. Michelle has tried several vegan wings around town, and Strong Hearts is her favorite.
Being a tourist, not a purist, I was free to choose a half-and-half order—half hunny mustard and half Buffalo sauce. They were delicious, though they seemed pretty processed. For verisimilitude, they had wooden sticks in them to represent bones!
“We source the wings from a distributor in New York called Lily’s Vegan Pantry,” owner Joel Capolongo told me. “Before frying the wings, we coat them in a house-made tempura batter, which crisps the wing up nicely while allowing more of the sauce to be absorbed more fully.”
Strong Hearts makes all of its wing sauces in-house, except for BBQ.
To balance out my meal nutritionally, I also ordered a large Thai salad with tofu and chili cashews. But dessert was best of all—pumpkin pecan cheesecake.
Michelle is, of course, a dedicated Buffalo booster with a vast knowledge of her city. She’s a big fan of Gilded Age and industrial architecture being repurposed for modern use and of the arts and culinary scene.
“Places change and renew all the time here, especially now, as we’re in the dynamic middle of a renaissance,” she said. “Anthony Bourdain captured it when he said Buffalo is weirdly wonderful. I think he meant that unexpected element of the depth and discovery that lies beneath the surface.”
Café 59
Café 59 is an omnivore restaurant with a large and clearly marked vegan and vegetarian menu. The wings are described as vegetarian—or vegan if you forego the blue cheese dressing.
These polenta-based wings don’t try to emulate the shape of the real thing. Instead, they’re square. This reinforces my experts’ assertion that it’s all about the sauce.
Joel Dombrowski was my dinner companion at Café 59. Joel is an accomplished author, tour guide, standup comedian, and event producer who loves talking about Buffalo. And he has a beautiful voice.
But still, he tells me as we wait for our order at Café 59, “I actually think I’m a fraud. I’m surprised people pay to hear me talk. So here’s a Buffalo thing. You have to kind of understand that we have not a lot of self-esteem.”
Buffalo is one of many Rust Belt cities that declined as manufacturing moved offshore. Improvements to Ontario’s Welland Canal made it a better choice for large ships than the Erie Canal, meaning lots of shipping traffic bypassed Buffalo.
Losing half its population since 1954 was a humbling experience for the city.
But about a decade ago, things began to change. “There was a spark,” Joel said. “We realized we don’t have to be ashamed of who we are.”
Creative people began to think of ways to repurpose grain silos. Buffalo local Rick Smith founded Silo City, turning old silos into performance venues and starting a massive effort of ecological restoration on 27 acres of industrial land.
Riverworks installed a Ferris wheel, sports bar, and game arcade and gave people the opportunity to zipline off a silo. All around town, beautiful Gilded Age buildings are being restored and repurposed.
I visited in September—unfortunately, too early to see Joel’s Halloween show, Evil Buffalo. He hired an artist to paint eight-foot murals of the seven most evil moments in Buffalo’s history and installed them in one of Riverworks’ abandoned grain silos, where he leads Halloween tours by lantern light.
Sunshine Vegan Eats
Sunshine Vegan Eats was the highlight of my vegan wing tour. This casual restaurant offers comfort and soul food, including vegan ribs, yams, mac and cheese, and collard greens.
Keysha “Nikki” Searles opened Sunshine in March 2020, about a week before the pandemic really got going. Fortunately, the restaurant survived.
Christine Krolewicz, program manager for GO Buffalo Niagara, joined me for dinner. “We’re trying to build a better commuter culture,” she explained.
GO Buffalo Niagara works on both the systematic level—working with organizations to offer employees more transportation benefits than free parking—and helping individual commuters find ways to bike, walk, take public transportation, or carpool.
Biking helps offset traffic problems and excess wing consumption.
Christine and I were both impressed by the wings at Sunshine Vegan Eats, which were crispy on the outside, tender inside, and had a piece of sugar cane as a faux bone. “It has to be crispy,” she explained about wings. Also, messy. “Social awkwardness is part of the wing experience, for sure.”
Visitors who want to ride bikes around Buffalo can participate in the bikeshare program Reddy Bikes. Christine recommends the loop in beautiful Delaware Park, laid out by the famous Frederick Law Olmsted.
My favorite parts of the 350-acre park were the Japanese Garden and the flamingo-shaped boats cruising around Hoyt Lake.
Lexington Coop
On my last day in Buffalo, before getting an Uber to Niagara Falls, I fit in one more wing snack. Or wing adjacent, really. Lexington Coop, a large market, sells Buffalo tofu nuggets served with vegan blue cheese dipping sauce.
They were spicy, messy, a lurid orange, and came in a plastic cup. I ate them at a table outside the coop.
What these nuggets lacked in presentation, they made up for in low cost. When I spoke with Doug Lambert later about all things wings, he complained about the inflation that comes with popularity. He’d be happier with both his city and his wings flying under the radar.
“It’s like real estate in Buffalo,” he griped. “I’ve had my house for 20 years and I’ve known that I like Buffalo wings for 40 years. And so to me, the increase in popularity just means my taxes are higher and Buffalo wings cost more money.”
Doug claims he used to go to wing nights at bars where wings were five cents each or a dollar for a bucket. I’m like, what, 1950? You’re not that old, Doug.
He relents. “Maybe 25 cents, whatever. But the idea that each wing is like two dollars now is just utter insanity.” It’s a bar snack, not a delicacy, he insists. If wing inflation is getting you down, I recommend the coop’s tofu nuggets.
The Vegan Grocery Store
Another way to fight the high cost of restaurant wings is to cook them yourself. I found a big football-themed display of multiple brands of wings plus huge stacks of Daiya pizzas at the surprising Vegan Grocery Store in North Tonawanda, not far from Niagara Falls.
“Our biggest selling product is May Wah chicken legs,” Judy Mittiga, one of the store’s three co-owners, told me. “With the Bills game going on, we get a lot of pizza and wings.”
The Vegan Grocery Store opened in 2018 in this town of 30,000. Vegans from Britain, Australia, Canada, and around the US have sought out snacks and grab-and-go sandwiches while traveling between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. And, of course, I’m not their first visitor from Portland, Oregon.
If You Go
If you go, try as many wings as possible. After all, you’re in Buffalo!
Niagara Falls is only 20 miles north of Buffalo, so make sure you allow time to see this natural wonder. I stayed at the Richardson, a fascinating state asylum turned boutique hotel, in Buffalo. In Niagara Falls, I stayed at another lovely historic hotel, the Giacomo.
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Author Bio: Teresa Bergen writes about adventure, eco, vegan and sober travel. She’s on a mission to kayak or SUP in every US state and Canadian province.
Go World Travel Magazine is a digital magazine for world travelers. Our editorial content is produced by a dedicated team of travel journalists who know the regions they cover. We cover travel in more than 90 countries.
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