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The Fried Bologna was even better and I’ll be back soon for another. The bologna was cut think too, as it should be, piled with grilled onion and cheddar on a nice Costanzo roll. The Mac salad was tasty – clearly house-made with fresh herbs. Another Buffalo staple is the unforgettable smell of Cheerios roasting. The Swannie House is located right next door, across the street from the river by the Michigan street bridge.
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He said that made the news of Wiles-Fetterman’s sudden death so much more shocking. That meant following in the tradition of the owners who came before, standing behind the polished mahogany bar, lining up frosty bottles of Labatts and shots of Crown Royal. But she would also run outside with a bowl of fresh water when customers brought their dogs and parked them outside, Allman said. Often times, such transformation motivates changes within neighboring locales, if only to keep up with the Joneses. But if you walk into the Swannie House, look over their six taps and absorb the ambience, you’ll pray they don’t touch a thing.
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Musician Kevin Kukoda started going to Swannie House as a child, brought by his father, along with a gang from the office, for gravy fries, burgers and wings. According to census and city directory records, the same William Swanney was born in Scotland. It was likely just the innocent manifestation of some old Irish storytelling, but the frequently retold told tale explaining the background of the Swannie name doesn't measure up to the records. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Send restaurant tips to and follow @BuffaloFood on Instagram and Twitter. Wiles-Fetterman grew up in Lancaster, one of four children of Marge and Harry “Bill” Fetterman.
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The Swannie House on Michigan and Ohio streets has been a popular place for a drink and dinner for locals and those coming downtown for various events like hockey games or concerts. Hanging out on the patio are from left, Vallery E. Marks, Don and Dee Douglas, Carlos Alberto and Cody Douglas, all of Buffalo. For a “dive bar” (meant affectionately) they clearly have someone taking the food/kitchen thing seriously.
Walk the other way and you’ll find quick routes to Canalside; the new Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino; and old neighbor Malamute, which is primed to reopen as the craft cocktail-focused Ballyhoo in the fall. But it’s the presumed future of the Swannie House that makes the place even more intriguing. Step outside the bar’s stain-glassed doors one way and you’ll see the possibilities of Ohio Street, with plenty of parcels primed to join nearby River Fest Park and upcoming Freight House Landing apartments off the Buffalo River. The liverwurst was great, cut thick and piled high with fresh, full flavored slices of red onion, on a nice fresh rye bread.
The original Swanneys of the Swannie House - Buffalo News
The original Swanneys of the Swannie House.
Posted: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Swannie House closed until further notice after death of co-owner Debbie Wiles-Fetterman
Some of the menu items are as classic as the Swannie, with a few Buffalo standards, but they also offer some good looking salads, appetizers, burgers, wraps and entrees. For starters we ordered the house-made chili ($3.95), and beer battered Stuffed Peppers – $7.25. I was a bit nervous about the deep fried banana peppers. Not so, they were nicely battered, with a light crispy shell that seems to hold everything together. Put these babies on the top of the stuffed banana peppers in Buffalo list.
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Combine this kind of seclusion with the tavern’s intimate, wood-paneled interiors and you’ll understand how it’s still standing after so many bars around it have fallen. And such attributes will keep it steady as an unforeseen swarm of development rises around it. If you’re looking for some quality pub food with some atmosphere and a side of history, then the Swannie House is calling your name. Don’t let the rough exterior fool you, someone is working hard in the kitchen. I’d be tempted to go for a late lunch, and let it roll right into happy hour and a Sabres game. “It was a great night of pure Buffalo hospitality,” said Zeisberger.
The late 19th century bar – first called the “Swanerski House” before some Irish-reared editing – is the second oldest in the city (behind the soon-to-be reopened Ulrich’s), with more history in its men’s urinal than most bars have inside four walls. The Tim Wiles-owned tavern has tamed Polish brawls, cashed grain scoopers’ checks and hosted generations of General Mills employees. It’s handled decades of Sabres fans, First Ward residents and Edward M. Cotter fireboat passengers. And its interiors detail the Nickel City’s waterfront history from its heyday to present day.
The original Swanneys of the Swannie House
Her restaurant career included a server stint at Gabriel’s Gate while she worked toward her dental assistant certificate at the University at Buffalo. Joe Allman, who started working at Swannie House at 16, as a dishwasher, 30 years ago, is now a main bartender, and Swannie House’s longest tenured worker. He said kindness is what people remember about the woman who tried to cure every ail that came her way. I walked under the race placard to find Swannie’s clandestine outdoor seating, covered and surrounded by high wooden fencing and landscaping. Whether on a long lunch or out “running errands,” patrons can hide for a few pops while basking in sweet cereal smells from nearby General Mills.
Some of that might not be true, Cichon found; there's no record of anyone named Swanerski – or anyone with a name even close – living in or emigrating to Buffalo, ever. On a recent Tuesday night, I stopped by the Swannie, ordered a Genny Cream stubby ($2.75) and a bag of Cheetos ($1), then settled into a barroom table surrounded by artifacts of Buffalo’s history. Old blue seats from Memorial Auditorium hung above my head, right near a picture of the Sabres’ French Connection and across the bar from a framed photo of Ward boxing legend Jimmy Slattery. Scattered around the front entrance are varsity letters from local high schools like Timon and Frontier; over the doorway leading to the back patio is a retired mile marker for the Shamrock Run. The First Ward's Swannie House is one of Buffalo's oldest gin mills, and recently, the family of the man who started the place began looking for some proper recognition.
The chili was good and meaty with cheese on top and some hot sauce served on the side. The Swannie House has been a Buffalo staple pretty much forever. It occurs to me that walking through the front door here is as close as I’ll probably ever get to traveling back in time (not that I’m giving up on that dream). You can just imagine what this place was like a 100 years ago when Buffalo was one of the largest seaports in the world, and the waterfront was alive with hard drinking sailors and dock workers. Today the servers and patrons are much more congenial (I’m sure), down right friendly. Later, he moved nearby, and was another frequenter of Swannie House, along with a cast of characters and working folks from the General Mills plant on the other side of the Buffalo River.
The former is primed to serve as the city’s long-awaited connection between its inner and outer harbor, with trees, bike paths and street lighting revamping a 1.4-mile thoroughfare to Fuhrmann Boulevard. And whether architects and planners of the forthcoming boulevard intended to or not, they’ve also positioned the latter – one of Buffalo’s most cherished corner gin mills – to become their riverside project’s unofficial welcome center. She was behind the bar five days earlier, chatting as she served folks from the neighborhood. That night, she kept the bar open late to accommodate a regular who was meeting friends from out of town. There's no record of anyone named Swanerski – or anyone with a name even close – living in or emigrating to Buffalo, ever. But since at least 1866, the Swanney family had been running a boarding house (with a tavern on the ground floor) in the First Ward.
There was a small group at the bar with five or six tables available adjacent. We were immediately greeted by our friendly server (also the bartender), and treated to some fine draft beer choices . While the Swanerski of Poland story looks to be a bit of barstool blarney, the record actually shows that the Swanneys of Scotland were the first to operate the tavern that still bears their name. The spelling of Swanney did change to Swannie at some point during the earliest days of the bar being open, which might have evolved and morphed into a story involving Robert Nowak, the Polish-American who owned the bar in the 1940s and '50s. The laminated Toronto Sun story is veteran National Hockey League journalist Mike Zeisberger’s homage to Jim Kelley, the longtime Buffalo News hockey writer who died in 2010, centered around a night at the Swannie House. Among the framed photographs and Buffalo memorabilia hangs an article summoning the memory of a particular night in the bar’s history.
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