Looking for suggestions in Niagara (staying there) or Buffalo (driving through) for beer/food with a (fairly tolerant) family in tow. Will be in the area 2 nights and hoping to have one of them be a beer night for dinner, but could be two if lucky. Thanks!
Souther Tier has a tap room, I believe Labatt has a tap room. Other Half has sort of a pop up location which is a bar, I believe they have food trucks on occasion. Big Ditch brewing is in Buffalo, although it looks like their tap list isn’t very expansive. Community Beer Works has quite a beer menu Im sure a Buffalo native can chime in with better information
This thread is relevant to my interests. I'm going to be driving from Northern VT to Ohio in a couple months, taking 90 most of the way, and I've been looking for places to stop to break up the drive. We are gonna do OH Finger Lakes on the drive to Ohio since it's almost exactly half way. And pretty sure we are stopping at Niagara Falls on our return trip. It's an 8hr drive from Niagara to home and I would love to find something about half way to stop and possibly stay the night. Haven't found a beer related destination that really excites me though, so as of now the plan is to pull through and not stop.
Reporting for duty. So to start just ignore Niagra. There’s absolutely nothing for beer there that matters. The falls are legit awesome but Niagra/Niagra Falls on the US side is not a place to be spending time. Buffalo, on the other hand, has great food and drinks every fuckin’ where you turn. It’s also nice because of how quick and easy it is to get around all of Buffalo that you can kinda piecemeal where you wanna stop. Easily on your way is Britesmith, which has great beer and food, and is also a couple miles from some incredible donuts (Paula’s) and some of the best wings you’ll ever have (Bar Bill.) If you go actually into Buffalo — which again, not much of a detour — you can hit Community Beer Works, Thin Man, Resurgence and Big Dutch. Great stuff at all four and gorgeous taprooms too. If you go a little further south you can hit BriarBrothers and Belt Line which are both killer. On the north side you can do Froth and Auturk. Other food — wings at Gabriel’s Gate or Elmo’s, beef on weck from Charlie the Butcher, pizza from Jays or Bocce Club. I could keep going so if you’ve got any more specific questions lemme know and I’m happy to help.
About halfway between Niagra and northern VT puts you in Utica. Great beers there at Woodland Farm and Bagg’s Square and Saranac is worth stopping at too. Lotta good Italian in Utica and since it’s an immigrant city lotta good food in general.
Thanks for the suggestions. Given we were there on a Thursday-Saturday and the traffic from Buffalo was awful on the way into town on Thursday we had no interest in going back to Buffaloon Friday. We ended up in Lewiston on Friday which seemed like a good location with a nice walkable downtown. Brickyard Brewing was totally fine (nice vibe and ok beers … IPAs better than other styles) and totally kid friendly. Next door was Brewed and Bottled which was a very good craft beer bar/shop with 16 taps and good coolers. Grabbed a nice mixed 4 pack to go. as mentioned, Niagara was a wasteland for beer as far as I could tell.
