Beef on Weck from Buffalo

Tom Hanchett

Ask newcomers from Buffalo, New York, what food they miss from back home and it’s a good bet someone will say, “beef on weck.”

That’s a sandwich of thin-sliced sirloin piled high on a kimmelweck roll.  What’s kimmelweck? When Germans arrived in upstate New York more than a century ago, they brought a taste for airy bread with a very crisp crust (weck, in German) dotted in caraway seeds (German kimmel) and kosher salt.

Now Donna and Brad Battaglia, native Buffalonians, have opened Taste of Buffalo Pizzeria in a little strip-mall off Interstate 77 in Charlotte’s northside suburb of Huntersville. Buffalo Bills football autographs and Sabres hockey photos line the cozy walls.

“We started this place to bring a taste of back home down here,” says Donna. “Real family-made pie” – that’s pizza in Buffalo-speak – “and wings. Most of our customers are from New York and Pennsylvania. People come in here, they were neighbors back home, they find each other.”

Fridays, there’s beef on weck.  The Battaglias located a bakery in Pineville willing to work up kimmelweck using a traditional Buffalo recipe. Rolls come in around noon, still warm from the oven.

They’re all gone by closing.

Taste of Buffalo Pizzeria
I77, exit 25, Statesville Road at Sherrill Estates Road
9610-B Sherrill Estates
Huntersville, NC 28078
(704) 439 – 0546

Tuesday – Thursday:  11am – 9pm
Friday – Saturday: 11am – 10pm
Sunday: 12 noon – 8pm
Monday: closed