EatItalian restaurantElmwood Village

Inizio

Name: Inizio
Address: 534 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo
Telephone: +1-716-424-1008

"Inizio" in Italian means "beginning": a brand new start for the building once home to the Elmwood branch of Joe's Deli, and a brand new experience for Buffalo pasta lovers. The Northern Italian dishes on the menu here, featuring noodles scratch-made in house daily, are really bursting with creativity: the house specialty cacio e pepe is beauty in simplicity, finished off with a drizzle of black truffle oil, and the potato gnocchi with braised short rib is just the thing (along with the dimly lit, cozy ambience) to warm you up on a cold Buffalo night. A persistent complaint is middling portion sizes, though, so don't come to Inizio ravenously hungry; on the other hand, in the words of one reviewer, "for first dates and people on diets, this is the place".

Address: 534 Elmwood Ave
Getting there: Metro Bus 12 or 20
Hours: Mon-Thu 5-10PM, Fri Sat 5-11PM
Price: $25-50
Phone: +1-716-424-1008
Website: inizio716.com (opens in a new tab)

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Listing from Wikivoyage: Buffalo/Elmwood Village, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Also listed in Overture Maps open data.

Updated 28 Sept 2026. Something wrong? Tell us.

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