The ’Burgh’s best dishes, drinks right now
Here, found and devoured by our intrepid staffers across the city and the region, are the week’s best dishes and drinks.
Cupcakes by HayleyyBakes
Baby showers scream for cake after the mom-to-be opens gifts. At a baby shower last weekend, I opted for easier-to-eat cupcakes, custom-made to absolute perfection by Marshall baker Hayley Ettaro. The super-moist marble cake married French vanilla and triple chocolate batters, and eachwas topped with vanilla buttercream icing piped to look like flowers. White edible glitter — sprinkled on like pixie dust — made them sparkle.
Cupcakes start at $20 a dozen, but can cost more depending on design. She also makes custom cookies and cakes.
Follow HayleyyBakes on Instagram and Facebook or email hayleyybakes @gmail.com.
— Gretchen McKay
Fresh Fest beers
I haven’t tasted them yet and I still know what are the best beers in town this week: The Fresh Fest collaboration beers.
The nationally known blackbeer festival held Saturday at the North Side’s Nova Place is built around about 45 collaborationsbetween breweriesand black artists and entrepreneurs. Once again, these creations are crazy creative. Take the one brewed and canned at Hershey’s Troegs Independent Brewing with Carnegie’s Apis Mead & Winery and the Partners Podcast. It’s billed as a tangy summer refresher with honey,peaches and apricots.
Larimer’sCouch Brewery in collaboration with Straight to the League will be pouring Gin & Juice, an India pale ale brewed with orange rind and juniper berries that is a nod to early 1990s Snoop Dogg.
The list goes on and on, with great combinations of creators (Brew Gentlemen worked with Braddock Mayor Chardae Jones) and techniques and ingredients (Slippery Rock’s North Country Brewing and SisterFriend conditioned their grisette on butterfly pea blossom, and Sharpsburg’s Hitchhiker Brewing and Walter’s Southern Kitchen used ears of corn and actual cornbread). These and other collabs will be available at participating breweries and other places afterward.
— Bob Batz Jr.
Mussels at Sarafino’s
I’m a sucker for mussels, especially ones steamed in coconut milk and curry. But I have a new favorite way to eat the bivalves, and I owe it to Sarafino’s in Crafton.
A heaping bowl ($14.95), served as a special to our group of 10 this past weekend, came steamed in the restaurant’s zesty, slow-simmered pomodoro sauce.
Tucked in among the shells are disks of spicy Italian sausage, hot pepper and onion. Even though there was an equally big bowl of garlicky beans and greens waiting for us to dig into, and five pasta dishes, we fought over the last bits of bread to sop up the juices. 40 E. Crafton Ave., Crafton
Summer pasta at Talia
We’ve endured a summer of seemingly endless heat and/or rain but that is creating a fantastic late summer harvest of the Solanum lycopersicum berry — aka the tomato. It is peak tomato season in Western Pennsylvania and we nightshade aficionados are hip deep in these spherical lycopene-delivery devices. The best way to enjoy their beautiful taste is simply, like the pasta Talia executive chef Steve Lanzilotti recently whipped up.
Their housemade, handrolled tagliatelle was tossed with sunburst tomatoes, fresh basil, roasted garlic, a little lemon zest, fresh mozzarella, pine nuts and some butter. Fresh, clean and delicious, this was like an Italian summer in a bowl. 425 Sixth Ave., Downtown
— Dan Gigler