Beef on Weck - Rochester Wiki

Beef on Weck is the other Buffalo specialty. To just call it a roast beef sandwich would not do it justice. First, take a Kaiser roll, brush the top with water and add caraway seeds and pretzel salt and bake for a few minutes to make it crusty. You are now holding kummelweck (or kimmelweck), usually shortened to weck. Add a few pieces of rare roast beef and a substantial quantity of horseradish. Dip the top half of the weck in the roast beef juices. Enjoy. Begin fighting over where you can get the best one.

You can get weck at some Wegmans, and some restaurants in Rochester do serve a passable Beef on Weck. Don't ever say that to a Buffalonian (or are they Buffaloonies?). For their money, you can only get a Beef on Weck at Schwabl's or Charlie the Butcher's.

Seriously, they're nuts about it.

Similar claims are also often made about wings, but as usual the people of Buffalo have no idea what they're talking about.

References

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2007-02-02 12:12:31 I highly recommend the beef on wick at Rohrbachs! Also, at risk of offending the Buffalonians, this isn't really a Buffalo specialty...I believe it originated in Germany. —RachelBlumenthal

2008-01-24 09:24:24 Why are you hating on Buffalo? spending most of my life there & going to school and now working in Rochester, I never understood why people around here seem to have a little brother love/hate relationship with Buffalo. So much of Rochester's identity seems to come from the Bills & Sabres yet are the first to try & insult Buffalo when comparing it to Rochester. It's always seemed to me an inferiority complex. For most people in Buffalo they have never been or have had the reason to come to Rochester. —SteveToponak

2008-02-25 14:47:29 Whoa, lighten up, Steve. I think Rachel may have her facts wrong but I don't think this is an example of Buffalo hating, although that phenomenon does exist around here. From what I can tell the sandwich was created by German immigrants in Buffalo ("kummel" is German for "caraway"). Rohrbach's serves one of the better versions around here but it's not nearly as common around Rochester as in the Buffalo area and it's rarer still to find a true exemplar of the style in Monroe County. —DavidPausch

2008-04-08 10:37:01 Hey Steve, nobody is hating on Buffalo. The fact of the matter is Buffalo is kind of trashy. I have relatives there and they live in a backwards world. My dad grew up in Buffalo and said he would never go back.

I used to live out of state and I was asked by a guy where I was from. I said, "Near Buffalo, Rochester." He said, "Whoa, I wouldn't admit to being from Buffalo, but Rochester, that's a nice place." -True story.

The mayor of Buffalo admitted that his city planning is based around what Rochester has done. What's the old saying? Oh yes, Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Oh, and I wouldn't say Buffalo is so much bigger than Rochester anymore. Check out the metro stats on that on Wikipedia. Rochester also has the largest economy outside of NYC in the state.

Sounds kind of like you are the hater. —SeanLewis

2008-07-20 13:45:09 Surprise - Charlie the Butcher's has a Rochester location (Bayview Wegmans on Empire Blvd in Penfield). At least, that's what it says on the menu board at the restaurant near the Buffalo Airport.

The roast beef at the original location? Dry, tasteless. Maybe it was an off day.

A couple of weeks later, I had the rarest, juiciest beef-on-weck at that Wegmans. Much better than Rohrbach's. Snobs take note - they use horsey sauce instead of horseradish - but I'm sure they would have scrounged up some of the raw stuff if I would have asked. —ZachSmalt

2009-09-09 13:19:11 Beef on wick, if done properly, is wonderful. Visit Buffalo and go to Schwabls. They serve little else. Buffalo is a wonderful city much like Rochester. Maybe a little more blue collar—but this means more yummy ethnic foods such as beef on wick. Rochester is rather stuffy compared to Buffalo, but both are great. —NicRic

2010-09-05 20:30:35 I am a Spencerport native that went to U.B. I've never been to Schwabl's (yet) but in the 60s I had Beef on Weck in lots of different neighborhood taverns and it was always delicious. Or maybe it was the beer talking? —DaveGrainer

2010-10-31 21:12:26 I just moved to Rochester and have yet to find a decent "beef on the block" restaurant much less a place that serves decent Beef on Weck. I've been to Schwabl's, but the very best beef on weck can be found at the Beef and Barrel in Olean, NY. Sorry Buffalo. —Myudichak

2013-03-16 20:57:10 I had my first ever beef of weck today. Delicious! —sub619