It Started With a Hot Dog Stand

The Berrafato story doesn't begin on the Niagara River waterfront. It begins on Main Street in Clarence in the early 1980s, with a father and a hot dog stand and four kids young enough to be handed a pair of tongs and put to work.

That stand — Berrafato's — was the family classroom. All four siblings grew up behind the counter, learning what it actually takes to feed people well: show up, work clean, treat the customers right, and don't cut corners on the food. It sounds simple. Most people who try it find out it isn't. The Berrafatos figured it out young, and they never forgot the lesson.

Building an Empire, One Restaurant at a Time

From that first hot dog stand, the family grew. They ran Ruby Red's. They ran The Hayloft. They ran Berrafato's Char-Pit. Each one a different concept, a different neighborhood, a different crowd — but the same family working the same values into every plate that went out.

In 1986, they planted their flag on the Tonawanda waterfront with Mississippi Mudds. That location, right on the Niagara River, became home base — a place where you could sit outside on a summer night with the water in front of you and feel like everything in WNY was exactly as it should be. They've been there ever since. Nearly 40 years at the same spot.

The Whale on the Roof

In 2004, the Berrafatos took over Old Man River at 375 Niagara Street — a summer institution that had been drawing crowds to that stretch of Niagara Street since the 1970s. When they took it over, they inherited something bigger than a restaurant. They inherited a ritual.

Every spring, Wanda goes back on the roof. Wanda is the giant blue whale — unmissable, cheerful, slightly ridiculous in the best possible way — who sits up there overlooking Niagara Street and Niawanda Park and the river beyond. When Wanda disappears in the fall, summer is over. When she reappears in the spring, it's official: Western New York is back. Families plan around it. Kids ask about it. People who grew up in the Tonawandas and moved away watch for photos of it on social media from wherever they landed.

There's a reason a fiberglass whale carries that kind of weight. It's because she represents something real — a place that's been consistent, that's been there, that means something to multiple generations of the same families. The Berrafatos didn't create that tradition, but they've kept it alive and kept it honest.

The Menu, the Bunny Dog, and Everything That Comes With It

Old Man River is right across from Niawanda Park, and on a warm evening, the smell of the grill drifts across the street and into the park where kids are running and people are sitting by the river. It's that kind of place — the kind where the food is part of the air on a summer night in Tonawanda.

The menu has the things you expect from a waterfront spot that's been around since the 1970s: hot dogs, burgers, the kind of food that tastes better eaten outside with people you like. But then there's the Bunny Dog. A grilled carrot on a hot dog bun. It exists. It's on the menu. It is exactly what it sounds like and somehow it works, which is either a stroke of genius or a happy accident, and honestly it might be both.

Three Restaurants, Four Siblings, Nearly 60 Years

Today the Berrafato family runs three locations on the Tonawanda waterfront and beyond: Old Man River and Mississippi Mudds, both on Niagara Street, plus the newest addition — District 37 Kitchen and Taphouse in North Tonawanda, a year-round taphouse that lets the family serve the community even when Wanda is off the roof and the river wind is bitter cold.

Nearly 60 years of family roots. Four siblings. A father who taught them everything on a hot dog stand in Clarence. The restaurants have changed, the neighborhoods have changed, and WNY has changed around them — but the Berrafato commitment to showing up and doing it right hasn't changed at all. Every spring, when Wanda climbs back up to her spot above Niagara Street, the whole family is there in that moment whether they're standing in the parking lot or not.