Audience Statement: The audience I would expect to read my review on The Dirty Buffalo would be people interested in wings. While located just a few minutes away from Old Dominions campus, It seems to draw the attention of students or faculty attending Old Dominion, and anyone else older who lives relatively nearby including sports fans. The audience I would expect to go to this restaurant are people who like food and sports. Just don’t decide to go to The Dirty Buffalo expecting a fancy nicely decorated place its mostly intended to be relaxed and comfortable, it’s not a place that customers would be expected to dress nicely. The Dirty Buffalo may catch the eye of travelers who are passing through the area just looking for somewhere comfortable to stop and eat. I expect whoever reads this review to consider what is said but not be set on never trying it out just because one person had a bad experience, you have to really just see for yourself.

 

Essay: Buffalo Be Gone

No wing place is the same, everyone must know that, they’re either good or they’re not. To me, there isn’t much of an in between, The Dirty Buffalo is definitely unlike any other wing place I’ve been to. The Dirty Buffalo began in 2012, surprisingly by a ODU Alum originally from New York. It was intended to bring New York dishes to the Norfolk area. They say that they intend to treat customers like family, but I didn’t receive any family treatment. The restaurant recently changed locations due to the increase of customers and their lack of space. Later being featured on “Food Networks: Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives”, boosted their customers, helping the business thrive. The Dirty Buffalo is a good place to go enjoy some wings and maybe even to catch a college football game. Located just a couple blocks from the ODU campus, it is very nearby for college students to drive or even walk to for a meal.

From the road, The Dirty Buffalo is definitely not the greatest looking restaurant, it looks like a older, worn down building. It doesn’t have the curb appeal of a place that you would decide to go to just by driving by and looking at the outside of the building. When pulling in to park, we pulled into a very poorly paved parking lot with very few parking places. Parking is limited to the point where there were cars parked on both sides of the road just to eat at that restaurant. The buildings itself looks very poorly taken care of, it is just a plain blue painted exterior with white paint around the windows. On the corner of the building is the entrance, two glass doors leading to a small waiting room then into the restaurant where guests are greeted by a hostess at a wooden podium, some are seated immediately, others may be asked to wait, it all depends on how busy they are. While seated, I looked up to notice that there are no ceiling tiles or anything covering the air conditioning vents or the roof frame. There are about 13 different TV’s around the restaurant, all with a different sport playing. I would have thought that a restaurant that seems to be getting good business would be able to afford to have their tables matching but at The Dirty Buffalo, the tables all seem to be different from one another. It has an empty feeling inside, like it needs to actually be decorated, except they are trying too hard to make it feel comfortable and friendly.

When I first arrived the service that I experienced for the most part was good. My waitress was very nice, she was able to give us her opinion on the food and what she recommended. I did although notice that every waitress/waiter working there was pretty or good looking, it appears that they were hired of their looks. They don’t seem to function the best under stress, on Wednesday and Thursday they have 65 cent wings, so that caused it to get busy and the waitresses didn’t seem to know how to handle the crowd. We had ordered out wings right at 5:00 pm, when the 65 cent wings started, and half of the table received their wings within 15-20 minutes, but the other half ended up waiting almost an hour for our wings. Our waitress didn’t seem to notice that our food was missing, she kept avoiding eye contact when we would try to get her attention. When we were finally able to ask her about our food she went to the back and got her manager, he came out to talk to us and explained that with the rush, our order had never been put in, they forgot. After he had explained what had happened without order I kindly asked for my wing order to be removed from my check since I had been waiting almost an hour and was no longer hungry, they hadn’t put in the order so nobody had started making them. The manager completely ignored me and just stood up and walked back to the kitchen.

The menu was different from what you would expect, it was crowded and a little confusing to me. The Dirty Buffalo Is best known for their wings. But they do also serve hot dogs, salads, burgers, and chicken tenders, they also have those things served onto of two sides and they refer to them as “dirty plates”. I ordered from their “create your own” portion, my order contained pulled pork, beans, and macaroni and cheese. The pulled pork was that perfectly cooked sweet, juicy pulled pork, but the beans were very watery and soup like and the macaroni and cheese was nothing special. I also got a piece of plain white bread cut in half with my food, the kind of bread you would buy at Walmart. The wings I ordered, that took almost an hour were definitely not worth the hour wait, they were cold and did not seem to be the kind of wings that a place would be “known for”.

I have never been to a restaurant that charges extra for your food to not be stacked onto of each other. $0.50 for food to not be stacked, and then $0.68 for a size of ranch or blue cheese with my wings. Their appetizers ranged from $4.99-$10.99 and included wings, fries, nachos, fried pickles, and mozzarella sticks. The main entrees were anywhere from $2.99-$14.99 and consisted of subs, salads, their dirty plate, hot dogs, and wings. The wings could get up to $60.00 for 50 wings. Their sides were at most $5.00 and included macaroni and cheese, beans, fries, onion rings, coleslaw, and chicken tenders.

Overall, I would say that with better training and preparation, The Dirty Buffalo could be a lot better. If they were to put a little more effort into the overall appearance of the restaurant and quality of the food, their business could do a lot better than it currently is. Even if you judge it based on the outside, I would still recommend going in and giving it a try. I didn’t have an amazing experience, it could have gone a lot better, but the food is not bad. Go in, try it out for yourself.

 

Reflection: 

If I had another opportunity to redo or revise this essay I have to say there isn’t much that I would change. I was genuinely happy with the outcome of this writing, it was edited by the class so I was able to see things that needed to be fixed.  If my paper wasn’t edited by the class I would have wanted to change the order in which I put the paper together. I feel that if I organized the paragraphs differently that the paper could flow better. I personally think that I provided a great amount of information to give the reader a clear view on my opinion.