Check out 2 eateries coming to Novo Asian Food Hall
In March 2022, Everyday Noodles owner Mike Chen and Mola owner Alex Tang announced the launch of an ambitious project at McCaffrey’s redevelopment of the historic Terminal Building in the Strip District.
They began the construction of Novo Asian Food Hall, an 8,000-square-foot space with seven open-kitchen eateries and a bar, in January. Tang says it’s on track for a December opening.
The Post-Gazette has the first look at two of the concepts.
Lolo’s Kusina
Lola’s Eatery owners Zoe Rieder and Max Becerra first considered opening a restaurant dedicated to Filipino cuisine a few years ago. Although their place in Lower Lawrenceville, which opened in 2019, has a few Filipino dishes, its menu includes a diverse array of savory and sweet items, including some of the best bagels in Pittsburgh.
“It took a long time for Filipino dishes such as lumpia to catch on at Lola,” Becerra says. “And there aren’t really any places in Pittsburgh offering a fully Filipino menu, so we wanted to take the opportunity to introduce the city to more dishes.”
He reached out to Chen when he heard about the Novo Food Hall project, but the lineup of restaurants was already full. Later, Becerra ran into Tang while shopping for ingredients for the kitchen he and Rieder, a talented pastry chef, run together. Tang let him know one of the original businesses (Silk Elephant) had dropped out.
“I said ‘yes’ right away without thinking about it. Then I went back and did the work of weighing the pros and cons of if we should do it,” Becerra says. “Any time you can work with someone like Alex and Mike and learn from them, you should do it.”
The concept, called Lolo’s Kusina, is an opportunity for Becerra to more deeply explore his Filipino heritage. He says some of the best memories of his childhood were forged by communicating with his grandparents, born in the Philippines, through food.
“It was the way I got to know them, and a way for them to appease a young, hyperactive boy,” he says.
Expect the opening to include dishes such as pork and shrimp lumpia, chicken adobo, sisig, longaniza, pancit, lechon kawali, sinigang fries and pandesal.
“We’re going to offer food that I grew up with in my household,” Becerra says.
Korea Garden 2
Seok Kun Han and Mun Ja Han ran Korea Garden in Oakland for 22 years, catering primarily to the neighborhood’s university students. They closed their restaurant in June.
“If you wanted authentic Korean cuisine, you’d have to go to bigger cities like New York, Los Angeles and Houston,” says their daughter, Hirah Han. “So they wanted to give people as much of a taste of their home as they could.”
Now in their 70s, the Hans, who share kitchen responsibilities, see Novo Asian Food Hall as a chance to fine-tune their offerings with a scaled-down menu.
“We’re very excited about this, and we think downsizing offers a lot of opportunities. My dad has time to step back and refine the dishes in the way he wants to do it. My mom is excited about all the new equipment and the new location,” Han says.
Dosirak, a four-component Korean lunchbox that includes a choice of protein, rice and handmade side dishes, is the primary focus of the opening menu. Other dishes include bibimbap, tteokbokki and yachaejeon — vegetable-packed pancakes that are a popular street food in Korea.
Han says the time is right for her family to offer a larger swath of Pittsburgh a deeply rooted Korean culinary experience.
“Now that K-pop and Kdramas have gone viral, people are interested in learning more about what the food is that they see on TV,” she says. “We don’t want to do it halfway. We want to bring 100% traditional dishes to the community.”
We’ll have more information on what to expect from the five other stalls soon.