Hometown flavours ‘elevated’
Pittsburgh is growing up, and it’s catching the elite food scene by surprise
Pittsburgh, the city that birthed America’s most famous condiment — Heinz ketchup — is perhaps best known culinarily for enhancing dishes with french fries. which are still abundant on Pittsburgh menus.
But in recent years, they’ve been surpassed by such things as squidink gnudi, duck-confit tacos, and cocktails made with local gin.
Pittsburgh’s restaurant scene has grown up, and food tourists are beginning to notice.
“When I moved to Pittsburgh, half of the things I enjoyed on a regular basis” — Negronis, Fernet-Branca liqueur, brut rosé — “no one even knew what they were,” said Justin Severino, a 2015 James Beard Award semifinalist for best chef in the MidAtlantic.
Even worse, in 2007 his finedining training in California didn’t help him get a job at what he recalls as a fusty lineup of unimaginative American restaurants. “I really felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life,” he said. “My resumé meant nothing to a chef in Pittsburgh.”
Severino works for himself now, as the chef-owner of Cure, a whole-animal, Mediterranean-inspired restaurant in a trendy neighbourhood. Cure is a mecca for carnivores; the shareable salumi plate alone comes with no fewer than 17 types of cold meats, including lamb culatello, coppa di testa and duck rillettes.
Severino is a good example of the major shift that has happened in Pittsburgh: Given the bargain rent and low cost of living, chefs around the city have struck out on their own — and they’ve given the dining scene a whole new flavour.
I grew up in Pittsburgh’s hilly suburbs, happily eating special-occasion dinners at white-tablecloth restaurants. But in recent years, I began to hear rumblings about upscale farmto-table eateries and trendy fusion places. And $12 cocktails were being mixed on the same streets where ancient dive bars sold Iron City for $1.75. Bon Appétit’s Foodist column named it the next big food town in 2014. My hometown became cool when I wasn’t watching.
So on a recent trip to visit my family, I reacquainted myself with Pittsburgh, where the most famous restaurant is probably still Primanti Brothers, purveyor of the aforementioned belly-busting frenchfry-filled sandwich. Best enjoyed at the chain’s flagship, in the Strip District — nothing unseemly here; just named for the stretch of land it sits on along the Allegheny River — the sandwich, invented for truck drivers, is a lowbrow and delicious reminder of the city’s blue-collar roots.
So, too, is the pierogi, a stalwart of the city’s Polish community. You’ll find those humble dumplings in such places as downtown deli Szmidt’s, where pierogi are done “Old World” (potato and cheddar) and “New World” (buffalo bleu cheese, among others); or at Ohio City Pasta in the Pittsburgh Public Market, where a heaping plate of breakfast potatocheddar pierogi comes topped with a runny egg, bacon, avocado, sautéed leeks, tomato and herb butter sauce.
“I think the best chefs are trying to retain a little bit of that hometown flavour and elevate it,” said Melanie Cox McCluskey, the managing editor of Pop City, a local culture blog.
The Strip is a longtime venue for food wholesalers, where sidewalk vendors advertise fried fish and twopound pepperoni rolls. Older establishments skew Italian, like Enrico Biscotti and La Prima Espresso.
But the newer spots introduce duck-fat-fried hash browns and egg-topped Belgian waffles (Second Breakfast, in the Pittsburgh Public Market), and craft cocktails customized according to guests’ whims (Bar Marco, where tipping has been abolished — a growing trend).
Pittsburgh is proudly a meat-andpotatoes town — and it’s a beer and whiskey city, too, and you’ll find both being produced in abundance. Wiggle, a distillery named after a man convicted of treason in western Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion, offers tastings and tours in its Strip District home.
And breweries — from the longtime Church Brew Work to relative newcomers like Roundabout — are proliferating.
Roundabout brewers Steve and Dyana Sloan settled in Pittsburgh after stints in New Zealand, Missouri and Colorado, and have watched tastes change over the last decade.
“I think that people are a little bit more willing to try different beers now,” said Steve, whether it’s their Earl Grey pale ale or the ginger-hinted Ginga Wheat, with a touch of locally produced honey.
The Sloans and Severino have both set up shop in the Lawrence-ville neighbourhood, its gritty industrialchic look intact.
Not far away are the locally foraged market Wild Purveyors, the divey hipster bar Spirit and Allegheny Wine Mixer. Go south on Butler Street for an even more concentrated cluster of bars and casual restaurants.
Another new foodie neighbourhood is downtown, where the fusion taco restaurant Tako features octopus murals, plenty of tequila and a steampunk esthetic.
The Hotel Monaco’s new rooftop beer garden is another spot with an interesting view, this one of the surrounding skyscrapers.
But if it’s closed because of rain, you’ll do well at the downstairs restaurant Commoner, where the decor pays tribute to the city’s steel industry and steak tartare is presented in a jar filled with a fragrant puff of smoke.