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

An intimate and elegant dining experience awaits you at this eight-table restaurant in an 1873 town house with red-clothed tables, upholstered Queen Anne chairs, and brass chandeliers and sconces. The menu leans French in preparation, but Continental in substance: the twin tenderloin fillets with port, Stilton cheese, and green-peppercorn sauce is the signature dish, or you might try veal scaloppine in a blackberry cream sauce. Desserts include lavender crème brûlée and homemade orange ice cream served in a bittersweet chocolate shell. The extensive wine and liquor selection includes 40 single-malt Scotches.

In a National Historic Landmark building, what was the town library, built in 1910 with funds from Andrew Carnegie, was converted to a restaurant in 1983. It retains most of its original architecture—parquet flooring, stained-glass windows, inlaid ceilings. Dining is in hushed, bookshelf-lined, front "library" rooms or a mezzanine overlooking a central atrium. The menu is diverse, with Italian, French, and American dishes. Six-cheese ravioli is served with pesto cream and sautéed spinach; sautéed antelope medallions come with peppercorn sauce; a surf-and-turn combo joins New York strip steak and jumbo scampi. Sunday brunch is served.

With its Italian–Latin American fusion menu focusing on simple dishes made with local, fresh, and organic ingredients, and an Old-World-meets-urban-café decor—exposed-brick walls, local art, a gleaming cappuccino machine on the bar—this place is quite the cosmopolitan departure in this pocket of the state. The San Francisco–trained chef might whip up seared scallops over ginger-marinated cabbage or pappardelle topped with tomatoes and cracked-pepper mascarpone. Sapore is open all day as a café, and also serves breakfast.

The name is a nod to the son of Zeus in Greek mythology, but the tome of a menu in this semicasual, rustic-industrial space—with huge windows, cement floors, and Mexican-style woven rugs hung from exposed piping—hails from seemingly every part of the old and new worlds: a Cuban sandwich on homemade rustic bread; a "filled burger," stuffed with feta, kalamata olives, and sun-dried tomatoes; house-made ricotta ravioli with prosciutto in Gorgonzola-arugula sauce; plus 20 pizzas, a page of salads, and entrées of duck, fish, pork, and beef. Thursday is Mexican day. The wine and beer lists are equally lengthy and varied.