Heralded North Side restaurant closing
Casellula boosted rehabilitation on North Avenue
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Add a visit to Casellula @ Alphabet City on the North Side this week to the to-do list before the holidays since the restaurant is closing Saturday. The Pittsburgh outpost of the New York City spot has been open for just under a year.
Brian Keyser, the restaurateur behind the 10-year old Manhattan sibling, was persuaded to open in the former Masonic Hall by the City of Asylum co-founder and president, R. Henry Reese, who cited Casellula Cheese & Wine Cafe as a New York favorite.
Between now and the holidays, owners are hashing out what’s next for the space: whether it’ll debut as a different concept with a new name or if the space will go dark.
“I hope to be able to comment on what is next for the space and whether I will be involved in the next few days,” Mr. Keyser said in an email.
Mr. Reese has not yet responded to inquiries from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Casellula was a super-anticipated restaurant opening since 2015 for a couple reasons: Connected to the City of Asylum and its bookstore and event space, Casellula is one of the first businesses to mark progress in the development of the West North Avenue stretch, next door to the long-delayed Garden Theater project.
It’s also part of a larger collection of North Side developments. These include Federal Galley at Nova Place in the former Allegheny Center, which opened earlier this month, as well as the stretch of buildings under development along East Ohio Street. These include the 96room Workingmen’s Square Hotel from Comfort Inn via October Development, and a handful of properties slated for restaurants, retail and residences on the stretch. Casellula’s closing speaks to the risks of pioneering a neighborhood’s changeover.
The timing of the closing falls a few weeks after Mr. Keyser caught heat for his outspokenness in his frustration with the city’s service industry featured on the Pittsburgh blog Tipped Off, a platform for front-ofthe-house staff. It includes news, updates, events and a forum on which servers can rate their work experiences at area restaurants.
In response to a negative review from a former server, Mr. Keyser wrote:
I opened Casellula @ Alphabet City with great optimism and high ideals. Unfortunately, those ideals bumped up against reality; my idealism turned into a simple fight for survival. The biggest issue is that Pittsburgh’s restaurant boom has thinned out the pool of experienced restaurant workers to the point that we could not attract good employees to our Northside location. Our opening staff was too small and had almost no fine-dining or casual-fine-dining experience.
Worse, they were for the most part untrainable. With a few exceptions, they couldn’t follow directions, couldn’t learn menu items, couldn’t handle more than a couple tables at a time, didn’t understand the concept of multi-tasking, and moved at the pace of molasses going uphill in the wintertime.
He was also interviewed by Tipped Off prior to his speaking as part of a panel on the future of tipping in restaurants that was held at Scratch Food & Beverage in Troy Hill in early December; his restaurant made news when he reversed his no-tipping policy back in October.
No tipping did not work at his restaurant, he says, because “business was inconsistent,” and “the space we are in with City of Asylum is inefficient.” But he said that his employees “were being paid more than their work deserved,” a perception that is one of several that led to his reversal of the no-tipping policy.
When he decided to make the change, he emailed investors, City of Asylum staff, regulars and others.
“I still believe that a system where servers are paid fair wages and food and drink prices reflect the actual cost of getting the product to the table is best for employers, servers and guests,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the unique quirks of Casellula @ Alphabet City make us the wrong test case.” (Mr. Keyser’s New York restaurant does not have a no-tipping policy.)
Mr. Keyser told the PostGazette that he hoped that paying staff $17 to $22 an hour would entice people to stay and work at the restaurant; as it turned out, the consistent wage didn’t mitigate turnover. His menu prices per plate were higher than a tipping restaurant, he pointed out, which hurt business, especially since Casellula is a destination restaurant.
“I have every confidence that in three years there will be more restaurants here,” he told the Post-Gazette.
Reservations are still available at Casellula via OpenTable through Saturday.