Learning to Love the Exotic Cuisine of Upstate New York
Learning to Love the Exotic Cuisine of Upstate New York
Beer in Buffalo
Like most American-born children of immigrants, I felt tension between the culture I was immersed in at school during the day, and the culture that my family kept alive within our home and in our community, which I returned to each night. In the late-1980s, after the passage of various immigration reform laws, my New Jersey township became home to thousands of migrants from China and India. We had South Asian neighbors, celebrated South Asian holidays, ate South Asian foods. My immigrant parents, to a large extent, were able to preserve their Old-World life, unlike, perhaps, immigrant families in less diverse parts of the United States.
My experience of American (read: non-South Asian) foods was largely limited to Kraft Mac & Cheese and peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. It was only when my parents’ became established in their careers in the early-1990s that “exotic” American foods beyond the occasional Pizza-Hut pan pizza became affordable and ubiquitous for us. And as I began to enter more white spaces, my appreciation of and taste for “American” food grew.
A dozen years ago, I married an Indian-American man, like myself, who had grown up in a city that required his assimilation, or at least more so than mine. He grew up with football and chicken wings, and, having entered his family, I have learned to love these things, too. (OK, maybe not football. Yet.) We frequent Buffalo annually, and we always have wings.
Our family prefers Duff’s Famous Wings in Amherst, a quiet northern suburb, rather than Anchor Bar, in downtown Buffalo, where wings are thought to have first been prepared. Local lore tells the story of Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the bar, who, upon the unannounced arrival of her son with several of his friends, deep-fried chicken wings and tossed them in cayenne hot sauce. Anchor Bar’s wings are smokier than Duff’s, and the bar is only frequented by my family when they have visitors in town. Duff’s, on the other hand, attracts both college students from nearby University of Buffalo and locals like my own.
On our most recent visit, we avoid the evening rush, when hungry diners spill out to picnic tables outside, and settle into a cramped corner in the main dining room. The standard-issue tables and chairs are squeezed tightly into this space, and my knees knock against my husband’s. Not much has changed since Duff’s was founded in this location in 1946, he tells me. The ceiling is white stucco, the walls are dark wood-paneled, and the bar is small and crowded.
We order 30 medium wings and a pitcher of Labatt Blue. “MEDIUM IS HOT/MEDIUM HOT IS VERY HOT/HOT IS VERY, VERY HOT,” we are reminded. The beer is cheap, light, and easy-to-drink, and a reminder of his twenties, my husband tells me. “It was either this or Molson,” he says.
Wings are a conversation-less meal. Between dipping the wings into blue cheese or extra hot sauce, tearing off bits of meat with one’s teeth and downing gulps of beer to offset the bite, wiping one’s orange-tinged fingers with napkins, and discarding bones into a bowl or bucket, there is no time for pleasantries. Duff’s wings are plump and crisp-skinned, and I much prefer the wings over the drumettes. They have a vinegary note, and their heat lingers on our lips and tongues long after our meal is complete.