Taste of Buffalo “Judged” to be extraordinary

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – You bet it’s an honor to be invited to serve as a food judge for the annual Taste of Buffalo, billed as the largest two-day food festival in the USA.

The Taste of Buffalo volunteers have worked for a solid year of smoothing logistics to stage this massive food-centric event along Delaware Avenue. Among their duties, carefully dividing score sheets for all 43 restaurants and food trucks and four New York State wineries among the dozens of food judges who have been selected from across the community.

The assignment begins when the grills are fired up at 11 a.m. Each judge gets a clipboard with score sheets for three individual vendors, and those sheets must be returned with scores for each item offered by those three vendors by 1:30 p.m. Then, the TOB volunteers get to work tallying all the scores, and by 4 p.m., they release the full list of the weekend’s award winners.

As a food judge, you are required to bring your discerning taste buds and your outsized appetite. You are assigned to sample each item that three restaurants are serving. In general, that means four items from three restaurants for a total of 12 items in the space of two hours hiking along a steamy, crowded Delaware Avenue, stopping along the way to talk to vendors, friends, and fellow judges. You've got to love this extraordinary Buffalo scene!

But there can be much more at stake here for the vendors than just keeping up with the customers who line up outside their cooking booths. Winning an award at the Taste of Buffalo can pay great dividends in the months and years ahead by attracting new restaurant customers and showing existing customers that their kitchen still has chops!

Cody Grasso, co-owner of BW’s Barbecue, 5007 Lake Ave., told me his restaurant keeps coming back as a TOB vendor because they see it as a community booster and marketing event that the staff truly enjoys. But make no mistake, it’s a lot of work in a short period of time. Grasso said the staff worked until midnight Friday night and had an early morning wake-up call on Saturday.

As it turns out, those extra hours paid off. When the award winners were announced Saturday afternoon, we learned that BW’s Smoked Jerk Chicken Wings won the award for Best Surf or Turf Item. I always take a certain pride in having an award-winner on my judging list. (You can see the full list of winners here.)

The Barrel Factory was the second restaurant on my list for judging. I learned from Executive Chef Cornell Williams that this was the restaurant’s first time in the Taste of Buffalo and he said the staff was “loving the energy” surrounding their spot on Niagara Square.

Williams told me he spent 20 years in the kitchen at The Buffalo Club and he “grew up there” amid the fine dining tradition. Williams has taken that expertise to The Barrel Factory where he said, “we are true Buffalonians at heart, but we like to take things and make them upscale.”

His variations on the upscale Buffalo theme, including the Fried Phyllo Dough with Fixins (and loganberry sauce), appeared to be a hit Saturday. “Everyone is loving it,” he said, “and asking for our location.” The Barrel Factory is at 65 Vandalia St. in Buffalo.

The well-known Chrusciki Bakery, at the Eastern Hills Mall, was the third vendor on my judging list. Owner Ania Duchon had stepped away from the booth before I arrived, but it’s been my experience that her desserts always speak deliciously for themselves with Old World flair and care. I ate the largest portion of the Pina Colada Parfait and loved it. Just light enough for an 85-degree day as the very last item to be judged.

As it turns out, members of our News Four team happened to meet up on the steps of City Hall. We weren’t all food judges, some of us were taking up posts in the News 4 Booth, but we all ate something and savored one of the highlights of the summer in the Queen City. Sun, food, friendly faces, and new experiences. What more can you ask from a Buffalo summer weekend? In the dark depths of winter, we’ll call this extraordinary!