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Beer Heaven

Buffalo Brewpub's famous chicken wings. Cheeseburger: 12oz fresh ground angus beef, broiled to order and served on a Kaiser roll with lettuce and tomato.

The Buffalo Brewpub has 34 different beers on tap, with a “Beeriodic Table” chart giving an at-a-glance explanation of how each one tastes. It’s one of only two real brew pubs in the area, and the oldest brewpub in New York State; other pubs offer microbrews but do not make them on the premises. Brewpub’s tanks are right there, just off the dining area behind a glass wall.

The five constant in-house beers the Brewpub offers are a lager, an amber ale, a pale ale, their “Nickel City Dark” (a porter-style ale) and an oatmeal stout. In addition it offers a rotation of seasonal beers. Currently, there’s an Oktoberfest on tap; I started with that, while my guest ordered Flying Bison’s well-known version of the same, the Baron Von Bisonfest. He is a staunch defender of the Baron, but I actually preferred the Brewpub’s version: It was a less hoppy-bitter and more warmly spiced version of the crisp yet almost sweet traditional Oktoberfest.

The Brewpub is a spacious, open restaurant. They offer free snacks, peanuts and popcorn constantly dispensed in an alcove behind the big-screen TV. It’s comfortable, homey, unpretentious and not too loud: The TV is always on mute, and they play unobjectionable music at a low enough volume that you can have comfortable conversations even across the big tables. It is a great place to come with a group of people to watch a game or catch up on things—I’ve been there with eight or nine people and not had trouble following conversations. (The Brewpub also has a private room for groups up to 25, if you’ve got a whole lot of friends to catch up with.)

A couple of minutes after you seat yourself, a friendly and chipper waitress finds you and gives you the big paper menu and, more importantly, takes your beer order. I suppose you could go there and not drink beer—they do have a fully stocked bar, and offer a moderate selection of bottled beers—but you’d be crazy to miss out like that.

The menu is big but simple and has pretty much anything anybody would want to eat, especially while drinking beer. Pizza, burgers, sandwiches, sausages, salads, ribs, grilled chicken, lasagna: basic American cuisine, including a respectable variety of unpretentious vegetarian options. All are reasonably priced, mostly under $10. The only way you’ll run up a huge tab is with the beers ($3.50 for their homebrews, $4.25 for other microbreweries’ beers), and they have a frequent drinker’s club (the “Mug Club”) to recognize their best supporters (no more than five beers per day, please). They’ll keep your mug, just for you, with your name on it, in a cupboard behind the bar. Currently, there are 1,300 active members.

My guest and I started with an order of wings, which the menu said were “reportedly the best in Buffalo.” The waitress was cagey when we asked who had reported this, but assured us that the Brewpub prided itself on their consistent quality, which is the hardest thing about making good wings. We got a single order ($7.95), and special-ordered ($1) half hot and half BBQ just to get a representative sampling. The wings were exceptional: crispy-skinned, big and juicy, and rather than being smothered in the sauce, they had been lightly tossed in it, leaving the skin crispy and the flavor less overwhelming. The BBQ was sweet and tangy with an almost sweet-orangey flavor, but not at all spicy, while the hot was formidable but not to the point of burning the lips. Bonus points were awarded for giving both carrots and celery alongside. I actually used the last carrot to mop up the delicious sauce from the empty platter.

I then ordered a hamburger (the Canadian burger, topped with a slice of Canadian bacon and Monterey Jack cheese, $8.35), because I’d heard the burgers were good. I was under the impression I’d had one there before, but when it arrived I realized I was wrong: A burger this impressive, this huge and excellent, is not something you can forget having eaten. It was so big I got ketchup all over my face trying to wrap my mouth around it. It was so juicy it dripped down my wrists. It was so meltingly, gorgeously tender, succulent, delicious, that I completely neglected to take any notes on it, but as I said, such a burger is unforgettable.

My guest ordered the beef on weck ($7.25), because it’s one of their specialties (seasoned in their own ales, and carved rather than pre-sliced). He deemed it a respectable beef on weck, but it was somewhat overshadowed by his exceeding cleverness in upgrading the included side of pub fries to the Brew City fries (thin seasoned fries, delectably crispy and crunchy—$.75 for the upgrade) and, in a stroke of genius, adding gravy and cheese ($.75 upgrade to any order of fries). The result was so completely excellent, so salty and melty and gooey but crispy, that it even got me to put down said amazing hamburger for a moment to try them.

For the purposes of journalism we had a second round of beers and a slice of carrot cake. The carrot cake was delicious, moist and buttery and oddly good with the beer. They’d run out of Nickel City Dark temporarily, so we had their well-known and respectable oatmeal stout, and their special Anniversary Ale. Anniversary of what? Why, the Brewpub! It has been open, in the same location, brewing beer, for 20 years as of last week. And to celebrate, their Anniversary Ale is a smoky, hoppy, caramel-y brew.

I was more than happy to raise my glass to them: Happy 20th, Brewpub, and many more.