Demand prompts rise in ethnic food options

By Angelica Rodriguez and Brandon Waz
Bengal News West Reporters 
        The retail strip of the West Side known as Grant Street has seen a great deal of change over the past couple of decades.  With the introduction of African and southeast Asian refugees to the area there  has come a change in the businesses – particularly in its food markets and restaurants.

Win Shwe puts some spice into Burmese chicken soup

 
        Take a walk down from the campus of SUNY Buffalo State, and as the rows of houses and community centers give way to business, the number of ethnic food and clothing stores becomes apparent.  
        “It’s amazing, to see how diverse it all is,” Grace Guercio, part of the family who owns Guercio and Sons, Inc., a grocery store that has stood at 250 Grant St. since 1961.
        She has been involved with the business for 10  years, and she remembers the neighborhood as being mostly Italian before she joined the store. Now, she said, the shopkeepers see everyone from Somalis to Muslims come to buy their wares.
        As a result, Guercio’s still has a heavy Italian influence, but among the jars of olives and bags of pasta one can find rice of every variety, from long-grain white to sushi and purple sticky rice. There are also coffees from Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Sumatra (an island in Indonesia) as well as the United States, Italy and Colombia. Gluten-free varieties are even available. 
        Guercio said the store’s stock is based on demand and what it can order from its  markets, which are largely based in bigger cities like New York; however, Guercio and Sons does carry plenty of specialty items, and the store is open to requests from customers.  
        “Basically, whatever you’re looking for, that you can’t find in other stores like Wegmans or Tops, we’ll try to get for you,” she said.
        Other stores like Vineeta International Foods, at 98 Grant St., just about five blocks south of Guercio and Sons, cater to specific ethnic crowds. The shelves hold different types of flours, rice and spices specific to the foods those from Southeast Asia know and love.
        Another spot on Grant Street known for its cultural flair is the West Side Bazaar at 25 Grant St., a part of the Westminster Economic Development Initiative. The brightly-lit storefront, which started in 2009, is home to a number of clothing spots and restaurants providing Burmese, Ethiopian, Laotion, Peruvian and Thai cuisine.
        WEDI’s executive director, Benjamin Bissell, said the point of the Bazaar is to help those in the community essentially create their own market based on what their needs are.
        “We don’t directly encourage people to create certain goods for the community,” he said. “We let them decide that for themselves.”
        Good business planning, he said, stipulates that you create a business plan based on the needs of the community you plan to serve, and so owners will state in their plan what the need is and how they will serve it.
         “We let the market essentially decide,” he said. “If you offer product and people have the ability to buy it, then that’ll kind of show whether they will be there selling it.”

 
        Manager Michelle Holler has been a part of the process for just three months, but she first came to the Bazaar for the food and loved it.
        “The food is a huge hit on the West Side,” she said. “It’s actually doing a lot better than the retail side right now, but hopefully that will change when summer comes.” 
        Indeed, the Bazaar is filled with the smell of spices, meat and coffee, and people of all ethnicities mill about. Holler said   the presence of restaurants that provide a taste of home for the refugees in the area also  has  fostered a sense of community for customers and vendors alike.
        She pointed out Kyen Sein Hein, a Burmese eatery owned by Soe Maung, and said: “Every single day, he has a huge following of Burmese people that come here, his family, his friends. Just to be able to come in here and speak the language and to have the sense of community is huge.”
        Those who are interested in experiencing different cultures also get their fix. Maung said scores of people from the city and suburbs come to sample the Bazaar’s offerings. 
        The West Side has proven to be a breeding ground for those of all nationalities and creeds to offer a piece of their homeland to those in the area, and the diversity is encouraging to Bissell.
         “Our (WEDI’s) goal is community and business development,” he said. “We’re here to support all businesses, and provide more healthy food options, more food options in general – just more options, and it’s great. I’m very excited to see that.”

Compost adds to fruitful West Side gardens

By Jeff Pawlak and Brittney Singletary
Bengal News West Reporters

As the weather warms up in Buffalo, so does the composting effort across the West Side. While most of America tosses away its yard waste and kitchen scraps, food markets and farmers on the West Side band together to provide compost to nourish the city’s farms and gardens.

         Composting is a means of fertilization that reuses crops and other organic foods, particularly the scraps. Since farming can be difficult in the middle of the city, the West Side’s movement to provide fertilizer through composting has become an invaluable asset to urban farmers.

         “In the past few years, more and more folks have rallied around community gardens in Buffalo, which is really exciting,” said Nicole Dionne, a prominent community gardener. “Community gardens have the potential to be such a boon to a neighborhood—they can be a gathering space, a source of food, a break from the monotony of concrete and asphalt, a way to create a healthier urban environment, and something that allows folks to practice working together toward a common goal.”

Nicole Dionne, on West Side gardens

         Dionne is one of many urban farmers who receive  compost from Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, an organization dedicated to agricultural growth in the city. Grassroots collects its compost from a variety of sources, from produce markets to some of the West Side’s largest gardens, before parceling it out to local farmers in need of additional fertilization; particularly during Buffalo’s chilly spring season.

         Grassroots isn’t the only program spearheading the compost movement. The Lexington Cooperative Market on Elmwood Avenue assists groups that manage urban farms, such as Grassroots, as well as the Massachusetts Avenue Project and farmers from the East Side. 

Lexington provides those farmers with organic materials from some of its   own products: the tops of carrots, the outsides of cabbages, even produce or vegetables that are past their due date.

         Lexington expects to increase its  compost supply as winter finally fades from Buffalo.

         “If you were to take a look at our produce section now in comparison to two months from now, it’s going to be way different,” said Tom Vrabel, a bookkeeping clerk for Lexington. “A lot of the stuff we have right now isn’t local, just because farmers can’t do much aside from apples and things like that, so that’s definitely going to be picking up a lot in the next couple months.”

         Lexington currently provides its   urban farm projects with compost between three-to-four days a week, but Vrabel hopes that the market can expand to a seven-day-supply soon enough.

         “I think that what a lot of grocery stores do and what they’ve done traditionally is they’ll just throw it into the garbage,” said Vrabel. “I mean, that’s wasteful when there’s people down the street who want to use it and would benefit from it and know that’s it’s kind of a higher quality because a lot of it is organic.”

         The compost movement also benefits the grocers who provide it. According to Vrabel, Lexington’s dedication to separating compost from its  trash has kept its  garbage containers from filling up quicker, saving  money since it  requires less garbage pickups.

         Much of the United States can’t claim that benefit. According to a report filed by the Environmental ProtectionAgency, the country sent approximately 26 million tons (67 percent) -  of its yard waste to landfills in the year 2012 alone.

         “If you take a look at nationwide organic waste statistics, you start to see why it's great that our city is starting to be proactive about this issue,” said Dionne. “A lot of folks will start out throwing that stuff into a landfill, but as you begin to think about and understand how different resources cycle through our environment, you realize that it makes more sense to figure out a way to re-incorporate all that organic waste back into the soil, where it will help create a healthy garden.”

         According to Dionne, several gardens are working with the city government to start a yard waste composting pilot program.

         “Compost is a valuable resource, while the stuff that gets trucked off to a landfill is a burden,” said Dionne. “I would like to see zero percent of our yard waste going to the landfill.”

Internship breeds 20-year plan for parks

By Sean Brock and Ally Rotundo
Bengal News Reporters

Over 10 years ago an intern was hired by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy to assist on a project aimed at returning the parks to their original glory. 

The intern, Brian Dold, began his career with the conservancy soon after graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Landscape Architecture, and immediately began work on a new 20-year project.

Created in 2004, the 20 Year Management and RestorationPlan has adopted a mantra of complete change. The intern, now the Associate Park Superintendent, has remained one of the Conservancy’s few constants. 

 “I was wrapping up college and was wondering what my next move would be,” said Dold. “One of

Dold

my professors at Cornell knew I was from Buffalo and thought I would be a good choice for the internship created as a master plan to restore the Olmsted Parks over time. I was happy to take the internship. To come back to Buffalo and get my legs underneath me was great.” 

During the beginning of the project the Conservancy entered into a partnership with the City of Buffalo, Erie County and the community,  making the Conservancy the official organization of the Buffalo Olmsted Park System, “overseeing its management, operations and maintenance,” according to its website. “Through the development of a 20-year Management and Restoration plan with guidance of its community-based Advisory Council, the Conservancy's experienced and professional staff is now revolutionizing the way common ground is cared for in Buffalo.”

Dold has   had a growing number of responsibilities on the 20-year plan from day one, something that he took great pride in.

 “At first there was a lot of historic research, putting together a lot of information as to how the parks were run up until 2003,” said Dold. “It was a balancing act. Figuring out a systematic approach to restoring the parks to their former glory of the Olmsted era, while realizing the needs of the parks have changed since the late 1800s.”

During Dold’s time at the park, there have been major improvements to many West Side  parks, predominately Delaware and Front.

“We’ve found that people really care about the basics, making sure the paths are smooth, the benches are in good shape, and that there are open accessible bathrooms,” said Dold.

Aside from the basics, the project has given way for massive improvements in playground areas and sports fields in Front Park and the updating of several popular buildings including the Marcy Casino building in Delaware Park.

“We meet with many organizations and clubs to get their input,” said Dold. “We base our restorations on what people in the community want on a day-to-day basis.”

The impact that the 20-year plan has had on the West Side is what keeps Dold and all who work at the conservancy motivated. 

“We have an obligation to raise the quality of life within these neighborhoods,” said Dold. “You can get kind of wrapped up in the restoration process, like we're trying to create a museum, but in following Olmsted’s original plan we look to serve the community first.” 

“Olmsted’s design was done in a way that really touches every community,” said Dold. “We’re in every community in the city, in everyone’s day to day lives.”

Although the conservancy has been successful in completing many tasks for the community, Dold and his coworkers have faced numerous difficulties in their quest to better the parks. 

Dold, on what the Olmsted Parks mean to him:

“We know what we want to do, it’s a matter of finding the resources to make the improvements,” said Dold. “We have our road map for restoring the parks. It’s mainly how quick and how well were able to fundraise to implement them.”

Dold and his coworkers are putting the final touches on the restoration of two Civil War cannons that will be displayed at Front Park later in the spring. When that projected is completed Dold has a handful of options in mind.

           “I’m always thinking about what projects we can do,” said Dold. “It’s actually very hard for me to come to Delaware Park or Front Park and enjoy it the way anyone else can. My mind is too wrapped up in the way things can be improved.