In which the Four Bites news column shreds its newsprint handcuffs
Quenelle may finally end French drought, seminar helps operators hire immigrants, where to find Buffalo's best duck, and much (too much?) more
The Franklin Street restaurant space that defined French fine dining in Buffalo for 40 years is destined to become another French restaurant.
Rachel Hermann-Gross and Leacel Hillenbrand are working on Quenelle, and reviving the glorious garden is part of extensive renovations to refresh the venerable space. It last housed The Crabman, a seafood boil specialist that closed in 2021.
Rue Franklin closed in 2017. Its former sous Steve Pusateri brings that focus to offers formidable scratch breakfast and lunch at Villa Coffee House in Lewiston, but finery like iles flottante is history. For now.
Before launching Quenelle, Hermann-Gross managed Prescott Provision’s bar program and sold wine. Hillenbrand was an owner of Jack Rabbit. They have enough experience serving Buffalo’s nightlife crowds to know that bringing French dining back to 341 Franklin St. presents challenges deeper than the usual permitting snafus.
How can you make diners happy when they inevitably compare present-day dining realities to their time-burnished memories of perfect evenings?
Their answer: By aiming to offer something even better.
By restoring the lush garden, in their season capable of being one of the city’s most serene tables. By expanding the bar to hold more people than a Mini Cooper. By redoing the down-at-heels main dining room into more classic bistro surroundings. They’re not looking to re-create Rue Franklin, but a new French dining definition for a new generation of Buffalo diners.
“We want to have a high level of hospitality, but not a high level of stuffiness and pretension,” Hermann-Gross told me. “It is the hardest part, but it can be done I think and I think there's some people in town that do it really well.”
The restaurant is named after the ovoid French dumplings shaped with spoons, like the classic Lyonnaise pike-based quenelles de brochet.
Expect “classics with a modern approach” on the menu, a raw bar, and an all-French wine list.
Quenelle will likely open Sunday and Monday nights, after its partners noted a lack of fine options in the area on those days.
For now, at least. Quenelle is expected to open this spring.
HELP HIRING HELP
On Dec. 12, restaurateurs and others looking for kitchen workers can attend a seminar at Sahlen Field focused on how to properly do the paperwork to hire recent immigrants to the United States.
The two-hour session, 5:30-7:30 p.m., is free to association members, $5 otherwise. International Institute of Buffalo, the century-old immigrant aid center, and the Western New York Chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association arranged the event. Register here.
SEND YOUR BEST
What edible gifts made in Western New York should be in my holiday gift guide? (Gift certificates and cards are not edible.) Please send your nominations, whether you make it, sell it, or would like to send the guide to someone after it’s published so maybe they’ll take a hint, for once.
Editor’s note: Welcome to the Four Bites news column, a free-wheeling weekly compendium of information designed to help you eat better. It will include items both time-sensitive and less so, glimpses of the frequently changing landscape of what’s good, and where to get it.
For the record, readers have always been a key ingredient in the weekly column recipe. I get around, but I’m just one guy.
When an alert reader gives me a heads up on the shuttered place that seems to be re-opening at the end of the street, a social media post I might have missed, or a dish that blew their doors off, I do my job, and check it out.
In the last decade, hundreds of items in my news column were sown by readers. Those tips led to their fellow citizens being alerted via the column. They were also the seeds of reviews, profiles, guides, and other stories.
Under the prior administration, I was forbidden to thank contributors in the report, to save room. Here at Four Bites, where the digital page stretches to the horizon, any item resulting from something I heard first from a reader will thank that reader by name. (Unless you decline. I don’t need a reason, just “no.” It ain’t a blood pact.)
Please send tips, menus, and news of restaurants and other foodish endeavors to consider to andrew@fourbites.net or agalarneau@gmail.com. Get me the whole five-finger fact punch: Who, what, when, where, why, plus a phone number and person from which to get the rest. Two weeks before events for best results, including candidacy for the Sunday news column lead story.
You want the community to know about your thing. I want to make a living telling the community about things like your thing. We’re in this together.
REVIEW REDUX
The review returns next week, Dec. 10, for paid subscribers. I will do my best to make 97 cents seem like a bargain.
During my hiatus, I’ve rejiggered the review formula a bit, aiming to offer better background and deeper data on why I’m pitching this place to you.
I’ll be looking for as much feedback as your fingers can spare on the results. That’s because you are my collective editor now, and if I can satisfy most of y’all, I might make a career out of this yet.
The review will feature Grange Community Kitchen in Hamburg. Long a subject of my praise, the takeover of Manuel Ocasio as Grange chef has triggered a few things I need to explain about how and why I review restaurants.
TALK SHOW LAUNCH
Another subscriber benefit, the weekly Four Bites live interactive talk show, will have its debut at 6 p.m. Monday via Zoom.
The link will go out by noon, inviting you to an only-partly-scripted conversation with one of my earliest inspirations to spread the good word of Buffalo restaurants to the masses: Christa Glennie, organizer of Nickel City Chef and IN industry night series.
You can watch and participate on your phone, tablet, or laptop. If you’ve never used Zoom, download it and use it to make a call today, or at least try to. That way those of you who need other people to make the Internet work for them can get in touch with those agents of mercy today.
On a Zoom call, you can talk to everyone else by clicking on the chat button and typing. That’s how you’ll talk to everyone else in the room, including Your Host. That’s how you ask questions that we’ll answer, so you can interview us as well.
It’s up to you whether to turn on your camera.
Prizes given away during the show will include a new cookbook, and vouchers for tasty things in Buffalo restaurants or bakeries.
In exchange, please allow patience with your producer, who is learning new things every day, including today, his 57th birthday. I can’t guarantee it will go smoothly, but I can guarantee it’ll only get better every week.
There are so many people I’d like to introduce y’all to.
ASK THE CRITIC
Q: Planning a celebratory dinner with a friend that loves duck. What restaurant in our fair city has a notable duck entree?
r/Buffalo, u/Primary-Move243
(There were many suggestions. Here are mine, expanded and illustrated.)
A: The best roast duck in town at the moment is at Emperor Dumplings, the new Tonawanda dim sum restaurant at 2309 Eggert Road, where Greek to Me was in the Sheridan Plaza. (Editor’s note: the Google listing has “Emperor Dumpling,” no “s” on the surname, but that’s wrong. Owners have confirmed the name is Emperor Dumplings.)
A hustling crew of Burmese dumpling specialists also offer roast duck ($24.99) with properly rendered skin, with puffy bao buns, sliced cucumber, and hoisin sauce for making duck bao sandwiches. You can order here or just gawk at four pages full of dim sum dishes, an encyclopedia of the dumpling arts.
Many, including the fried taro puff, are making their Western New York debuts.
Hours: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday-Friday. Closed Tuesday. Phone: 716-424-0576.
My other suggestion isn’t roast duck. It’s better.
At Winfield’s Pub, Tab Daulton makes duck confit poutine ($16) from birds that are first salt-cured with herbs, then braised in a vat of duck fat. So there’s lush petals of actual duck meat in the reduced duck essence ladled over house-cut fries. He offers a choice of cheddar curds or chevre goat cheese on top, but since he offers half-and-half, I usually choose that option.
Editor’s note: Please mark down my new email, andrew@fourbites.net, which I thought would be easier to remember than agalarneau@gmail.com, but they both end up in the same place. I’ll read anything you send, and thank you for your participation in this weird little experiment.
If you haven’t signed up for more of this malarkey, you can hit the button, and get the Sunday news for free. At Four Bites, the news is free. Shenanigans cost extra.
#30#
Happy Birthday, this 58 year old loves this format!