Sunday News: Buffalo pizza cred grows with Jay’s, Pizzeria Florian honors

Jay Langfelder has helped flowering of Queen City pizza culture

Amanda Jones, left, and Jay Langfelder’s Pizzeria Florian took 44th.

Buffalo’s claim to pizza destinationhood grew last month, as Jay’s Artisan Pizzeria and Pizzeria Florian gathered laurels at last month’s United States 50 Top Pizza awards.

Jay’s was No. 6 on the list, Pizzeria Florian, No. 44.

The 50 Top Pizza lists spotlight Neapolitan-style pies, not all the types of pizza currently found in Buffalo. Neapolitan-style doughs are blasted into life by intense ovens, cooking in less than five minutes, for a characteristically leopard-spotted cornicione.

Both places were started by Jay Langfelder, whose lifelong pizza obsession has contributed greatly to the eating opportunities enjoyed by Buffalo pizza lovers.

Langfelder’s first Buffalo pizza business was the OG Wood Fire truck. In 2017, he opened Jay’s, 2872 Delaware Ave., Kenmore.

Joe Powers, the first employee at Jay’s, bought the business in 2020, and has won his own honors. Pizzeria Florian, 650 E. Main St., East Aurora, opened earlier this year, is run by Amanda Jones and Langfelder, her partner in business and life. They are currently besieged by customers, which is the best restaurant problem.

Calabrian Crunch pizza at Pizzeria Florian. (Photo: Buffalo Eats)

“I wanted to do pizza, but it wasn’t really a career in Buffalo at the time, unless you were the owner,” Langfelder said. “So that’s all I wanted to do, from a very young age.”

At eight years old, Langfelder was stretching out dough from just-add-water pizza kits. Hired as a delivery driver at Bocce’s on Transit, he got into the dough game when the kitchen needed help.

Langfelder was in Tuscon, Arizona, attending Pima Community College for architecture, when he started his doctorate studies in dough, with Jamie Culliton. Now in Florida, where he owns NONA Slice House in Safety Harbor, Fla., Culliton has gone on to star in the field of pizza acrobatics, which combines dough stretching with elements of juggling and sleight-of-hand.

In Gainesville, Fla., Langfelder was inspired by Tyler Black, whose Ameraucana Wood Fire food truck rolled with a wood-fired oven that made good pizza anywhere it could park.

That inspired him to ask his father, John Langfelder, to produce OG Wood Fire from a former Aramark truck. A former millwright, the elder Langfelder installed electrical, plumbing, and hot water systems, stainless steel walls, and built the chimney for the wood-burning oven. His skills have helped at Pizzeria Florian, too.

The reason he came back to Buffalo to open Pizzeria Florian is because “this is a place where people take pizza seriously,” he said. His customers aren’t the only ones who benefit, because Langfelder is a sort of Johnny Appleseed for better pizza in Western New York. Restaurants like Connor’s in West Seneca have benefited from Langfelder’s dough coaching, along with other operators working to make better pizza in Buffalo.

“I like to share the information with people, because I’ve probably done the style at some point in my career, or at least worked on it, and I know where I went wrong,” said Langfelder. “So if I could see those things going on with people, I can typically steer them in the right direction.”

Another factor in Buffalo’s pizza flowering is better access to premium ingredients. Langfelder cited Italo Besseghini’s work at Latina Boulevard Foods for the influx of better tomatoes, better cheese, and other crucial components of next-level pies.

The most important ingredient, though, is hungry, passionate pizza lovers, who can be found in greater abundance around Buffalo than any other place Langfelder has worked.

“It’s crazy how much people love pizza here,” said Langfelder, laughing. “I got to experience it elsewhere, and it was nothing like this.”

Coconut curry ramen noodles with seafood at Nine & Night

REVIEW: After dropping off the culinary radar for two years after a fire destroyed restaurants at 25 Grant St., former West Side Bazaar standout Nine & Night Thai Cuisine has become a new Black Rock staple. Across Amherst Street from Spar’s European Sausage & Meats, Htay Naing and his crew do steady business in noodle, curry, and stir-fry dishes from Thai and Burmese canon, in a peaceful room with a view of the Church of the Assumption. (Later today, for patrons.)

OPENINGS

OG Dumpling House is open at 1400 Niagara Falls Blvd., Tonawanda, with sightings and reports popping up.

The original location in Rochester serves the closest thing to Shanghaiese soup dumplings, xiao long bao, available in Westernish New York. Soup dumplings are prized for their thin-skinned juiciness, all broth and meatball.

Why I said “closest thing” is that the OG Dumpling House versions had the skin right. But the ones I got to try were partly deflated, not the plump, perilous broth lava versions that I fell in lust with.

Haven’t been to see what the Niagara Falls Boulevard branch has to offer – but if you have, I’d welcome your thoughts on your experience at andrew@fourbites.net. Especially on the question: Are these real soup dumplings?

This menu has the Rochester address and phone, but the menu is otherwise identical to the new Tonawanda location.

EVENTS

Party at the Pier, FeedMore WNY’s fundraiser featuring seafood sourced by Fresh Catch Poke Co., is coming Aug. 1.

From 6 p.m.-9 p.m. in Buffalo River Fest Park, 249 Ohio St., participants can look forward to seafood rolls, swordfish sliders, Buffalo chicken sliders, mussels, clams, a shrimp boil and more.

Admission includes an open bar, with signature cocktails and mocktails, tastings and pours from Hartman’s Distilling Co. and Southern Tier Brewing Co.

Tickets, $100 or four for $375, are available here. All proceeds benefit FeedMore WNY programs and services for Western New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity.

Vegetarian dinner club at Black Iron Bystro features Kevin Thurston on Aug. 2.

Chef-owner Bryan Mecozzi invited Thurston, of The Little Club and Cafe Godot, presently executive chef and general manager at Tipico Coffee on Elmwood Avenue, to take a crack at harnessing peak season.

Four courses, with drinks. $100 plus tax and tip, $80 without drink pairings. Seatings are at 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Royal Family Restaurant serves rotisserie roasted pork and chicken gyro.

ASK THE CRITIC

Q: In Greece they serve pork shaved off a spit as “gyros.” Not the gyros they serve in Greek restaurants here, which are good, but the meat is more of a meatloaf. Are there any Greek style gyros in town?

A: In Toronto, the stretch of Danforth Avenue east of the Don Mills Parkway has numerous restaurants offering satisfying examples of shaved pork gyro, served in fresh pita bread with tzatziki, yogurt-garlic-dill sauce.

In Buffalo, there is one version I know of – in Tonawanda, actually, 1320 Sheridan Dr. There Royal Family Restaurant, a veteran Greek diner operation, serves a pork-and-chicken rotisserie gyro as one of its meat options. Along with the usual chicken and beef souvlaki, diners can opt for the Royal gyro in a pita, atop salad, or as a breakfast meat.

As dinner, $24.90 brings a pile of crusty well-seasoned meat, with Greek salad, rice, Greek potatoes, and grilled pita. Parts were a touch dry, but I applied more tzatziki and barely slowed down. If you’re not up for an international road trip, I’d head for the Royal.

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