2 local restaurants earn Bon Appetit recognition
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two Pittsburgh restaurants, a luncheonette and pizzeria, made Bon Appetit magazine’s top 50 nominees of this year’s America’s Best New Restaurants: They’re modest in comparison to million-dollar, over-the-top culinary destinations that also made the list.
Yet Bitter Ends Garden and Luncheonette in Bloomfield (4613 Liberty Ave.) and Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville (3615 Butler St.) share a common value in that they both go to great lengths to source hard-tofind ingredients — and they’re both baking bread.
Bitter Ends’ co-owners Becca Hegarty, Jason “Jodo” Oddo and Lou DeVito run a pesticide-free farm in conjunction with the restaurant, where they’re growing esoteric varietals of chicories, lettuces, zucchini, tomatoes and more on a halfacre of land in Verona.
The daytime restaurant offers toast with, say, blueberries paired with Calkins Creamery brie from Honesdale, Pa. — that just won first place at the American Cheese Society competition — or a breakfast salad with pole beans and ‘Nebraska Wedding’ tomatoes. Sandwiches start with baguettes Ms. Hegarty is making inhouse, layered with those vegetables harvested from the Verona farm.
Bitter Ends Luncheonette, which opened in November, cost less than $20,000 to get up and running and may be one of the smallest restaurants in the city, with about 10 seats, not counting outdoor picnic tables.
Over at Lawrenceville’s Driftwood Oven, Neil Blazin and Justin Vetter are sourcing some of the same flour Ms. Hegarty is using from Central Milling out West and Weatherbury Farms in Avella. They’re using it to make the pizza that has garnered a following since 2015, with the debut of their mobile pizza oven. The restaurant openedin the spring.
Ms. Hegarty had been named as one of this year’s Eater Young Guns semifinalists and has made the semifinalist list for the James Beard “Rising Star Chef” for the past two years. Driftwood Oven has gotten nods for best pizza in Pittsburgh from Thrillist and recognition from Star Chefs.
The Bon Appetit list was put together by the magazine’s editor at large Andrew Knowlton, who “hits the road for weeks at a time, crisscrossing the country and eating everything in sight, in search of the top standout spots,” said Savannah Jackson, spokeswoman for Conde Nast.
The criteria for the list is any restaurant that has opened in the past year, reviewingnot just the chefs and what’s on the menu, but also thefull dining experience.
Beyond this top-50 list there’s more: On Aug. 14, Bon Appetit will announce its short list of which 50 favorites earna place in The Hot Ten.
SUNDAY
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2:30 p.m.: Meuse
4:30 p.m.:
8 p.m.: Randy Houser POINT STATE PARK
Noon-9 p.m.: Kids Zone, Sandsational Sand Sculpture, AAA Travel to the Beach Kids Korner, food vendors
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