Essential English phrases

Rare roast beef on a kummelweck roll — a kaiser crusted with pretzel salt and caraway — dipped in jus and eaten with horseradish. Buffalo's real signature dish, and unknown almost everywhere else.

Never 'Buffalo wings' here — just wings. Ordered by heat (mild, medium, hot, suicidal) and served with celery and blue cheese, never ranch. Saying 'Buffalo wings' in Buffalo marks you instantly.

Aerated honeycomb toffee dipped in chocolate, made by local confectioners and sold by the box. A western New York obsession that barely exists outside the region.

A fizzy soft drink. Buffalo says pop, New York City says soda, and the boundary between them runs through this state. Ordering a 'soda' will be understood but noticed.

A sweet purple berry drink sold across western New York, descended from the recipe served at the old Crystal Beach amusement park across the lake in Ontario. It appears next to lemonade in every diner here.

Cold air crossing warm Lake Erie and dumping the moisture as snow in narrow, intense bands. It is why one suburb can get several feet while another six miles away gets nothing, and why the forecast here is about location, not just amount.

911 for emergencies and 311 for city services. 716 is the area code for Buffalo and essentially all of western New York, and locals treat it as an identity.

Erie County divides into the suburbs south of Buffalo (Orchard Park, Hamburg, West Seneca) and north of it (Amherst, Tonawanda, Clarence). The Southtowns get dramatically more lake-effect snow. It is the first thing anyone tells you.

The big eastern suburb, from the Seneca for 'place of the crabapple'. Along with Tonawanda, Lackawanna and Canandaigua, one of the names that identifies you as new the moment you attempt it.

The crossing to Fort Erie, Ontario, at the end of the Niagara River — about ten minutes from downtown. Canada is a suburb here, and the bridge's wait time is checked like traffic.

The joint US–Canada trusted traveller card that gives you a dedicated lane at the border. In Buffalo it is not a frequent-flyer perk, it is a normal household document.

The Buffalo Bills' supporters, and effectively the city's civic identity. Game days genuinely reorganise the week from September to January, and the tailgating culture in Orchard Park is a phenomenon in its own right.