Dog Ears is not only a bookstore, but also a cafe where you can get a whole range of gourmet sandwiches served up in a cozy, intimate setting. Creative names for menu items evoke the literary classics of the past: the "Dubliner" features bacon, sharp Irish cheese, roasted tomatoes, and spinach on panini, and the vegetarian-friendly "Walden" sees grilled zucchini, mushrooms, artichokes, red peppers, and sun-dried tomato pesto piled onto on toast. Grab a scone out of the bakery case for a side; they're out of this world. At breakfast, bagels, French toast, and some pricey-but-good breakfast sandwiches are the rule. If you're here on Friday mornings, take advantage of "Free Coffee Friday"; if not, have a coffee anyway — it's ridiculously cheap on the other six days of the week too!
Mon-Fri 6:30AM-8PM, Sat 8AM-8PM, Sun 9AM-3PM·$10-15
DoSouth Buffalo
25 Cazenovia St.
Sep-Mar: Open skate Mon 1PM-3PM, Thu 6PM-8PM, Fri Sat 7PM-9PM, Sun 2PM-4PM; closed Apr-Aug·$3, $2 for Buffalo residents, $1 for seniors or children under 18 who are Buffalo residents
By contrast with the spiffier places elsewhere along the Abbott Road strip, Molly Maguire's hews closer to the prototypical grungy South Buffalo dive, with cheap drinks poured in a dark, loud barroom sparsely decorated with the usual Irish-themed tchotchkes. That's certainly no knock on the place, though; the clientele is friendly, the vibe is gregarious, and free concerts by local bands liven the place up further on Saturday nights.
Ask locals about Cazenovia Park Falls and you'll likely get little more than quizzical looks: even more so than Buffalo's other natural waterfall, Forest Lawn Cemetery's Serenity Falls, this is truly a hidden gem. Strange, because it's easily the more impressive of the two — by comparison with its counterpart which is little more than a series of rapids, the horseshoe-shaped Cazenovia Park Falls is a six-foot (1.8-m) vertical plunge along Cazenovia Creek over a ridge of dark, oil-rich shale. The scene at the falls is a very changeable one — after heavy rains the falls might be temporarily submerged again, and during the dry summer months the flow often slows to a trickle, but come at the right time and you'll bear witness to a lively affair of trout or bass jumping up the cascade as anglers try their luck.