Romanello's South, Hamburg

Since 1928, four generations of the Romanello family have been tweaking and swapping recipes at a trio of restaurants in Western New York. In the 1980s, Romanello's South took its place among the family's eateries. Reporters from AM Buffalo have visited to heap praise on the ballroom, whose honey-hued expanses of hardwood can accommodate parties of up to 300 people or 150 adolescent rhinoceroses. Chatter from groups drifts into smaller dining rooms, where fireplaces cast their liquid light across white tablecloths laden with calamari, pasta, and eggplant parmigiana. Some evenings, the restaurant resounds with the harmonies of local artists, which swell beneath the clink of toasting glasses and help clear minds of shrill toothpaste jingles.