Torn-Down Tuesday: Dickie’s Donuts at Elmwood & Hertel

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

This past week, Uniland Development crews razed the building that was the longtime home of Dickie’s Donuts at the corner of Elmwood and Hertel.

By the time this photo was taken in 2011, the Dickie’s Donuts location at Elmwood and Hertel had been closed for several years.

Dickie’s had the Buffalo doughnut market cornered for most of the ’80s and ’90s.

The locally owned and operated chain had 17 locations, making it the largest local name in doughnuts at the height of business in the mid-1990s, larger than Dunkin’ Donuts and Mister Donut, both of which had limited success in Western New York.

“We beat them at their own game in Buffalo,” said a proud Dickie’s founder Harold Wiesmore in a 1988 interview with The News. He opened the first Dickie’s Donuts in Woodlawn in 1978.

About the name Dickie’s Donuts?

Wiesmore always said he just liked it, and he thought it sounded like a name people would remember. That wound up being true for a generation of giggling Buffalonians and at least one national figure as well.

1982 ad.

Longtime “Tonight Show” host and comic Jay Leno often used his knowledge of the doughnut shop with the somewhat silly name as proof of his Buffalo bona fides.

“I always say to my wife, ‘Dickie’s Donuts, not associated with Richard’s Donuts Inc.’ ” said Leno in a telephone interview with News critic Alan Pergament in 2003.

“For some reason, when we used to tour Buffalo, we’d always go by that place and I’d always say that to my wife. It’s one of those things that isn’t funny to anybody except her.”

Founder Wiesmore died in 1995 and business dwindled for Dickie’s during the ensuing decade, as at the same time, Tim Hortons began to make inroads in the Buffalo market after opening its first Western New York location on Niagara Falls Boulevard at Ridge Lea in 1986.

By 2002, there were only five Dickie’s locations.

Many, like the one at Elmwood and Hertel, struggled after the New York State restaurant smoking ban was enacted. Gone were the men who sat on stools and in booths, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

It will likely be remembered as the only place to get coffee 24 hours a day during its heyday, but that Elmwood Avenue store will also be remembered as the backdrop for a scene in Vincent Gallo’s 1998 movie “Buffalo ’66.”

Dickie’s Donuts on Dingens Street closed in 2011.

The final remaining Dickie’s Donuts on Dingens Street closed in 2011. That location reopened a few months later as Donut Kraze, and carried on many of the Dickie’s Donuts traditions.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Bailo’s, famed for beef on weck and an urban legend

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

You could call it “the day the roast beef died.”

Sept. 25, 1979. Flames and smoke poured out of the three-story structure at 1298 Bailey Ave., the longtime home of Bailo’s. The fire, which started in the kitchen of the restaurant, caused more than $150,000 in damage to the building and contents, and it ultimately lead the Buffalo landmark to close.

From just about the moment Prohibition was lifted in 1933, George Mankowski operated the gin mill at Bailey Avenue and Lovejoy Street. When he died in 1953, his sons Eugene and Chester were already running the place. Known informally for years by the nickname formed by the Bai-Lo intersection, it officially became the Bailo Grill when Chester and Stella Mankowski registered the business name in 1956.

Not much different in menu or ambiance than hundreds of other neighborhood taverns around Buffalo, Bailo’s became well-known, and eventually beloved, far outside the boundaries of the Lovejoy/Iron Island neighborhood for something we still love in Western New York: The portions were huge.

The draft beers were big. The shrimp cocktail was big. And famously, the beef on weck was huge.

Bailo ad, 1962 (Buffalo Stories archives)

The well-done beef, usually topped with gravy and horseradish at Bailo’s, poured off of the full-sized kimmelweck roll.

Again, at a time when dozens — if not hundreds — of corner saloons were carving up beef on weck around the region, Bailo’s was famous all over the city for people who’d make the trip for what was universally recognized as one of the city’s best roast beef sandwiches.

Sitting in the Bailo’s dining room, you were likely to bump into people from all corners of Western New York, along with a good mix of families from the Lovejoy area and UB students drawn down Bailey Avenue by the promise of a real Buffalo experience headlined by giant sandwiches and ice cold and super cheap Ballantine draft beer.

Chet and Stella Mankowski sold the place to John and Lillian Stein in the mid-1970s. Soon after the fire, an attempt was made to open Bailo’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard, but it didn’t last. A Buffalo institution faded away.

From a Bailo’s ad, 1976. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Nearly 40 years after the last sandwich crossed the bar on Bailey Avenue, people still talk about Bailo’s. The sandwiches are fondly remembered, but it’s also the unbridled retelling of an urban legend — with no apparent basis in fact — that helps keep Bailo’s memory alive.

Just about anyone interested enough about Bailo’s to read this story has heard the rumors that they served horse meat. The rumors, which I’ve personally been tracking down and researching for more than a decade, have no basis in any verifiable truth.

Despite the fact that there are no firsthand or even secondhand accounts giving credence to the urban legend, one Facebook group celebrating the restaurants of Buffalo’s past had to ban Bailo’s posts because the page was becoming regularly filled with equine double entendre and word play.

Where did the rumors come from?

It’s difficult to say, but over the 45-year history of the tavern, there were incidents like the time in 1969 when the owners were fined for allowing underage drinking. A month after the 1979 fire, the owner was indicted in a tax case. Never, however, does there appear to have been any violations or fines relating to the serving of horse meat.

There were several times when controversy over horse meat heated up in Buffalo. During World War II, when meat was scarce, it was illegal to sell horse meat for human consumption. However, it could be sold and butchered as dog food.

Horse Meat was sold for dogs on Hertel Avenue in 1943, but not at Bailo’s. Ever.

Marlin Perkins, then the Buffalo Zoo curator, was a partner in Buffalo’s first horse meat shop opened in 1943 at 1709 Hertel Ave., currently the site of Deep South Taco.

It was reported in the Courier-Express that while the meat at “The K-9 Kitchen” was marked as not for human consumption, “occasional customers inspect the steaks and hamburg with hungry eyes.”

When no other meat was available, it was clear that not all the steaks made it to Fido’s bowl.

Even the the post-war years, meat was scarce, and several Buffalo butchers were fined for mixing horse meat in with pork and beef when producing sausages and hot dogs.

In 1954, Bernard Badzinski was sentenced to six months in the penitentiary. The Courier-Express called him the “King Pin of the illegal horse meat dealers” after a horse head was found in a barrel not labelled “horse meat” in a store at 1128 Broadway.

“Your crime,” said Judge John Kelly to Badzinski, “is that you were placing other sausagemakers in disrepute.”

All this is to say, plenty was written about horse meat — and Bailo’s never came up once.

So it’s time to put the urban legend to bed and to be able to fondly remember one of Buffalo’s favorite all-time restaurants and talk about its giant roast beef sandwiches — slathered in horseradish — without making a joke.