BUFFALO, N.Y. — Many a football fan prides themselves in being the loudest, the toughest and the scariest to play against. Sometimes superfans are focused on making sure you leave with the taste of victory no matter the score. 

When Eammon Azizi lights up his grill, it brings together an entire community.

"So I grew up in northern Maryland," Azizi said. "The only teams we would get were the Washington Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers, which were boring as hell to watch. But then the Bills drafted Jim Kelly in 1987 and they started getting on TV. I said, 'Dad, whenever the Buffalo Bills play, I want to watch that game.'"

It was a seed planted of MafiaMania which continued like family trips to the 716 to take in games over decades.

"You start meeting people at tailgates," he said. "And as Buffalonians do, they start recruiting on me to move here."

It's a feeling that many who visit feel compelled by..

"It's just been part of my life [and] part of my culture," he said. "I felt it every time I came here, I felt like I was at home. I felt like I fit in here."

And those who take the leap have their stories.

"I brought my first wife up here, and I was like, 'Hey, what do you think about moving here?" he recalled. "It's like, 'No, too cold.'

"[I have a] new wife. And we're in St. Louis during the pandemic. We both wanted to get out of Dodge. [We said] let's get out of the Midwest. Let's go somewhere. Like with a good community, try to start a business, start fresh with a good like people who support each other. And she brings up Pittsburgh. And I'm like, Pittsburgh? If we're going to Pittsburgh, let's just go to Buffalo."

But what separates Azizi's fanhood journey is the elevation of a classic.

"I was tweeting about how I cook chicken wings and he's like, how are you getting those wings to look like that?" Azizi recalled. "So I said, hey, I'll come by your tailgate and show you."

He made good on that promise and most weeks since then he's built on what has been an odd but fruitful culinary career.

"I just started in my backyard," Azizi said. "Learning from some grill masters. I worked on a competition team out of Kansas City for a little while and learned from them on Burnt Finger Barbecue. And then started my own barbecue team called, 'Porky-Mon.'"

From a barbecue team to a business, he's regularly teaming up with other tailgaters and even Bills long snapper Reid Ferguson. And, like the Bills, he's more than ready to go come gameday.

"So cooking outdoors in Buffalo is a challenge like none other in the league," he noted. "So how can you make elevated food with 40-mile-an-hour winds, possible sleet, snow, whatever you can think of? And I love that challenge each week to, like, what can we make that people are going to enjoy and they're going to be like, we're not leaving this tailgate," he said.

It's a place where peace is brokered even among bitter rivals and communities are grown..

"I say when people gather around a grill and get to the backyard to go to the tailgate, people most of the time get along," said Azizi. "They don't argue. They kind of have a good time. They don't bicker. And you can't sub-tweet people when you're live and in real life."

Food can help create stories...

"People who travel to Buffalo from a long way away, just for this one game out of the year like I used to -- I appreciate that," he added. "Now I'm spoiled. So it's like, how can you create a really hospitality environment in what people traditionally don't think is that hospitality?"

It ultimately becomes hardware on the gridiron or something just as special between fans.

"Some of the best people we've met have just been over a grill," he said.