Four Bites Focus: Moriarty's boeuf on weck

How a Buffalo boy apprenticed in France to learn how to cut animals and give his hometown a better beef on weck

Beef on weck, shaved roast beef on a roll crowned with rock salt and caraway seeds, is Buffalo soul food.

My beef on weck initiation started at 16, the first time I pulled up a stool at Anacone’s Inn, 3178 Bailey Ave. As a University at Buffalo freshman, roommate Joel Resnikoff led me on a hike south on Bailey Avenue from our Main Street dormitory, McDonald Hall. 

Anacone’s Inn beef station on last night in service. (Photo: Douglas Levere)

There, I watched Mark Anacone slice rosy roast beef with a knife sharpened so many times its remaining blade was not much wider than a scalpel. Dip the beef in the jus well, onto the roll, and hand it over on a paper plate with a sheaf of dill pickle slices tucked under the roll, and a jar of horseradish.

Eyes watering, I thought it was the most magnificent sandwich I’d ever eaten.