Antoinette's Sweets

5981 Transit Road, Depew, NY - (716) 684-2376

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Posted By Michael Stern on 12/20/2009 7:33:00 PM

Ten years ago when Jane and I wrote a story for Gourmet magazine about beef-on-weck sandwiches – Buffalo's lesser-known culinary icon (after hot wings) – the story included a sidebar extolling the chocolate-coated, spun-sugar bonbon Buffalonians call sponge candy. In the decade since, we have come to appreciate that the home of the chicken wing and of carved-to-order roast beef on kummelweck rolls also happens to be a confectionery city of the highest order. In the capital of what one local chocolatier called The Sponge Belt (Syracuse to Erie), sponge candy is only one chocolate grail among such pieces de resistance as cashew-crowded Charlie Chaplin logs, molasses pops, nut barks and non pareils. One of the very best places to sample the city's chocolate bounty is Antoinette's Sweets. (Actually, Antoinette's is TWO of the best places; there is another location in West Seneca at 1203 Union Road. The phone there is 716-675-3981.)

Merely walking into the place is intoxicating. The air is perfumed with chocolate, glass cases are filled with masterfully made candies of every shape. Beyond the dizzying confectionery, what kept participants in the Buffalo Roadfood tour coming back, day after day, even when the whole day had been spent eating elsewhere, was ice cream. Antoinette's makes some of Buffalo's most aristocratic sundaes (which western New Yorkers know as frappes): homemade syrups and sauces arrayed atop ice cream in tall tulip glasses or banana split boats. Hot fudge is so much more about the flavor and luxe of cocoa butter than sugar that you want to call it savory. It is especially profound when sharing space with fragile marshmallow sauce. If hot fudge is too fudgy, you can get an alternative sauce that Antoinette's calls French chocolate pudding – cool, silk-smooth and thick enough to eat with a fork. To adorn sundaes, Antoinette's skilled scoopers use a pastry bag to pipe on freshly whipped cream which is nothing more and nothing less than that: pure cream whipped enough to add heavy billows of unsweetened luxury.

Scorecard

Overall: Legendary - Worth driving from anyplace

Classic Sundae	Sponge Candy
Old Time Sundae	Charlie Chaplin
Frappe

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Reviewers Photos [Upload Your Photos]

"Chocolate is Antoinette's strong suit, but sundaes without it are pretty spectacular, too. This is vanilla ice cream with mint and pineapple sauces topped with crunchy peanuts."
Michael Stern

"What is wrong with this picture? It is a turtle sundae and you can see the rivulets of caramel sauce running down the whipped cream as well as the load of hot fudge atop the ice cream. But the pecans are missing! When I pointed out the omission to the server, she swiftly made another sundae exactly right ... and I was too hungry to spend any time photographing it."
Michael Stern

"A perfect banana split. The peanuts and ripe bananas are a combo Elvis would have loved."
Michael Stern

"This is the Antoinette's in West Seneca, just a short way from the fabled Schwabl's Beef on Weck restaurant."
Michael Stern

"Roadfooders often met at the Antoinette's on Transit after eating all day for a denoument of ice cream and hot fudge. Tour regular Jay Olins kibbitzes for the camera."
Michael Stern