Meat and Potatoes

The DJ began spinning a Space Odyssey remix. The doors opened promptly at 10:30, and a small riot of unreserved patrons made a barely restrained rush for the bar. 

Meat and Potatoes is not quite as down-home as it sounds. Pâté and bruschetta are on the Sunday brunch menu. Michelle's Bellini was made with real strawberries, and my Bloody Mary bar was a DIY festival with six kinds of meat, probably two dozen pickled things in jars and just as many varieties of hot sauce. 

And yet, if there are two kinds of good menus—inventive deliciousness and calculated deliciousness—this definitely was the latter. Maybe it was the decor: I just can't take antlers seriously in a new downtown cultural center. Maybe it was needing to decide between chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, huevos rancheros AND stuffed French toast. 

I ended up with E: None of the Above, but it was hard to know if I was eating brisket hash or a marketing gimmick.  

meatandpotatoespgh.com

Key Pizza

My wife thinks the name “Key Pizza” is stupid. Stupider is the sign, which, even in this fuzzy photo I did not take, plainly shows a real key attached to a pizza keychain. Either the sign should show a key made of pizza, or the shop should be called Keychain Pizza. Right? Right.

I first visited Key Pizza on Halloween. Fitting, as it turned out. 

Inside the door I saw an ice cream menu. I saw pizza boxes, insulated delivery bags, ovens. What I did not see was pizza.

Dialogue:
— Do you serve slices or just whole pies?
— We sell slices.
— I’ll have a slice.
— That will be $2.25.

Note: in New York “a slice” implies a plain slice, and I took the fact they didn’t ask what kind of slice I wanted as a good sign.

It wasn’t. I waited a minute for them to produce a slice. Then two. Then five. They were busy. I thought maybe I was missing something. I looked around for a self-serve pizza bar. There wasn’t. I looked for an unobtrusive place to stand. Negative.

Note: in New York pizza shops pride themselves on getting slices out the door as fast as possible. Business depends on it. If there’s a wait, people will down the street.

Not so in Philly. Closest competitor: 3 blocks. And I had already paid. 

A man came in dressed as Dumbo’s friend Timothy Q. Mouse. (I asked.) He said his nose was hurting so he had taken the nose off. He ordered two slices. $4.50. 

A minute went by, then two, then four. He wondered out loud if he was missing something. I asked at the counter. We weren’t: the pizza was “coming up right now.”

The pizza, when it was delivered, was hot. It had cheese—lots of stringy chewy cheese. And chewy crust that flopped around and was impossible to hold. There was also red sauce. It was all thoroughly unremarkable.

What was remarkable was the neighborhood. I walked home past homeowner after homeowner on their front stoop, each with a bowl or bag of candy. Some were in costume. Some were reading. One seemed to be grading school papers.

Swarms of children caroused the streets, with and without adults in tow. “Check out 2218!” one boy yelled back over his shoulder as he sprinted toward the next promising door.

Key Pizza on Grub Hub

Draai Laag Brewing Company

Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza are smart, fiercely devoted to their art (modern dance) and determined to do good by whomever they meet. The creative inspirations behind Pittsburgh's Attack Theatre met us at Draai Laag Brewing Company for three rounds of sour beers, a Slobby Bifko (that's a brisket sandwich with cheddar, pickled onions and horseradish mayo) and other-worldly ice cream sandwiches from Leona's Ice Cream.

Clockwise from left: Black Briar, Razmata,
more Black Briar, Plastic Cup, Nanabam.

In my first flight I tried Black Briar—Draai Laag's signature American wild ale made with blackberries. It is solid. Deep. But my first swigs smelled like ammonia. "Yeast," said Michelle. Dave behind the bar assured us that the huge head—he had four foamy glasses settling below the taps—didn't indicate anything was wrong with the keg. Once, he said, they had a beer where they had to draw a whole pitcher of foam and wait for it to settle to pour one glass.

The other winner in that flight was Razmata. "There are two distinct notes," Michelle said. "The Weiss beer and the raspberry." She was right, according to the menu. It's a raspberry Berliner Weiss.

I wish I could give you a report from my second flight, with R2Koelschip, Tafelboer and Relic, but honestly all the sours started tasting the same at that point. Michelle ordered a glass of the Relic, however. She said it smelled like a campfire. (I thought it smelled like a camp latrine.)

I like sour beers, honest. I even like Draai Laag's sours. All misplaced snottiness aside, I don't think they do anything poorly, and I don't think that I have the discriminating palate to tell if they did. But nothing I drank gave me the life-changing aha of the Fetish Brewing Company Wild American Dark in Lancaster, Pa., or the Belgian drinkability of Ommegang's Rosetta, or the confident satisfaction nearly anything I've tried from Free Will Brewing Company in Perkasie, Pa.

But I like to drink, and I like to try new food, and I like sitting outside in beautiful weather with some of the best people I know. Pretty sweet.

www.draailaag.com

Wigle Whiskey

I first wisited Wigle Whiskey soon after they opened in 2012. Everything I'm about to write about them I learned from their friendly and knowledgeable sales staff.

Wigle is the first distillery to open in Pittsburgh since Prohibition. Named after a notorious Pittsburgher who was imprisoned for instigating the whiskey rebellion (and later pardoned by George Washington), Wigle prides itself on distilling locally sourced ryes and innovating new varieties of common spirits like their Dutch-style “Ginever” gin. On a Saturday afternoon (and nearly every day they're not distilling) their tasting room is bustling and tours fill the barrel-lined area beyond glass garage doors.

We tried their Foundations flight—a spectrum of alcoholic concoctions ranging from the sickeningly sweet Spiced Honey Spirit to the smooth-sipping Ginever gin and their signature Pennsylvania Monongahela Small Cask Rye Whiskey. There was also an extensive cocktail menu, and a variety of experimental spirits. We walked away with 750ml bottles of their Ginever and Deep Cut Monongahela Rye.

www.wiglewhiskey.com

Bar Marco

Around the corner from Leaf and Bean, Bar Marco delivers the best possible afterlife to one of Pittsburgh's old fire halls. This is how people built fire stations a century ago: tin ceilings, metal stairs, tile brick six feet up the wall.

Whoever renovated was kind to the kitchen staff—fully half the ground floor is devoted to food preparation, and the food can tell. I ordered lemon buttermilk pancakes with sweet cream, bacon and rhubarb compote. The pancakes were light and hot with crispy edges. I didn't even use the maple syrup until the last bite.

Michelle had her choice of five delicious savories and settled on an unusual, delicious burger with sweet bacon, sautéed red onion and an egg. Passed over: fried chicken with rhubarb-chili sauce, croque BLT on sourdough, baked eggs with pepperonata sauce, fried zucchini benedict.

In a 2012 Pittsburgh Magazine review, “Valentina” raved about their bar program, with bitters, tinctures, juices and syrups made from scratch. We didn't scratch the surface of their drink menu, but there was nothing wrong with the gently spicy Tito’s Bloody Mary or the glowing mimosa.

Total bill under $60. (Elise told us they "do not accept any kind of gratuities.”) Writing a food review on one’s phone over a rainy Saturday morning brunch: priceless. 

(I paid with Discover.)

www.barmarcopgh.com

Leaf and Bean

Leaf and Bean has been in Pittsburgh's Strip District for nearly as long as I've been gone from Pittsburgh. 

Many dismal chains try to make a hodgepodge of mass-produced garage sale crap look funky and fun. Leaf and Bean actually pulls it off—probably because it's their crap (and bona fide antiques) they've accumulated over 15 years in the Strip, and this is an aesthetic they like. The win is that all the finer things one may want in a coffee shop—a good breve, a selection of whole beans, a cooler with pop, a TV with the Bucs playing—are cradled in a humble jumble of other “important” stuff.

For someone who has never been to Cuba, Leaf and Bean nails the Havana vibe. Most of the reason, of course, is the Leaf—for someone who doesn't smoke, they sell a huge selection of high-end cigars and are happy when a half-dozen guys sit in the doorway and smoke them. Completing the island atmosphere: the back room is stiflingly hot.

www.leafandbean.com/stripdistrict

Conestoga Restaurant and The Waterfront

Two restaurants cling to the banks of the meandering Conestoga River east of Lancaster. Both have big parking lots, spacious outdoor decks and tacky interiors. The Waterfront offers a “waterside dining experience of casual elegance”; Conestoga makes much of the fact that an inn stood there in 1741, even though the current building is cinder block and formstone. Both serve mediocre food that they pretend is haute cuisine. 

And yet, after six years of sampling, I have a clear favorite: Conestoga.

1. Better river views. Where the Waterfront sits low on a bare mud bank, the Conestoga overlooks a landscaped yard that slopes down to the arched East King Street bridge. In the spring, there is constant entertainment from swallows darting to catch fat mayflies rising from the water. In the evening, the deck is ringed by gas torches that make it cozy and sheltered from the street.
2. Less attitude. I’ll be honest: I haven't experienced great service in either location. If you go to the Conestoga during the 7 p.m. rush you may wait forever to be noticed, and again to get your food. But just an hour later and you could have the deck to yourself.
   
   
3. Surprisingly good food. It’s all about managing expectations. Conestoga promises less than The Waterfront and delivers more than expected. The thing that I often order is a gyro sandwich with a small Greek salad. The salad is fresh and comes with stuffed grape leaves; the gyro is pleasantly warm and spicy. Conestoga has a funny thing about putting meat on burgers (consider the Lumpy Bleu Burger which includes fresh lump crab meat and house smoked cherry bacon) but none of sandwiches are bad. I wouldn’t recommend the spinach pie or the “specialty drinks.”

http://www.conestogarestaurant.com/dinner.asp