By Dean Wells
When Martin Danilowicz sits at his bar in his Buffalo, N.Y. restaurant Roost, you can see the energy vibrating off him as he talks about his favorite subject—food. The kinetic energy seeps from his pores, it’s written on his face, it’s in the way he slaps you on the shoulder when he is particularly excited or wants to make a point—like talking about his recipe for bolognese.
He was in Italy in 2001 on a food tour, staying in a villa. He asked a woman—her name was Adriana Ravioli— “I swear, that was her name,” he says, laughing.
—to cook with him. “We got two fires going and two pots. I didn’t speak Italian, she didn’t speak English, but we cooked together for five hours, joking and laughing. Food is the universal language. It was a special moment. And that’s the exact same bolognese we have on the menu now.” Danilowicz opened his current location in the Crescent Building—a former pill box factory—on Niagara Street 9-1/2 years ago on the heels of his wildly popular restaurant Martin Cook’s. The interior is done in an industrial chic style and features an open kitchen, soaring windows on two sides, a massive pizza oven from Italy, collectible roosters everywhere and a menu that changes every three weeks. Yes, every three weeks—a herculean task for most chefs.
Yes, every three weeks—a herculean task for most chefs.
But Danilowicz is a culinary madman. But Danilowicz is a culinary madman.
“I really like the movie ‘Shawshank Redemption.’ But it would be really boring to watch it day after day, year after year, wouldn’t it? Same thing with cooking; so, I switch things up every three weeks.” Every three weeks translates into 17 new menus every year. What inspires Danilowicz’s to keep up such a heavy pace of culinary creativity?
He sifts through his massive collection of cookbooks. He travels specifically for food experiences. And sometimes it can be as simple as he feels like making tacos or some other food.
“There’s really no point in having a wood-fired pizza oven. Not when you’re cooking at 1,000 degrees. You would have to bake the pizza for 20 minutes to get any kind of smoke flavor.”
His most recent theme?
Lebanese-Mexican fusion.
“It’s just a beautiful combination of the two,” Danilowicz says. “They have so many common ingredients. Those cultures just work really well together.
“I believe it’s our job to make food people won’t whip up at home. We need to push the envelope. We should never settle. I aspire to make my own style of food, to create my own genre.”
While discussing his love of food and his career as an owner/chef, Danilowicz makes a surprising revelation: he was never formally trained as a chef.
He wanted to be a golf pro, he says, but an argument with a golfer ended that career path.
“The only other thing I really enjoyed was cooking. We had a big garden growing up. My mother canned everything. It was a really nice way to grow up. The memories from when I was a kid are just overwhelming. Smell and taste can be so nostalgic.”
Danilowicz tries to utilize the two sensations for maximum effect at Roost.
“We did a Persian menu. We would have Persians come in. They would eat and tell us, ‘This isn’t how my grandmother made this, but it totally reminded me of her.’ It’s all about memories, isn’t it?”
Landing in his current location in a warehouse neighborhood felt like a natural move, Danilowicz says.
“Look what happened in the meatpacking districts in New York City and Chicago. People don’t want to live in less desirable neighborhoods. People don’t want to go to less desirable neighborhoods to shop. But you will go to a less desirable neighborhood to eat good food. Restaurants can make a neighborhood, can’t they? And once you have (the restaurants), people start coming.”
Danilowicz was approached by the owners of the Crescent Building—a narrow rectangular concrete slab along Niagara St.—who had a plan to renovate the upper floors into apartments.
“I said, ‘yes, absolutely. I’m in.’ Every warehouse district eventually gets developed.”
One of the centerpieces of Roost is a 6,000-lb stone pizza oven imported from Italy, currently painted like a giant ladybug. It was once painted like Darth Vader. To get it inside, the contractor removed doors and windows and used a crane. The oven operates at 1,000 degrees. It automatically rotates pies every 20 seconds and has a hydraulic lift to raise the cooking surface to crisp the final product.
Danilowicz chooses to use natural gas as his fuel source, going against the wood-fired oven craze.
“There’s really no point in having a wood-fired pizza oven. Not when you’re cooking at 1,000 degrees. You would have to bake the pizza for 20 minutes to get any kind of smoke flavor.”
Roost is located at 1502 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY. Follow online at roostwny.com.