Buffalo taste “judged” extraordinary

Thousands of foodies gathered Saturday for the 41st Taste of Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – It is without a doubt an honor to be asked to serve as a food judge for the annual Taste of Buffalo, billed as the largest two-day food festival in the United States.

Taste of Buffalo volunteers have worked for a year to facilitate the logistics of this massive food event along Delaware Avenue. Among their tasks, they carefully distribute the scoring sheets of the 43 restaurants and food trucks and four wineries from New York State to the dozens of food judges who have been selected from throughout the community.

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

As a food judge, you must appeal to your discerning taste buds and your insane appetite. You must sample every dish served by three restaurants. Typically, that means four dishes from three restaurants for a total of 12 dishes over the course of a two-hour walk down a crowded, humid Delaware Avenue, stopping along the way to talk to vendors, friends, and fellow judges. You’ll love this extraordinary Buffalo scene!

But the stakes for vendors aren’t just about satisfying the customers lining up at their food stands. Winning an award at Taste of Buffalo can pay off big in the months and years to come by attracting new customers and showing existing customers that their cuisine still has talent!

Cody Grasso, co-owner of BW’s Barbecue, 5007 Lake Ave., told me his restaurant regularly returns as a TOB vendor because he sees it as a community booster and marketing event that the staff really enjoys. But make no mistake, it’s a lot of work in a short amount of time. Grasso said the staff worked until midnight Friday night and had to get up early Saturday.

Turns out, those extra hours paid off. When the winners were announced Saturday afternoon, we learned that BW’s smoked jerk chicken wings took home the award for best seafood or turf. I’m always proud to have a 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 participating in the Taste of Buffalo, and he said the staff “loved the energy” surrounding their restaurant on Niagara Square.

Williams told me he spent 20 years in the kitchen at the Buffalo Club and “grew up there” surrounded by the tradition of haute cuisine. Williams has brought that expertise to The Barrel Factory, where he says, “We’re true Buffalons at heart, but we like to take things and make them high-end.”

His variations on the upscale Buffalo theme, including fried phyllo with fixins (and loganberry sauce), appear to have been a hit Saturday. “Everybody loves it,” he said, “and asks where to find us.” The Barrel Factory is at 65 Vandalia St. in Buffalo.

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

It turns out that our News Four team met by chance on the steps of City Hall. We weren’t all food judges, some of us were staffing the News 4 booth, but we all got to eat something and savor one of the highlights of summer in the Queen City. Sun, food, friendly faces and new experiences. What more could you want from a summer weekend in Buffalo? In the dark depths of winter, we’d call it extraordinary!