A pinch-off at the pierogi fest
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Matt Wallace hadn’t even planned on going to Sunday’s Pittsburgh Pierogi Festival at Kennywood Park, let alone take part in its signature food contest.
Yet there he was in front of a long table with dozens of other contestants come midafternoon, stuffing and pinching dough rounds together as fast as he could in the fest’s inaugural pierogi pinching competition.
The premise of the contest, co-sponsored by The Bakery Society Pittsburgh, was to see who could pinch together the highest number of pierogies in 60 seconds. The prize for first place: $500 and lifetime admission to the annual fest, which started small at South Shore Riverfront Park in 2013 and has grown exponentially ever since. This year, more than 5,000 people bought tickets to the event.
Mr. Wallace, 29, nearly won it, crimping together five perfect dumplings to Lisa Harris’ seven and Carly Brosek’s four in the contest’s “death round.”
Mr. Wallace, of Hopewell, along with Ms. Brosek of Pittsburgh and Ms. Harris of Fox Chapel, tied the score with eight pierogies in their respective first rounds, leading to the pinch-off. According to Mr. Wallace, a restaurant supervisor at Ember & Vine at the DoubleTree in Marshall, he pinched together nine in the first round. “But one stuck to my thumb and so it didn’t make it onto the plate,” he said.
Still, not bad for someone who’d never even thought about making a pierogi let alone actually doing it before the contest. (He saw the sign and signed up on the fly.) He was successful, he said, because of the advice that two ladies sitting nearby in the bleachers shouted to him. “They said, ‘Make sure you wet the edges of the pierogies, and pinch it hard,’ and that was what I did,” he said.
Ms. Harris, by contrast, knew exactly what she was getting herself into. She’s worked as a professional pincher for the past three years at Cop Out Pierogies in Etna. “I can do it with my eyes closed,” she said.
She signed up for the contest just for fun and also got owner Carl Funtal’s name out to the thousands of festivalgoers. Her strategy going in was just do what she does every day when she goes into work. It only kinda, sorta worked that way.
“It seems so simple, but when they’re timing you, it’s a little stressful to do it right,” she said.
Crowd participation helped to make it more exciting, and Ms. Harris also appreciated how seriously the judges took their jobs. It was a thrill, she said, to meet emcee and local celebrity Pittsburgh Dad (Curt Wootten). “It was just fun.”
While the dough was easy to work with, all agreed the filling was on the runny side. That made for some sloppy seams and lessthan-speedy fingers.
That actually was by design, said TBSP executive director Jami Pasquinelli. Mr. Wallace aside, “these were serious pierogi makers. If we’d used standard filling, it would have been too easy.”
The contest drew 40 participants with different backgrounds from all parts of the city — everyone from church ladies to restaurant workers to regular people who just love their ’rogis, said Ms. Pasquinelli. Everyone had his or her own technique.
In deciding the winners, judges had to determine which pierogi makers created the best seals, “because that’s the rule of pierogies,” she said. “You have to have a good seal or they break open during cooking.”
Ms. Harris walked away with a crown in addition to her prize money. She joked her three kids could spend it, “but we’ll see.” For his second-place win, Mr. Wallace took home $100 and Ms. Brosek got $50. All three finalists also got T-shirts.