3 Best Restaurants in Niagara Falls and Western New York, New York

On Lewiston's historic main street (Center Street), Carmelo's has a classy small dining room with an oiled wooden bar, dark-wood beamed ceiling, partial stone walls, and white tablecloths. Fresh and often local ingredients are used in pastas, like homemade ricotta gnocchi with rapini and sweet sausage or slow-cooked veal, pork, and pancetta Bolognese, and in entrées, such as peppercorn-encrusted ahi tuna with a ginger-soy glaze.

Since 1927, the Antonacci family has been serving traditional dishes from the south of Italy like veal à la Francesca, chicken cacciatore, and veal Parmesan. The interior is an explosion of floral wallpaper, pastoral-scene murals, glitzy chandeliers, and faux grapevines.

In the Chautauqua Suites hotel, this restaurant puts a twist on traditional in northern Italian dishes such as seared salmon in a pinot grigio–butter sauce and slow-roasted pork served in the style of osso buco with an herb-reduction-and-mascarpone polenta. Lunches consist of pasta, paninis, and pizzas—the Calvatore is topped with cremini and portobello mushrooms, truffle oil, and fontina. Chef Andrew Culver has worked at Washington, D.C.'s Mandarin Oriental, and at the White House. Some pastries—such as a lemon butter-cream tart—are imports from the owners' Bonjour Cafe & Patisserie, on Mayville's main street.