Happier cooks redefine standards at Hamburg’s farm-to-table destination
Even on the mornings when my coffee doesn’t taste quite right because it lacks an old-fashioned color comics section to pore over, digital media still beats dead trees and ink six ways from Sunday.
In the paper era, impact was extrapolated from letters to the editor, incoming phone calls, and vibes. In the digital world, gauging reader enthusiasm is mercilessly precise.
So when I say Grange Community Kitchen coming to Buffalo was our community’s biggest restaurant story of the year, I have the receipts, the cold, hard facts, to back up that claim. (Double the readers of the next-best-read restaurant story, actually.)
Personally, I punched the sky like my favorite team won a playoff game. I’ve fanboyed Grange hard since Brad Rowell and Caryn Dujanovich transformed an actual former Grange hall into the best reason to drive to Hamburg hungry.
The secret is out: Hamburg is worth the drive for dinner. Breakfast and lunch, too, if you’re hungry and they’re nearby Grange is the first check-off on the list. Likewise West Rose in Ellicottville, or Wayland Brewing and Grange Outpost in Orchard Park.
The Grange group’s overall excellence level stems partly from its better-than-average employee wages and conditions. Workers stay longer. Plus, Grange can attract talented restaurant people who could find a decent job in most metro areas but want to live in Buffalo.
Manuel Ocasio and Gina Nalbone, for instance. Ocasio started at The Black Sheep before honing his craft at Philadelphia standouts Zahav and Jean George. Nalbone worked at Del Posto, Sqirl, and Philadephia’s Fiore Fine Foods before she and Ocasio decided to move to Buffalo to work at Grange Community Kitchen. They will help lead the kitchen at Mira, the Grange’s takeover of the former Pano’s on Elmwood Avenue.
Before that comes to fruition next year, consider heading to Hamburg to get a taste of what you’ve been missing.
Dishes you thought you knew, made better. Steak tartare, minced raw beef dressed up and served with accoutrements, has been a fine-dining menu standard for decades.
Ocasio’s version is so much better than it may have turned me off to lesser tartare for life.
At Grange, beef tartare ($18) presents the dressed minced beef on a foundation of celeriac, shredded and lightly dressed. Standard preparations aim to balance the carnivore richness with Dijon mustard, shallots, and capers.
Celeriac’s astringency and crunch provide a stronger foil, making each dab of beef a more complete mouthful of indulgence. The combination is so preposterously right that I expect this move to be copied wholesale by other places.
Grange’s version of the ubiquitous Caesar salad ($14) subs out romaine for heartier kale, whose robust chew and crucifer bite stands up better to the intense lemon-garlic-anchovy dressing. Croutons are upgraded to a blizzard of toasted sourdough crumbs. They cling to the dressing so each bite of foliage is suffused with crunch, no need to corral skittish croutons with your fork.
What ingredient is humbler than the potato? Grange ennobles spuds by boiling, smashing, and deep-frying them to a golden crunch. Crispy potatoes ($12) lives up to its name, dusted with pecorino romano cheese and fragrant thyme, with garlic aioli for gilding.
So much hummus is pedestrian spackle. Here, creamy fresh-ground hummus ($16) gets a soft egg, whose yolk contributes to the meatless feast of pickled vegetables, and crispy chickpeas. Crucially, it arrives with freshly baked laffa bread, slightly charred in the pizza oven’s fierce heat.
Neapolitan-style pies, floppy two-handed slices with leopard-spotted corniciones, bear vegetables, cheeses, and cured meats. We chose funghi ($23), with Flat 12 mushrooms, garlic cream, kabocha squash, and truffled pecorino, and adored its earthy sweetness. Other pies include margherita ($20), pepperoni ($22), and brussels sprout ($22), with garlic cream, gorgonzola, red onion, and bacon.
Another long-running dish that I always order for Grange first-timers is the crispy pork ribs on heirloom polenta ($30), accented with Calabrian chili agrodolce, and fennel pollen. Deftly cooked so that the meat pulls clean off the bone, these ribs spare nothing when it comes to satisfaction.
Grange’s standard-bearers are joined by dazzling specials, inspired notions that last until they’re gone.
Prawns in pepperoni butter ($22) joined my childhood love of pepperoni fat with my adult appreciation of whole head-on prawns, full of savory ocean essence. The toasted cup-and-char notes applied to elevate spendy seafood made it a particularly rakish pleasure.
Sit down at the Grange at the right time, and you might be offered fluke crudo with upstate strawberries, miso and chicharrón. Crispy soft shell crab with smoked butter hollandaise and pickled green tomato. Lobster cappellacci with slow roasted tomato. Crispy eggplant with tahini and pepperonata.
But by all means, save room for dessert. Few restaurants make their own sweets, and fewer still invest in a full-time pastry chef like Gina Nalbone.
Nalbone brings American and European styles to bear on fruits of the season. Recent desserts ($10) include a pear crostata with chai spiced frangipane custard and caramelized white chocolate ice cream. There’s always chocolate, of course. Our visit found chocolate olive oil cake, in a lake of almond caramel alongside a quenelle of coconut cream.
Both sweets were acmes of the form, peak pastry, like pretty much everything else Nalbone puts on the menu. Even the seasonal sorbet is well worth holding out for when that last slice of pizza tempts.
Our well-seasoned server made our night even better by asking questions that helped us make this rare interlude with friends even better.
Chefs often say their job is to get the right ingredients, and treat them with respect. At Grange Community Kitchen, that ethos applies not only to the product, but the workers. The result is a restaurant that could change your definition of fine dining with its casual genius.
22 Main St., Hamburg, grangecommunitykitchen.com, 716-648-0022
Hours: 4:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday. 4:40 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday. 9 a.m.-2 p.m., 4:30-10 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday, Tuesday.
Prices: appetizers $6-$18, pizza $20-$24, entrees $20-$40
Parking: street, public lot across street
Wheelchair accessible: yes
Vegan: hummus, pickles, ask server
Gluten-free: ask server
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