Sunday News: 500 Seneca hides Buffalo’s most peaceful breakfast-lunch oasis

Louisiana Cookery launches Barker hours, where to find an old-school salad bar

One of the best-hidden weekday breakfast and lunch spots in Buffalo is worth finding, on the third floor of 500 Seneca.

At the heart of a six-story rehabbed office building, Steven Hummel and Morgan Molsino are luring people hungry for good food, and some peace and quiet. Graze at 500 Seneca, the weekday breakfast-and-lunch spot they opened Dec. 1, is a calm harbor of careful cooking worth checking out.

Hummel started his restaurant career the old-fashioned way, as a dishwasher at Hideaway Grille while he attended North Tonawanda High School. He got a hospitality bachelor’s at Buffalo State College, then a masters in career and technical education.

Morgan Molsino and Steve Hummel, Graze at 500 Seneca

He worked as the executive chef at 100 Acres in Hotel Henry, where he met Molsino, who was managing events. She’s a graduate of Jamestown High School, and earned a degree in hospitality and tourism from Niagara University. They have been together for eight years, married in 2024.

He was teaching at Niagara Falls Culinary Institute when the pandemic hit. Noting the enthusiastic response to her charcuterie board stylings, Molsino started Grazeful Gatherer, a board-centered catering business. When they learned about the 500 Seneca kitchen availability, they decided it was time for their first restaurant.

Graze’s menu stands out for its freshness, starting with housemade bread and herbed sandwich rolls. Hummel and Molino make everything they can, down to the mayonnaise and blueberry jam.

Breakfast sandwiches of bacon or ham, egg and cheddar ($6) can be ordered on housemade bread, English muffin, or bagel. A vegetarian version ($7) swaps out pork for pesto, tomato, and provolone.

Avocado toast and steak and cheese in back, foreground Italian sandwich on herb-flecked housemade bread.

Avocado toast ($7.50), the Graze Italian sandwich ($13), with salami, capicola, and fresh mozzarella, and steak sandwich ($12.50) with muenster, caramelized onions and bell peppers, and homemade aioli, are among best-sellers.

There’s also a Tipico-powered espresso menu, with a double latte ringing up for $5.50.

Graze at 500 Seneca’s other specialty is catering. It happens to be adjacent to a lovely space flooded with natural light, which comes in handy for people looking for one-stop shopping. Molsino was also events coordinator at Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, giving her years of experience in sorting out all the food-related details for frazzled brides-to-be.

First-time customers sometimes have a hard time finding Graze, but they usually find their way back with ease. Once they know what awaits, not even Buffalo’s slowest elevators can deter them.

Graze at 500 Seneca

500 Seneca St., Suite 306, see menu, 716-240-9595

Hours: 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday. Closed Saturday, Sunday.

Fresh fried potato peels by the acre are key to Bandana’s mammoth potato skins appetizer.

REVIEW: In 20 years of service, Bandana’s has put Youngstown on the map for reasons beyond historic tours and sailing excursions. Rob and Melissa Kudel’s restaurant is a marvel of down-home scratch cooking, not meals just shaken out of a Sysco bag into a Friolator. Pot roast and dumplings, mac and cheese fired to order, and savory golden thickets of frizzle-fried onion straws are just the beginning of the down-home satisfactions. Then there’s the best potato skins ever. (On Tuesday, for patrons.)

Louisiana Cookery’s red beans and rice with andouille is now available on the Great Lakes Seaway Trail.

NEW ORLEANS IN NIAGARA

If you’re ever traveling in Niagara County within glimpsing distance of Lake Ontario, you should know that The Louisiana Cookery has resumed offering its New Orleans-inspired menu on the Great Lakes Seaway Trail.

Red beans and rice with andouille sausage, crawfish etouffee, crispy fried catfish or shrimp dinners, and jambalaya are back on the menu, now at the corner of Quaker Road and Route 18 in northern Niagara County.

With 12 years serving Cheektowaga, Mark and Amy Powlenko get the details right at 8671 Lake Road, Barker. Their new location is tiny, but still has more sit-down seating capacity. Thanks to them, Niagara County now has great gumbo.

Phone: 716-727-4533. Hours: Thursday, Friday 11 a.m.-7 p.m., 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday-Wednesday.

ASK THE CRITIC:

Q: Anybody in Buffalo / WNY have a bead on an old school salad bar still rolling? I’m talking screaming cold iceberg lettuce, those tiny ham cubes, that shredded gubment cheese, red beets, sliced olives, chickpeas, croutons. You know.

Mike_in_Buffalo, Twitter/X

A: I know. Your salad bar shopping list hit me right in the nostalgias.

Old-school salad bars are rare these days. Pour out a ladle of blue cheese dressing for Edge of Town and Scotch & Sirloin. But there are still a few salad bars that might hit the spot.

Danny’s Airport, 3715 Genesee St., Cheektowaga, and Danny’s South, 4300 Abbott Road, Orchard Park, still administer an old-school salad bar backed up with award-winning chicken wing soup. Danny’s Endless Soup and Salad bar, with four housemade soups du jour, fresh garlic breadsticks, and housemade croutons, is $13-$16.59 at lunch and dinner.

Salad bar section of Full Plate buffet in Seneca Niagara Casino.

Seneca Niagara Casino’s Full Plate offers a broad salad selection as part of its sprawling buffet at 310 Fourth St., Niagara Falls.

Pricing: $25 Sunday-Thursday, $34.99 Friday, Saturday. Children 6-10 half price, 5 and under free.

Hours: 4 p.m.- 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, Sunday noon-6 p.m.

Fieldstone Country Inn, 5986 S. Transit Road, Lockport, offers an all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar at lunch and dinner.

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, Saturday. Closed Sunday.

There are probably other good candidates out there I missed. If you know of another salad bar that the world should know about, please send me a note at andrew@fourbites.net.

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