hondo in seattle

Well, I guess we won't be sharing a beer the next time I'm in Buffalo. That's okay, I'm not a beer guy anyway. In the meantime, I'm going to eat well and hope you do, too.

My Filipina wife is a good mimic. When we have a good meal at a restaurant, be it Cambodian, or Oaxacan, or French, or whatever, she'll come home and imitate the dish, often with great success. But we decided Beef-on-Weck would be impossible because you can't buy Kimmelweck rolls where we live. Stupid us, we never considered making our own. This would be a great 4th of July project.

The only defender who showed up to play last week won't play this week? Not the news I wanted to hear.

I go back to Buffalo typically every 2 or 3 years. Each time I do, I talk to family and friends about restaurants, check Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews, and eat at the most promising spots. My last visit was 2 years ago so maybe a bunch of good restaurants have popped up since. The awards do mean something. So do my own taste buds. They both tell me the same story. I apologize if you don't like the story, but my experience is my experience. I've eaten out at so many restaurants in so many cities in 40+ different states and 20+ different countries, my opinion is strongly held. But I'm glad you're happy with the Buffalo food scene. It's all subjective. If I loved BBQ, maybe Kansas City or Austin would be my favorite food cities. But I'm wired differently. Btw, I'll add this: Pizza in Buffalo is criminally underrated. I once saw a top ten list for pizza created by two pizza chefs. Weirdly, to me, they had both Seattle and San Francisco in their top ten but not Buffalo. I've had plenty of pizza in those three cities and Buffalo pizza, on average, is easily the best. I could only guess they'd never been there.

I hear you. I was once driving across the US and stopped in some little town off the highway. I was hungry but not in the mood for fast food nor a diner, and this little burb wasn't big enough to have much else. Or so I thought. As I drove around, as unlikely as it was, I saw a sign for a Basque restaurant and had a great meal. Even the smallest towns sometimes have awesome food, though your odds and choices are better in the big city.

"The most important restaurant in the world..." That's quite a compliment! I believe Iron Chef Marc Forgione's dad worked at the River Cafe??? (I used to watch the Food Network).

We can agree to disagree. But I've eaten all over Buffalo and I've also eaten all over several other cities as well. This is one of the reasons I don't want to retire in Buffalo. I love food and, for me, the food scene in nearly every West Coast city (Vancouver BC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA) is much more diverse and just plain better. I'm not saying Buffalo doesn't have some good dining options. It does. I always eat well when I'm there. But, for example, the people I know in California don't go out for "Chinese" food. They're much more specific about what they want: Hakka, Szechuan, Cantonese, or some other regional specialty. And beyond the regional differences, there are Chinese restaurants in California razor-focused one particular thing like Dim Sum, or hand-pulled noodles, or dumplings, or hot pot, or clay pot, or mala skewers, or whatever. Chinese restaurants in Buffalo are mostly generic Chinese-American places serving inauthentic and less-delicious food. Or think about Latin food. It's hard to find a good Mexican restaurant in Buffalo. In CA (San Francisco or LA), you can find tons of good Mexican including Jaliscan, Baja, Yucatecan, Mexico City street food, and my personal favorite: Oaxacan. If your Latin palate extends beyond Mexico, you can also find good Peruvian, Colombian, Brazilian, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Honduran, and Guatemalan restaurants. But if Europe is more your thing, you can also find German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Austrian, and Scandanavian (etc.) restaurants. Both LA and SF have restaurants serving over 100 different national and regional cuisines. This is kind of a hobby of mine - trying new cuisines. The other day, I ate at a good Uyghur restaurant in San Jose. Buffalo doesn't even have a Uyghur restaurant. Most American cities don't. The Bay Area has seven. That covers diversity but what about quality? LA has 27 Michelin-starred restaurants. The Bay Area has 17 including two (French Laundry and Atelier Crenn) that are considered among the very best in the world. The entire state of California state has 87 Michelin-starred restaurants. Vancouver BC has 9 and a strong overall food scene. Michelin doesn't do a Seattle guide yet, but its food scene is also excellent. Food & Wine magazine ranks LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle all in the top 10 food cities in America. Buffalo, sadly, didn't make the top 25, which is as far as the list goes.

Agreed. I've also had some great food in unexpected places. Whenever I go to Buffalo, I try to hit a few of these regional specialties: Wings, Pizza, Pierogi, Beef-on-Weck, and sponge candy. And much to our surprise, we once found excellent Indian food in Buffalo. And, btw, Geoffrey Zakarian, celebrity chef, is a huge fan of the Beef-on-Weck at Charlie the Butcher in Buffalo. If you don't mind me asking, what Michelin-starred restaurant did you run?

Buffalo is a somewhat bigger version of Dayton - both midwestern, rust-belt cities - but Buffalo is on the water, so maybe a trip to Canalside or some other waterfront locale might be nice. Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy!

At a 66-year old man, I can neither confirm nor deny these reports. Happy Birthday, SDS!

Zach Wilson vs. Joe Burrow (2021) Zach Wilson: 14/22 for 102 yards, 1 passing TD, 91 rushing yards, 1 rushing TD → QBR: 92.4 Joe Burrow: 37/46 for 525 yards, 4 TDs, 0 INTs (historic day) → QBR: 89.3 Huh?

I don't even like country but this is freaking awesome! Am I out of touch or is a song about an individual football game unusual?

I didn't know about this. I'll have to check it out next time I'm in Buffalo. This is a little idiosyncratic, but I visit Parkside Chocolate on Main Street roughly every other time I'm in town. I like chocolate and I like architecture and Parkside Chocolate is a little, decaying architectural gem with decent chocolates, including Buffalo's unique "sponge candy."

Here's the problem... Passer rating evaluates efficiency, not contribution. Imagine this game... We're playing a team with a great O line and All-Pros at the skill positions. But their starting QB and his backup are both hurt. The Head Coach has zero confidence in the 3rd-stringer and only allows him to throw 6 passes during the game - all screens against a D that doesn't respect the QB and only worries about the run game. The QB's stat line is 4-6 for 40 yards with zero picks and zero TDs. Meanwhile, Josh goes 40 for 60 for 400 yards against a D that's intensely focused on stopping him, moves the team up and down the field, rushes for 4 TDs, and leads his team to a 34-0 victory. Despite his heroics, Josh's passer rating will be the same as the scrub's. They both had the same completion, interception, and TD percentage, as well as the same yards per attempt. That's crazy.

QBR has had some other weird anomalies over the years. I probably like it less than 'passer rating' but don't like either one.

Where are you coming from?

First of all, I hope you have fun and the Bills deliver a victory! As a former Buffalonian who (I duck as I type this) has visited and lived in bigger & better cities, I'll say that Buffalo has its charms. IMHO it's food scene is not world-class. It doesn't have any Michelin-starred restaurants. As far as I know, no James Beard award-winning chefs. Asian food is far better on the West Coast. Latin food is far better in the border states. Almost everything is better in NYC. But I do highly recommend the Buffalo classics: Wings and Beef-on-Weck. And if there were a way to measure this, I think Buffalo would lead the nation in most good pizzerias per capita. "Buffalo Pizza" with its cup-and-char pepperoni and cheesy overload is a thing in its own right. You can find some good Polish food, too, since a lot of Poles live in Buffalo. In my opinion, btw, Mighty Taco (mentioned previously) used to be awesome but has faded over the years into a grim shadow of Taco Bell. Niagara Falls is a must-see. Both the Canadian and American sides (including Goat Island). The Maid of the Mist boat ride is definitely worth the money. It'll take you to a spot where you're nearly surrounded by cascading water. Very cool. If you're into architecture, there's a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the city and another about 20 or 30 minutes to the south. Both are open to the public. In fact, there's a lot of good/great architecture in Buffalo dating to the early 1900s when Buffalo was a booming metropolis, though much of it is in rough condition now. The zoo and some of the museums are decent. In my opinion, none are must-see. If you like presidential history, you can see the house where McKinley died after being shot in Buffalo, and a different house a few blocks away where Teddy Roosevelt was then sworn in. But of these are skippable, too. Delaware Park (mentioned previously) is frustrating. It was beautifully designed in the 1860s by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the same landscape architects who designed Central Park and some other fantastic spaces. But in the 1960s, we stupidly built a highway down the middle of Delaware Park, forever scarring it. I recommend wearing Bills gear every day. The Mafia is for real. I've lived in or near KC, SF, Oakland, Indy, Atlanta, Seattle, San Diego, and St. Louis, and been to nearly every other NFL city. Buffalo's love of their team is different. You might want to stop at The Bills Store, next to the stadium, to get outfitted.

Jimmy, you make TBD a more entertaining place. Thank you. I'll shed a tear for you when your J-E-S-T-S get crushed this weekend.

You make a good case, and I hate arguing against Josh because I love the guy and believe he carries this offense. But the traditional way of measuring offensive skill players is by how many yards they produce versus their positional peers. So let's look at the top ten rushers in OJ's MVP season and the top 10 passers in Josh's MVP season. OJ had nearly as many yards as the next two very talented guys combined. Josh didn't even make the list. And, btw, OJ won MVP with 95% of the votes. Josh barely edged out Lamar 383-362, and a few people voted against Lamar only because they thought Lamar already had two MVPs and it was Josh's turn to get one. Josh is great. But he's not head-and-shoulders above his peers the way OJ was. NFL fans and analysts argue who the best QB is today: Josh, Mahomes, Burrow, etc. There was no serious argument in OJ's day who the best RB was.

The 7-11 Defense There's 11 on the field but they play like there's only 7, and someone's always open.

Well, only if you count that one pass the opposing QB threw away and Hawes caught while sitting on the bench.

It's not OJ's fault the team around him sucked. But I'll acknowledge that Josh probably adds more W's to the win column than OJ did. Still, the Bills have never had a player as dominant as OJ was in his prime.

With 9 years of experience, this guy has a career average of 47.3 yards per punt (net 42.2). He supposedly excels at deep directional punting and has 183 punts downed inside the red zone. In 2024, he signed a 3-year, $9 million contract with the Steelers, but injured his ACL in Week 1 and missed the rest of the season. When Johnston got hurt last year, the Steelers signed Corliss Whitman to replace him. The two punters duked it out this preseason for the job. Johnston lost.

I don't think our starting trio is as weak as you think it is, but I do agree with this: Beane hasn't done Josh a lot of favors. Earlier in his career, it was only Josh's athleticism that kept him somewhat upright. You'd think a GM with a great QB would want to give him a great bodyguard. Beane took his time with that. You'd also think that a GM would give his talented thrower some good guys to throw to. Beane success with that has been a mixed bag. I miss the days when the Bills had Reed, Lofton, and Beebe on the same roster. I'm afraid that when Josh retires and his critics, looking at the stats, assert he wasn't the GOAT or doesn't deserve the HOF or junk like that, his apologists will say, "Well, he had a sh*tty line for half his career and sh*tty receivers for the other half."

I occasionally check out other boards. It's not just homerism to say ours is better. It just is. Thanks, all.