Customers won’t let chefs take these dishes off their menus
Many longtime restaurant chefs and owners around town have tried to ditch a dish for whatever reason — to swap it for something more updated or in season — only to have a small but vocal customer minority demand its return.
Among these is Casbah in Shadyside: More than 20 years ago, the restaurant added a dish that came about by accident — and now it can’t take it off the menu.
After service one night in the fall, chef Bill Fuller, now president of the Big Burrito restaurant group, assembled a late- night dish for himself made up of a little bit of this and a touch of that: He seared some chicken he added to orecchiette, combined heavy cream and added goat cheese and sage, then layered in dried cranberries — a dinner sourced from the remains of the night’s mise en place.
“This is pretty good,” he said of the decisively autumnal meal. He put it on Casbah’s dinner menu. And the restaurant hasn’t been able to take it off since.
Sure, Casbah has had an arugula salad since the day the restaurant opened, along with the double- cut pork chop. But the $ 24 dish of orecchiette with cranberry and sage has as much staying power as those year- round classic plates.
When the restaurant tried to take it off the menu a few years after it was introduced to swap with a dish more in keeping with spring, “People were furious,” he said. Today, it’s not a bestseller, “but it’s got a lot of vocal proponents.”
Over in East Liberty, Brian Pekarcik, chef- owner of Spoon, says he’s had some version of a blue- cheese souffle on his menus “in one way or another” since before Spoon opened in 2010. ( Before that, he was the head chef at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, starting in 2007 — where he also offered the souffle.) Currently, the blue- cheese souffle is a $ 12 starter served with stone fruit.
Another item at Spoon, the bread basket, with its sliced baguette, mini corn muffins and savory scones, has garnered even more vocal fans. ( For that matter, the status of the Pittsburgh bread basket could be an article all its own).
“It’s more the fact that we give it for free,” said Mr. Pekarcik, “and we make the two quick- bread batters in house.” It takes “a ton of labor and money,” he said. And with how much it’s requested, customers can tell and seem to appreciate it.
On the North Side, at longtime red- sauce restaurant, Legends Eatery — which chefowner Dan Bartow opened more than 15 years ago — has a dish that seemingly faded into the sunset. Even though pasta e fagioli is not listed on the menu it’s still available: Whenever someone asks for what Mr. Bartow jokes is an “old- fashioned dish,” it’s available, he said.
The dinner portion is $ 19 and includes a side salad and focaccia bread. These days, he sells about a dozen plates a week. “Nothing crazy,” he said, “but people like to
order dishes that aren’t on the menu.”
Not all restaurants that have been around awhile offer menus with evergreen dishes, but some have their own variations of dishes that must make an appearance due to popular demand.
Chef- owner of Dinette, Sonja Finn runs one of the first of the new- school casual restaurants to open in East Liberty — around the same time that Spoon debuted. Today it’s still a pioneer as a no- tipping restaurant that has always maintained a seasonal menu, which includes items like cucumbers, peppers, zucchini and Little Gem lettuce from local farmers as well as her rooftop garden right now.
Because Ms. Finn is so wedded to seasonality, she doesn’t have one dish she has to keep on the menu yearround, but she does have a summer eggplant pizza ( grilled eggplant with oil- cured olives, salmoriglio, fresh mozzarella and tomato) that people ask for all winter long. Yet she insists that it’s only a summer dish.
“Eggplant has always been available locally for a very definite and generous four to five months, and I think that’s the perfect amount of time,” she said.
“But it’s pretty exciting for everyone involved when we run that first eggplant pizza of the year,” she said. “It’s like the Dinette equivalent of baseball’s first pitch: Summer is on.”