Review: At Strong Hearts Buffalo, a vegan everyday restaurant with a seat for all

Even meat lovers find satisfaction on plant-based menu – and stick around for the cupcake parade

Southwest chicken salad with jalapeno ranch dressing, vegan, like everything else at Strong Hearts Buffalo.

Not too long ago, vegan was a dirty word in the restaurant industry. Anthony Bourdain, patron saint of cooks, echoed prevailing sentiment when he wrote in 2000: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

Bourdain changed his tune later in life, acknowledging that vegan options have a place in the world. So did the restaurant industry, responding to a growing appetite for deliberately animal-free cuisine. Ambitious modern restaurants offer vegan choices, or lose tables to places that can please everyone.

Places like Strong Hearts Buffalo. The vegan diner opened in 2022 after the Syracuse original started in 2008. Strong Hearts has subverted the dominant paradigm, by the power of seitan.

Despite the restaurant’s name, it’s not “health food,” in the pejorative sense. Sure, it’s better for you than drive-thru dollar menus. But these all-plant plates taste downright sinful at times.

Macaroni and cheese at Strong Hearts, made with cashew cream.

Vegan nachos weren’t even possible until the advent of widespread non-dairy cheese in the 1990s.

Strong Hearts’s version ($9/$14) start with house-fried tortilla chips, dolloped with nacho cheese sauce, with chorizo, roasted corn salsa, guacamole, jalapeños, pickled red onion, black beans, sour cream, cilantro, and a lime wedge to squeeze.

The cheese is made from cashews, chorizo and sour cream of soy. But if your omnivorous self was not paying close attention, the lack of animal involvement might escape you entirely. Same deal with the loaded fries ($9).

When looking at menus like Strong Hearts’ – breakfast sandwiches, griddled sandwiches, burgers, salads, wings – I often head for the Southwestern chicken salad ($14). Enough fried chicken and ranch dressing to take the edge off, plus an acre of greenery to crop for my nutrition payback, roasted corn, black beans, and fried tortilla strips. Especially considering the jalapeno ranch dressing, it was more pleasing, overall, than full-beast versions I’ve paid dearly for in the throes of an airport hunger fugue.

Thai tofu salad, with grilled maple chipotle tofu, mixed greens, edamame, cucumber, cilantro, Thai spiced cashews, red cabbage, and Thai vinaigrette.

The breakfast burrito ($15), loaded with tofu scramble, fried potatoes, tempeh bacon, cheddar, avocado, spinach, and tomato. wrapped in a warm white flour tortilla. Its Egg Trick Muffin ($6.50) tops a butter toasted english muffin with fried seasoned tofu “eggy patty,” choice of fried sausage patty or tempeh bacon, and mozzarella cheese.

Chicken wings here (4/$15) are not likely to pass for bonafide bird. But if you close your eyes and savor the flavor, they’re chicken finger competitors. Better in heft and moisture retention than low-grade “tenders,” though neither provide much fiber.

Chicken wings and bleu cheese, vegan again, at Strong Hearts Buffalo.

Choose from Buffalo, BBQ, Sweet n Sassy, garlic parm, and Hot Hunny. Dunk in the bleu cheese or chipotle aioli, and marvel at how far the possibilities of vegan munchies have come. Fresh-cut celery and carrots, no little plastic bags here.

Sandwiches come with small salad, pickles, or chips. Sweet Sassy Molassy ($13) is a slab of grilled maple chipotle tofu, graced with avocado, grilled red onion, tomato, lettuce, and chipotle aioli.

Cajun Seitan ($12) holds grilled housemade seitan, cheddar, cajun seasonings, chipotle aioli, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber on butter toasted rye.

Cajun seitan sandwich, of grilled housemade seitan on griddled rye, at Strong Hearts Buffalo.

Battered and fried chicken sandwiches ($15), made with Tindle patties, are served on brioche buns, with a side, in regular, Buffalo sauce and bleu cheese, Sassy, and BBQ varieties.

Asian Spring Roll ($14) is my other go-to salad. It’s full of admirable nutritional qualities, and a couple of fried spring rolls, chopped into bites, to keep it real. Besides mandarin oranges, chow mein noodles, crushed peanuts, carrot, red and green cabbage, sesame seeds, mixed greens, with a bright sesame-ginger dressing.

Asian Spring Roll Salad at Strong Hearts Buffalo.

Milkshakes ($8) come in more than 40 flavors, including peach cobbler, dreamsicle, maple pecan, and cookie dough espresso. But it’s the cavalcade of cupcakes that mesmerizes customers waiting to pay in the counter-service restaurant’s pastry case.

Anyone with a soft spot for Hostess cupcakes – and a sweet tooth – might be delighted with Strong Hearts’ version: the Fauxstess. Followed by Oreo, loganberry, Cookie Monster, lemon blueberry, they are largely indistinguishable from butter-and-egg versions.

Will Strong Hearts Buffalo convince diners to give up meat? Maybe not. But it certainly gives diverse groups a new option to make everyone happy.

At Strong Hearts Buffalo, everyone has a seat at the table.