Food & Drink

When the first Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week kicked off in 2012, there were about five craft breweries in Pittsburgh, including Penn Brewery, which planned the inaugural celebration.

Now, as the 2017 celebration prepares to kick off, there are closer to 35 breweries in the region. Eighteen of them are participating in the week-long celebration this year – the largest number so far. Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week Board President Brian Meyer said that’s fitting.

Gina Merante grabbed a banana bunch from a red wall lined with gradually ripening fruit. She shuffled past boxes of apples and red peppers and pointed outside, past the large display window at the front of her store, Linea Verde Green Market.

Nied’s Hotel in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood is one of a handful of bars where workers who clock out while most hit the alarm clock can still meet for coffee or a beer. Taverns that cater to third-shift workers aren’t a new concept to Pittsburgh, but over the years, their clientele has evolved.

Food makers, consumers and regulators have sparred back and forth over what constitutes “healthy” in food labeling for years. Last year, the makers of Kind Bars battled over their snacks’ nutrition merits.

The region’s first pay-what-you-can restaurant is expected to open in January in New Kensington. Knead Community Café is modeled after similar facilities around the country that offer meals in exchange for donations or volunteer time.

Mary and Kevin Bode, cofounders of the café, said they wanted to renovate the $64,000 building with the hopes that it would spur revitalization in the city’s downtown.

 A Pittsburgh group named A Few Bad Apples has three missions.

The first is to teach people the lost skills of making use of homegrown fruit.

First in an occasional series exploring Essential Pittsburgh.

Jacqueline Wardle was working as the executive chef at Isabela on Grandview, a Mt. Washington restaurant, when she received a beguiling email: Instead of working for someone else, did she want to own her own restaurant?

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United is a national organization that advocates on behalf of restaurant workers, and Pittsburgh is home to one of its chapters. In this episode of On The House, Larkin Page-Jacobs talks to organizer Jordan Romanus and server Heather Freeman about the change they hope to see in the industry.

At a restaurant or bar, details make up a diner’s experience. Lighting, décor, music -- Brooke Annibale’s embraces each to enhance the experience of eating out.

She’s a Pittsburgh singer and songwriter, and works for the Big Burrito restaurant group as a music programmer. In this episode of On The House, the work of the behind-the-scenes DJ to countless meals at Mad Mex, Casbah, Eleven and Kaya. 

One burger joint in Pittsburgh has repeatedly kept raw hamburger meat, lettuce and coleslaw at temperatures that allow bacteria to flourish. A chain restaurant’s worst violations in the past three years were a missing floor tile and a dirty floor drain.

Both restaurants have maintained their approved-to-operate green stickers from the Allegheny County Health Department, but one would’ve earned a ‘C’ and the other an ‘A’ if the county’s attempts to institute a restaurant grading system had passed.

Pittsburgh's evolving food scene has been gaining national attention. Is it enough to make the city the country's next great food destination? This week contributor Rebecca Harris looks at the business of food in Pittsburgh.

From vegetable garden bounties to sliced and diced ingredients to plated meals, pictures of food are ubiquitous on social media. Anyone with a smartphone can make beautiful photographs of food.

You’ve decided to open a restaurant: the lease has been signed, renovations completed, equipment purchased and staff hired. All you have to do is buy a liquor license to get things rolling. Not so fast, says attorney Mark Flaherty. He and his firm specialize in all things liquor licensing and in this episode of On the House, Larkin Page-Jacobs talks to Flaherty about what you’ll have to do to legally pour wine, beer and spirits in your restaurant.

The golden French fries and basket of wings ordered at the bar or restaurant are made delicious through the frying process. But the oil used in restaurants and commercial kitchens can’t go down the drain, so it’s set aside for pickup. Companies big and small specialize in the collection and recycling of the grease.

In Pittsburgh, Fossil Free Fuel is one business that reuses the residual oil. In this segment of On The House, Larkin Page-Jacobs looks at where the grease goes.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dining critic Melissa McCart took a roundabout path on her way to Pittsburgh. She’s worked in restaurants since she was a teenager and first started writing about the dining scene in Washington D.C. in the early 2000s. She moved to south Florida to become a critic in the Ft. Lauderdale area and made the leap to the Post-Gazette three years ago. In this segment of On The House, Larkin Page­-Jacobs asks McCart about her role as a critic and what makes Pittsburgh's dining scene unique.

Salt of the Earth opened in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood in 2010, and it was unlike any restaurant the city had seen before. The menu was adventurous and ever-changing, the minimalist design was warm and the high-end food belied its location in one of the city’s poorer communities. Recently the architect-owners announced Salt would close Aug. 1 so they could focus solely on their architectural practice.