YumNoms

It came to my attention this week that Zillycakes, my favorite cupcake shop, is up for sale so that owner Zilly Rosen can spend more time with her family. Furthermore, if it doesn’t sell in the next two months she will simply shut it down for good.

This is seriously saddening because, for anyone not familiar with Zillycakes, it is an amazing cupcake shop with inventive flavors and a consistently moist, flavorful product. They have a couple of regular and gluten-free staples that they carry year round, and at least four specialty flavors (including one Vegan) that are changed monthly.

Though this is more of an endorsement than a review, I have had some of the best cupcakes of my life here; it has been a longstanding part of my Saturday routine to walk over from the Elmwood-Bidwell Farmer’s Market and pick up a few cupcakes at Zilly’s.

While I would be lying if I said they were perfect (service occasionally lackluster, a dry cupcake once in a while-usually vegan), Zillycakes for me has almost always been a four-star cupcake experience, and I for one will be crushed if they close. With potential closure looming, I encourage everyone to give them a shot.

Yums: ✭✭✭✭

(Source: blogs.buffalonews.com)

I drove by Donut Kraze on Dingens St (next to Sunoco by the 190N entrance ramp) tonight and became intrigued, having never heard of it before. It seemed only providential that they were open 24/7, so I decided to ignore my full stomach and stop to check it out (I never come to this area). It was almost midnight and they appeared to have been cleaned out of a lot of things (time of day + lack of choice made me concerned I might be making a mistake), but with some staff help I picked a couple things to try. I really hope that this wasn’t a fluke, because these doughnuts were amazing. Out of three doughnuts (Bavarian Cream, Strawberry Custard, and a bacon-free bite of the Maple Bacon), all of them were lightly crisp on the outside and nicely chewy on the inside. There was just enough filling to balance out the doughnut. They offer a nice array of both inventive and classic flavors. My biggest critique is that the filling could stand to be ‘fresher’ (read: homemade); the Bavarian Cream reminded me of nothing more than SnackPack vanilla pudding, and the strawberry filling (though tasty and perfectly balanced in conjunction with vanilla custard and delicious doughnut) was gel-like and tasted like commercial pie filling. I was really happy that the Strawberry filling was actual ‘filling’ and not over-sugared Jam like most places use, but, though tastier, I would hazard a guess that the stuff is made of strawberry flavoring, corn starch, and corn syrup (which is not too far from the sugary jam). Because of the quality of the doughnut portion and the fact that the end product was fresh, well executed, tasty, and at a wonderful price point, I’m still happy with it; this is junk food, and it’s not pretending to be anything more or less than what it is.

Donut Kraze also apparently serves bagels; sandwiches; and, according to their on-site signage, hot dogs/hamburgers. From what I have been able to find out, they have been open for about six months and, in my opinion, are definitely worth checking out. They have different crazy flavors on the daily (e.g.: the maple bacon “Heart Attack”), but carry the staples you would expect all the time. These are the best filled doughnuts I’ve had in over ten years. For those of you who eat meat: I mean, come on, they have a maple-bacon doughnut topped with bacon pieces and filled with marshmallow creme — how can you say you are living without trying something so ridiculously indulgent at least once?

Seriously. Look at the crumb on this!

Yums: ✭✭✭✰

Here is the verdict on my first experience with ‘The Cheesy Chick - Grilled Cheese on the go’, Buffalo’s newest food truck. Firstly, the window girl was super-nice and the service was a bit slow (but understandably so - they seemed a little overwhelmed). I ordered a grilled cheddar sandwich on wheat with apple and a side of pickles. It didn’t taste like they used butter (more like commercial margarine or cooking spray), so my sandwich had a slight, unpleasantly chemical, bitterness to it with every bite. Cheese was great (nice melting mild cheddar), bread was good (crusty, not your standard wonderbread fare), apple was too sweet and so thinly sliced so it got lost in the sandwich — they should really use a tart apple (e.g.: granny smith) sliced about twice as thick to keep it from getting lost. Also, the dill pickles are not good quality; I would like to see a better dill pickle (spears or long slices) that comes as a garnish with the sandwich.

My sandwich was a good size, but the boyfriend’s lucky7 was freakishly small (1/3 the size, yet almost 2x as expensive) with some of the meat inside it still cold (one expects their grilled sandwich to be hot) and he ended up describing it as ‘wholly disappointing’. The biggest short term changes they can make are to use a quality salted butter to grill the sandwiches and to standardize (or make proportional) sandwich components (so you don’t have a freakishly large/small sandwich or apples that you can’t taste). Based on the sandwiches I observed coming out of the truck, price is a pretty decent value for what you get (it just needs to be tweaked and executed better). I wanted to try the tomato basil soup, but they were out; ideally they should be crossing off unavailable items as they run out. Lastly, their sign and website advertise dips but do not list what they are (it just says to ask); these really need to be written on the menu so people can formulate their order by the time they reach the order window… I don’t want to wait in line for 5-10 minutes only to not be sure of what I’m going to get, and being able to read a complete menu also helps pass the time. They have the right pieces to do something really great here, but as of now still have a lot of work to do; I would like to give them another shot when they have been open longer and have fully refined their product. For now, I rate them 1.5 out of 4.

Update:
I’ve been back to the Cheesy Chick several times and had food that was consistent…ly awful. On the most recent occasion a few months ago, I went there on a rainy day when they were parked over on Hertel. I ordered a simple grilled cheese on white bread with cheddar cheese. First, they gave me attitude about ordering something that wasn’t on their board, and then they charged me extra money to make it. I was annoyed at this because it’s not like I was asking for anything crazy, and they treated me like it was impossible to make even though there was only one other person there during the entire 15 minutes I was there (so they weren’t exactly busy). But anyways, I brushed off my annoyance, waited outside in the rain for my sandwich, and went on my way.

Less than five minutes later I opened my sandwich to eat it. The super-processed generic white bread was completely-and I mean completely-sopping with the bitter-tasting fake margarine they use instead of butter; it was so saturated with it that the bread was actually disintegrating when I picked it up. The cheese wasn’t fully melted (this is an ongoing problem with the Cheesy Chick), which surprised me because I waited for my sandwich for fifteen minutes (there was only the one order in front of me and she only had a single sandwich as well) so they had plenty of time to cook it properly. Because I was hungry, I had driven 20 minutes out of my way for it, and the sandwich wasn’t exactly cheap (If I recall they charged me something like $7+ for it), I tried to eat it. I made it about 1/3 of the way through but I just couldn’t do it. It made me feel sick for the rest of the day. One star is too kind for this truck, considering myself and my ex-boyfriend both went there at least 10 times and each of us failed to have good food even once. Other people I’ve spoken to have had similarly lacking experiences.

In summation: this place is awful sauce. Stay away, there are much better food trucks out there. The only reason to go to the Cheesy Chick is if you’re interested in wasting 7-9 dollars to see how somebody can actually screw up grilled cheese.

Yums: ✭✰✰✰

The Bad Beginning (unintentional Lemony Snicket reference…):
I went to Laughlin’s Beef & Barrel in downtown Buffalo NY with a party of about 10 for a friend’s pre-bachelorette party dinner. We spent about 30 minutes at the first floor bar drinking while waiting for our entire party to arrive, at which time I had the misfortune to order the Pineapple Cake Martini (I think that’s what it was called… to my recollection, it contained: rum, pineapple juice, peach schnapps, grenadine, etc.); it was, in a word, subpar. It was watery and had an ‘off’ flavor (most likely due to crappy fruit juice), and also had an extremely patchy and messy ring of graham cracker crumbs around the rim. My maraschino cherry garnish was cutely cut and stuck on the rim of the glass, but it tasted dry and waxy (I can’t not consume a maraschino cherry if it is put in front of me…). Alas, I thought, I should have known that a drink containing fruit juice at a restaurant in Buffalo would be terrible, that the garnish would be dried out; I should know by now to not expect fresh fruit or juices, and a smarter choice for me to order would have been wine. I digress…

We were eventually given a private table in the cramped far end of the 3rd floor; in fact, we were the only party on our floor. My excitement at that fact was dissipated when I looked down and noticed that our table was really dirty - covered with food debris and dried liquid spills. Shortly afterwards, I was similarly disappointed when I went to the bathroom: the enormous mirror in front of the sink is black (but still reflective, being a mirror and all) and has a TV set behind the glass. Pretty cool, I thought, until I noticed the smudges/smears all over the glass, and then looked down to see pools of water all over and paper towels/TP littering the floor. Strike two for cleanliness, and I am starting to be scared to eat their food…

Our waitress was friendly and seemed to have extensive knowledge of the intricacies of the menu and specials. I do, however, think she forgot about us in the beginning - it took at least 20 minutes for her to bring back the waters and other drinks that we ordered shortly after sitting down. Again, I digress. I had scoped out their menu ahead of time and had been happy to see that it included far more meat-free options than I expected from a restaurant that boasts ‘beef’ as part of its name. They have a good selection of vegetarian-friendly appetizers and meat-free salads. So I ordered myself a glass of merlot (was easy drinking and was a good house merlot), Laughlin’s Farmer Cheese Pierogies (Appetizer), the Battered Onion Rings (Appetizer), and a Mesclun Salad with pears, gorgonzola, and walnuts for my entree.

Appetizers:
The pierogi was pan fried to perfection and had a great crust on it, but the filling tasted like straight unseasoned ricotta cheese and was a touch bland. Lucky for me, during ordering I consented when the waitress asked me if I wanted sautéed onions on it - it made a world of difference and gave an otherwise bland dish most of the oomph it needed. I liked it, but it would be so much better if they added a little bit of salt and pepper (or a second, stronger cheese) to the filling and put some slightly more caramelized onions in with the filling.
The onion rings were near-perfect. Ever taken a bite of an onion ring and had the onion fall out of the breading on the first bite? These fresh and super crispy rings did not suffer from this problem. The breading stayed put. They were cooked the perfect amount of time to a lovely golden-brown crust. I could not bear to mar them with so inferior a condiment as ketchup. My only preference would be that they be cut slightly thinner (I like a slightly less fat ring), but they were by and large the most outstanding thing that I ate there.
I also had an opportunity to taste the stuffed peppers that somebody else ordered. Two enormous hot peppers were stuffed with cheese that overflowed from the top, and the overflowing part was covered with breadcrumbs and cooked to crisp golden-brown awesomeness. My first bite of the hot peppers was just a bite of the lower portion (pepper and cheese only), and it was average; but when I took some of the overflowed cheese with breadcrumbs from the top portion and combined it with the naked pepper stuffed with cheese on the bottom portion, it was magical. Weird thing though? The hot peppers were served with this generic fluffy bread that reminded me of a hot dog roll, and didn’t really do anything for the dish. Dear Laughlin’s Chef: a little more imagination, please?

Entree:
As previously stated, I got the Pear/Gorgonzola/Walnut salad on a bed of mesclun greens, as did two others in our party (I added dried cranberries to it, and they opted to do so as well). The salads, though they advertised walnut in the name, all came with rather bland almonds (read: the walnuts are not walnuts). The greens were all clean, dry, and extremely fresh (you would think that would be a given, until you order a salad at Cheesecake Factory and are served 70% black decayed mulch, and are given a little sass from the manager about wanting something else). The salad was good, but not what was advertised, not what we ordered, would have been better with walnuts, and I did not feel quite so compelled to polish my salad plate as I did with the appetizers. The balsamic dressing was also generic tasting grocery store garbage that I preferred to do without.

At the end of the meal, a few people ordered coffee and tea. Chunky, half frozen creamer was served to our table with the coffee. The coffee/tea crowd was concerned that it might be spoiled, and were all pretty turned off from drinking the coffee/tea they had just ordered. When our waitress finally came back to check on us and they complained, she admitted that the only creamer they had was frozen, that they “[didn’t] usually serve brunch or anything”, and that the kitchen staff had told her not to even bother providing our table with creamer but she had taken the frozen creamer because she did not feel that it was acceptable to serve coffee without it. Now, I liked our waitress - she was perfectly nice and quite competent - but why would you not just either tell the table what the deal was, or ask them if you could substitute creamer with milk? I felt this to be worth mentioning, because it further attests to the restaurant’s lack of concern for the customer experience in a way that can only be coming from the ownership/management.

Overall, I liked the food for the most part, but the lack of cleanliness and overall consistency of the experience really deters me from wanting to give them my business. There are some very simple, basic things that they could be doing to elevate their food and the dining experience that they offer. Also? All of the things that I really liked were fried, and making fried food great is not all that hard to do. I would definitely give them another opportunity to change my mind in the future, but I will not go out of my way to try Laughlin’s again.

Yums: ✭✭✰✰