The Broadway Market began as a place for the largely immigrant populations of Buffalo’s surrounding neighborhoods to buy their daily bread.
The market’s food offerings still reflect its Polish roots, at Pott’s Deli, where pierogi and kielbasa can be enjoyed in their natural setting: a luncheonette counter. Margie’s Soul Food presents an extensive menu drawn from Black cultural traditions, from yams and fried chicken, to chitterlings and pig’s feet.
East-West Café does American fare, you might say, including French toast, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers and a fish fry.
Lately, some 133 years later, the newest wave of immigrants to set up homes on the East Side has started adding dishes to Broadway Market mealtime menus.
Apa’s Kitchen is a full Bangladeshi-Indian restaurant that recently opened there. It is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Its menu is displayed on sides of its square kiosk in the floor’s center, next to the invigorating aroma of Famous Horseradish.
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Running it are Sayeda Moin and Luthfun Hassan, two women from Bangladesh. Before coming to Buffalo, Moin ran a restaurant in New York City for 30 years.
The counter setup belies the depth of the menu.
Samosas ($1.50) and pieces of tandoori chicken ($3) are ready to go in the hot case. Triangular deep-fried pockets of beef, potato or chicken, samosas are the empanadas or pastelillos of Central Asia. Chicken boti kabab is chopped chicken, onions, chiles and spices formed, crumb-coated and fried a style of chicken nugget that needs no sauce.
Pani puri ($8) are vegan shooters, plum-sized rice-lentil batter puffs, filled with potatoes and beans, then drizzled with sour-sweet tamarind sauce. Mughlai paratha ($5) is an omelet-stuffed flatbread that’s deep-fried, dusted with spices and chopped into handy squares.
Biryanis ($10 to $15) are hugely aromatic piles of basmati rice trailing plumes of clove and cardamom. Curries like the yogurt-based beef rezala ($12) are long-simmered and tender.
From a service standpoint, I’m not sure Apa’s is yet suited to people shoehorning meals into lunch hours. The actual kitchen is in another space on the side of the market, slowing down the process of getting food.
What I’ve done is put in my order, then browse the other market vendors or gather groceries at the Save-A-Lot.
Or go across the street to Buffalo Fresh, 1018 Broadway, and explore wares of the Middle East and elsewhere. (More than 60 kinds of olives, aisles of spices, and if you’re making that popular feta-and-roasted-tomato pasta? Bulgarian sheep’s milk feta, 2 pounds, $8.99.)
Afghanistan’s cuisine is also not often offered for retail sale in Erie County, though there are thousands of people from that nation living here.
That is starting to change, with Sahar Bakery, 2785 Sheridan Drive, Tonawanda, offering barbari flatbreads, semi-sweet cardamom coffeecakes called roht and more.
For Afghani cuisine beyond baked goods, though, the Broadway Market is the place to be, at least on Fridays. From noon to 4 p.m., a pop-up outfit called Khoshmazeh Afghan Cuisine turns out a small set of dishes from the market’s new rentable commercial kitchen.
Mohammad Zubair Alemyar and his friend Mohamad Qasim Rahimi have started Khoshmazeh Afghan Cuisine as a pop-up in the Broadway Market on Fridays. They plan to open a restaurant in the Northtowns later this year. Raw video supplied by Khoshmazeh Afghan Cuisine, editing done by The Buffalo News. The video is 2x faster than its original shooting.
Mantoo ($8), steamed beef dumplings in garlic yogurt, potato-stuffed flatbread called Bolani ($2.50), and Kabul-style lamb pilaf ($12), with aromatic rice, carrots and raisins, are three dishes offered since owners Mohammad Zubair Alemyar and Mohamad Qasim Rahimi started.
Mohamad Qasim Rahimi, left, and Mohammad Zubair Alemyar of Khoshmazeh Afghan Cuisine.
The pop-up format, serving once a week, gives fledgling operations a chance to learn before expanding their scope, allowing them to grow little by little. Last week, for the first time, the Afghanis added a dish. Ashak ($8) is steamed leek dumplings with tomato-bean and yogurt sauces.
Little by little, in the welcoming, historic surroundings of the Broadway Market, our new neighbors are making themselves at home.
