restaurants Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2021 Summer Homefront

Pusadee’s Garden of Delights

by Marylynn Uricchio

Pusadee’s Garden closed even before the virus shuttered restaurants across the globe, and like a butterfly leaving its cocoon, it has emerged from hibernation with a resplendent new look. It took close to four years for the transformation, but the popular Lawrenceville Thai restaurant that once boasted a pretty garden and a small indoor space …

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Will Pittsburgh’s Dining Scene Survive the Pandemic?

by Julia Fraser

Pittsburgh, where sandwiches held together with French fries and coleslaw once defined its cuisine, had become a mecca for chefs and bold, award-winning restaurants. The city topped Zagat’s list of top food cities. The BBC last year anointed it the seventh-best destination for foodies in the world. And the New York Times proclaimed: “If there …

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New & Noteworthy: Spirits & Tales

If you ascend to the tenth floor of the newly constructed Oaklander Hotel on Bigelow Boulevard near the University of Pittsburgh, you’ll find Spirits & Tales. This French-influenced restaurant features floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Oakland, with sweeping vistas that include the exquisite rooftop of Soldiers and Sailors Memorial and its manicured gardens. To the east …

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New & Noteworthy: Alta Via

Alta Via, named for a footpath through the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, is big Burrito’s first new concept in 15 years. The food is a unique fusion of the fresh, clean vegetable plates and wood-fired entrees one might experience in the California wine country with classic Italian cooking such as homemade pasta and gelato. …

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Pittsburgh Quarterly Presents “The List” 2019

Pittsburgh Quarterly’s Restaurant review Board is pleased to present our list of favorite restaurants. The list was generated based on our preferences for memorable dishes, fresh ingredients, professional service, appropriate atmosphere and, most important, consistently delicious food. Through regular meetings, spirited conversations and intense reviews which detail our anonymous dining experiences, we voted to generate …

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New and Noteworthy: LeoGreta, Fish nor Fowl

Longtime Pittsburgh chef Greg Alauzen has opened his own restaurant in Carnegie paying homage to his parents, Leon and Greta with his homemade Italian cuisine. His enthusiasm as chef/owner is palpable. Firmly at the helm in the kitchen; he takes time to visit his guests. His menu is straightforward featuring Italian classics made from scratch. …

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Essential Dining: Winter

While Pittsburgh winters often begin with sparkling lights, a gentle first snow and holiday splendor, they can quickly become slush and ice. The constant threat of the wintry mix, the steady stream of gray days, and scattered plastic chairs reserving parking on snowy streets can wear down the most pleasant among us. Confronting the cold …

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Introducing the Pittsburgh Quarterly Restaurant Review Board

Pittsburgh Quarterly is happy to introduce a major new food and dining section, featuring Pittsburgh’s leading food experts–a group that for the past 25 years has chosen the region’s best restaurants. We’re honored that they’ve decided to join Pittsburgh Quarterly. And our readers are literally in for a treat as they bring their expertise to …

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If Pittsburgh is Having a Restaurant Boom, Why are So Many Restaurateurs Worried?

by Melissa McCart

Even with the opening of Ace Hotel in 2015, there seems to be a lot of East Liberty restaurant spaces waiting for tenants. Head down Penn Avenue and there are a parade of empty storefronts, including the former Livermore space at South Highland and the old Anthon’s Restaurant & Bakery (now the home of a …

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A Delicious Quandary

by Cody McDevitt

In 1968, Pittsburgh Chef Ferdinand Metz cabled from Frankfurt, Germany, to tell his friends that the U.S. Team won the Grand Gold Award in the International Culinary Competition. He was at the top of the culinary world, with 16 gold medals and the grand award given to him and his team. And thousands came when …

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American Spirit

Gino

by Kate Benz, photography by John Altdorfer

Dinners plus two daily sides and bread…$6 each reads the inner page of a card-sized, laminated menu. Breaded Veal, Roast Beef, Cube Steak, Hot Sausage, Meatloaf, Chicken…all $6.00. The bread comes from Mancini’s, “Proudly Served” according to the banner hanging from the ceiling. Photography by John Altdorfer Gino has been operating his namesake restaurant at …

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Triangle Bar & Grill

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

The Bermuda Triangle—that vortex in the Atlantic Ocean that starts at Miami, follows a line southeast to Puerto Rico, then north to Bermuda and back to Miami—forms a region that some have imbued with mysterious powers. Over the decades, many ships have entered this triangle, never to be seen again. But there is one triangle …

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Square Café

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

There are two features that are essential before any establishment can become a neighborhood joint, and Square Café in Regent Square has both. The first is a counter or bar. A raised countertop and stools will anchor a place. In this case, size is not important. The Square has just nine stools, enough to do …

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Girasole: Dinner and a Show

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

As the great American playwright Tennessee Williams once said, “I think Italians are like Southerners without their inhibitions.” Williams could have made that observation from a table at Girasole, which combines the best of Italy and Pittsburgh: sometimes it can be a little bit pazzo, but it is always honest. Girasole is often crowded, usually …

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Johnny’s Restaurant

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

There is a relationship that regular patrons have with Johnny’s Restaurant in Wilmerding that is a lot like the one shared by old married couples. They promise each other not to be the first to go, because the survivor will be lost until the end. And after a yearlong hiatus, Johnny Fusilli is back at …

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The Mighty Oak Barrel

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

When you think that you must have taken a wrong turn, you are almost there. The Mighty Oak Barrel sits at the end of a little twig of a road that is also the last chance for anyone who panics at the approaching Hulton Bridge and swerves to the right. And when you first lay …

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Enrico’s Café

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

Chuck DiNardo, legendary food and drink impresario, operated the Hollywood Social Club in Shadyside into the 1970s. The haunt of politicians, every old mustache in the region and visiting celebrities, the “Sosh” was accessed through an unmarked narrow walkway, easily missed, between what is now The Pottery Barn and Kards Unlimited on Walnut Street. That …

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Nied’s

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

The orange neon fish sign at the corner of Butler & 55th in Lawrenceville is the gastronomic version of the beacon atop the Grant Building. Nied’s Hotel Bar has held this corner since 1941 and, like all great joints, it’s a neighborhood within a neighborhood. The starting point at Nied’s is the “world famous fish …

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Nap’s Cucina Mia

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

This Napoleon and Josephine story has a happy ending. It began in 1952, just two blocks from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus, when Napoleon and Josephine Patti opened Nap’s, a shot-and-beer joint along the main drag of the small town. For years, Nap’s was a regular stop for the guys who made their bones …

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Klavon’s

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Nothing says summer like a classic banana split. For some of us, it recalls going to the neighborhood drug store/soda fountain with no thought of caloric intake or cholesterol levels. For a step back in time to that more innocent — and way better — era, visit Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor in the Strip District. …

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Salt, Air, Time and a Pig’s Hind Leg

by Virginia Phillips

In a food world where cured pork products have been catapulted to sexy heights of connoisseurship by chefs like Mario Batali, Pittsburghers blithely accept, take for granted and plain underappreciate the elegant—and bargain-priced—sausage and prosciutto made here in a fourth-generation family business in the Strip. “Parma is the best kept secret in town,” says Chef …

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