Review: At La Casa de Sabores, island of sunny Caribbean flavors shines in Buffalo

Dominican spot is mainstay for working people who prize value over a wine list

Tres golpes, the Dominican breakfast of champions

One delightful quirk of the Buffalo eating landscape is that you can trudge down a drifted moonscape of sideways snow, head bent against Mother Nature’s latest assassination attempt, quite used to not feeling your face.

Then open a door and escape into a tropical island cafe.

The music, the aromas of Caribbean cooking, the posters and television stations, everything combines for lowkey transport to Puerto Rico or Jamaica or Colombia or the Dominican Republic. Thanks to Buffalo’s immigrant restaurateurs developing one-stop anti-homesickness clinics, we can all use a dose, food as medicine. 

Buffalo’s boricua battalion feed thousands daily, making Puerto Rican the city’s predominant strain. Standouts include Monte’s Grocery and Deli on Swan Street, and House of Sandwich on Tonawanda Street in Riverside. Then there’s Niagara Cafe and La Flor Bakery, Buffalo’s only panadaria, across from each other on Niagara Street.

Buffalo’s only place to find their Caribbean cousin, Dominican cooking, is La Casa de Sabores. The restaurant opened in 2018, with an expansive view of the city impound lot, where motorists go bail out incarcerated vehicles, a few blocks from the Buffalo State College campus border.