Category Archives: Food & Drink

A Doggone Good Day With Beer

On one of the first warm days after what has been never-ending and cold winter, we got to go outside and take our dog to the dog park (in our case, the Highland Park Dog Run). And thank goodness we got to go out; our little dog has been chomping at the bit after being limited to short walks. The dog park was super muddy, which made it even more fun!

Tennis Ball + Dog = ❤❤❤❤❤❤

Our adventure was your pretty standard with a long classic game fetch; i.e., we throw a ball, and our dog, kind of, brings it back.

After forty minutes of running around in the mud it was time to head home, wind down, and just hang out. Luckily, we recently got our hands on a special mix of beers from Great Lakes Brewing Company, which included: Dortmunder Gold Lager, Eliot Ness Amber Lager, Turntable Pils, Commodore Perry IPA, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, and Holy Moses White Ale. While we can’t deny that we have an affinity for beer made right here in Pittsburgh, the Steel City is a diverse powerhouse that has stepped out onto the national stage, we, of course, have access to beer from all over, like from our neighbors in Cleveland, Ohio.

Amongst these tasty brews, we found ourselves lost in thought when drinking the Dortmunder Gold Lager. It has the drinkability of an American lager with a subtle depth of flavor. A light underlying sweet maltiness is complemented by a touch of bitterness that results in a smooth medium-bodied beer that perfectly fits with our day. It’s the kind of beer that makes you want to be outside taking in some sun or hanging on the porch with your four-legged friend in your lap (well maybe not in your lap until your pup has had a bath to remove all that mud!). While we do like lots of different types of beer on this day this lager is totally ours. The only thing that would make the day better would be to add pierogi to go with this beer.

Dortmunder Gold Lager

You can fetch Great Lakes Brewing Company beer (yeah pun!) here in Pittsburgh by using the following link: www.greatlakesbrewing.com/beer-finder. (On this list, is the Tipsy Cow that allows dogs in their outside seating).

 

Bonus: Swag

Great Lakes Brewing Company is also giving away swag. Who doesn’t love swag?

Here’s how:
Go on the Twitter or Instagram machine
Post Great Lakes Brewing Company brew is yours – perhaps with a photo or video and tag @IheartPGH, @GLBC_Cleveland, and #GLBCisMine
Await contact for some super awesome swag.

 

Disclaimer: You must be 21 to drink alcohol in the state of Pennsylvania. We were asked to try this beer and we really did like the Dortmunder Gold.

Our night at Pennsylvania Beer Alliance’s PGH Beer Blogger Dinner

We love beer, and so we were happy to have been invited to the PGH Beer Blogger Dinner last Wednesday on December 6th. The event, presented by the Pennsylvania Beer Alliance (PBA), a full-service trade association representing the wholesale tier of distributors of malt and brewed beverages in PA, featured beers from Fat Head’s Brewery and Great Lakes Brewery paired with dishes from Lot 17 where the event was hosted.

At the beginning of the event, attendees were given a packet full of PBA related information, including a document that indicated the economic impact of the beer industry here in Pennsylvania. According to this one-pager, Brewing, Beer Wholesaling, and Beer Retailing contribute 36,512 jobs, more than $1.2 billion in wages, and $4.1 billion in economic output for PA. The document also indicated the economic impact on other industries, including agriculture and construction. Please feel free to review this document for yourself below.

After introductions from Alyssa Gorman, Communications and Outreach Coordinator for PBA, the pairing of six beers and six dishes began.

Starting things off was Fat Head’s Holly Jolly (ABV 7.5%) paired with a sweet potato skin with maple bacon drizzle. The pleasant smell of nutmeg came through on Fat Head’s Holly Jolly, and the taste was very smooth. This holiday brew went well with the candied maple atop the potato skins. It’s the kind of pairing you’d want during the gift-giving season.

Up next was Fathead’s Headhunter IPA (ABV 7.5%) paired with Swedish meatballs. The Headhunter IPA is crisp and delicious. The yummy taste is so distracting, it made us forget to take a photo of this pairing as well as made it hard to taste the flavors found in the meatballs.

Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter(ABV 5.8%) came next paired with a porter beef stew in a bread bowl. This pairing is the kind you need when you’re snuggling up by the fire. The double porter flavor from both the beer and stew will warm you up, and the bread bowl’s starch will lull you into a well-deserved winter sleep.

Just past midway in the night’s pairing event came Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale (ABV 6%) served with a portobello mushroom and crab meat. Those who drink beer as much as we do will understand the complexities of switching from a porter to a pale ale. If you’re not familiar, just know, porters tend to coat your taste buds pretty well. That being said, the Burning River Pale Ale is the kind of beer that you can drink all day and all night. We actually began our evening and finished our evening with this solid beer.

Great Lakes was up next with its own Christmas Ale (ABV 7.5%) paired with rosemary filet slider on a brioche bun. Great Lakes Christmas Ale goes with cinnamon as its holiday spice. The sugar-sweet taste went well with the savory meat found in the sliders. The Christmas Ale, along with the new friends found at the event, definitely got us into the holiday spirit.

Finally, Fat Head’s Bumbleberry(ABV 5.3%) served with a berry bread pudding closed out the night. The Bumbleberry has a strong blueberry smell, is soft and refreshing, and goes with Lot 17’s must-have bread pudding. If you’re seeking a perfect way to end a romantic winter evening, do yourself a favor and order Fat Head’s Bumbleberry with Lot 17’s Berry Bread Pudding.

All and all, this was a pretty fantastic event. Although it’s pretty hard to mess up anything with beer and food, we’d like to toast PBA for inviting us. The brews from Fat Head’s and Great Lakes overall were pretty fantastic and covered a wide range of flavors, any of which would make a Pittsburgh winter day, merry and bright. If you’re interested in trying any of the beers or dishes noted from this event, swing by Lot 17 in Bloomfield.

Ice Cream Sundays at East End Brewing

One of the best kept patio secrets in Pittsburgh, is the patio at the East End Brewing Brewery in the Larimer neighborhood. Last year they transformed the parking lot into a delightful beer garden.

The East End Brewing Brewery has always been a family-friendly spot for spending an afternoon. The patio makes this a great place for everyone to spend a hot summer afternoon with a cold beer (or root beer, which they usually have on tap). Just a heads up that East End Brewing also has a location in the Strip District, the East End Brewing Taproom, so make sure to point your GPS to the East End Brewing Brewery on Julius Street if you are looking for ice cream.

Ice Cream Sundays at East End Brewing

Well the good folks over at East End Brewing have come up with a way to make Sunday afternoons even better… ice cream. Starting this Sunday, July 9, there will be a different ice cream vendor at the brewery.

Here is the line up of tasty frozen treat vendors….

Keep an eye out for some limited-edition beer-inspired flavors of ice cream and my sources say there may even been some beer & ice cream floats.

If you aren’t an eat dessert first kind of person, the Tango Food Truck will be on site each week* so you can have something savory before a sweet treat.  *(Tango food truck will not be at the Brewery on August 6.)

Good Beer, Delicious Ice Cream, Really Nice Neighbors

I can’t say enough good things about East End Brewing. Scott Smith who is the owner as well as everyone who works there could not be nicer. This is by far one of my favorite businesses in town and they also make some great beers. If you have not yet had an ice cream sandwich from Leona’s Ice Cream, you are missing out. Last week I arrived at the market in Aspinwall, Feast on Brilliant, just as they were closing for the day. I was determined to pick up some Leona’s ice cream sandwiches. So I talked the poor clerk into letting me come inside to buy some ice cream sandwiches before they locked the door. Like Scott Smith, the owners of Leona’s are also incredibly nice people. Leona’s is also local, just down the street in Wilkinsburg, they have been an active participant in some of the redevelopment activities.

The best way to keep up on the Ice Cream Sundays at East End Brewing and all of the other food vendors that stop by the brewery is this “Come Hungry” calendar on their website, which is also a Google calendar you can subscribe too as well.

What’s that you say? You need a better way to keep track of tasty cool treat happenings? How about a twitter list of ice cream shops in Pittsburgh! You can find that list right here.

 

Pittsburgh Speakeasy

You Can Now Legally Drink at the Speakeasy in the William Penn

This is one of this historic things about Pittsburgh that I think is so fascinating that I assume everyone knows. But I am amazed how many people don’t know that the new(ish) bar in the basement of the William Penn Hotel which is named Speakeasy, really was a speakeasy back in the day.

I love old hotels. I love visiting old hotels. I love the book “Eloise,” which is about a girl who grew up in the Plaza hotel in New York city. I love the stories about the New Yorkers who lived in the Plaza hotel for years. (Check out the story of Fannie Lowenstein, who lived at the Plaza for 35 years and has been described at the Eloise from hell.) A few years ago, I drove cross country with a friend who was moving back to Pittsburgh from San Diego. Each day of the trip as I routed our stops to conveniently be at grand old hotels. The first time I set foot into an Ace Hotel was on the advice of a Twitter follower to visit the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. So of course I love the William Penn Hotel and not just because it has some of the cleanest bathrooms in all of downtown Pittsburgh. If I have to wait for someone Downtown, I will almost always suggest the lobby of the William Penn Hotel.

The prohibition era speakeasy at the William Penn, reopens as “The Speakeasy”

Pittsburgh Speakeasy

 

The Speakeasy is underneath the lobby, if you are entering from William Penn Way, instead of going up the stairs to the reception/Starbucks area, go down the stairs and to your right. After prohibition, the space was used as storage for a number of years. The hotel renovated the space and reopened it to the public as a bar/lounge on December 5, 2012, which was the 79th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition.

From the Trib’s article on the grand opening of The Speakeasy in 2012:

A rear exit opens onto a warren of hallways that led to Oliver Avenue. In the event of a police raid, customers could beat a discreet retreat, Page says.

Here is a video tour of the reopened Speakeasy by WESA in 2012:

Pittsburgh Prohibition Cocktail History

Last month, CityLab, the Atlantic’s blog about all things urban published “The Secret Lives of Speakeasies,” the entire article is about Pittsburgh and that the term “speakeasy” was first uttered right here in here in Western, Pennsylvania:

Whisper “speakeasy” into a search engine of your choice and odds are you will stumble across the story of Kate Hester, the Pittsburgh hotelkeeper at the center of the amusing, possibly apocryphal origin story for the word.

Hester appeared in what can only be described as a prototypical trend piece for The New York Times in July 6, 1891. The story goes like this: Hester owned a saloon in McKeesport, just southeast of the city, that sold booze in defiance of a state law that upped the costs of licenses for alcohol so much that it was nearly prohibited. When customers got too rowdy, Hester would hush customers with “speak-easy, boys!” to avoid attracting the attention of authorities; the expression soon spread to the city, and the nation. “Some day, perhaps, Webster’s Dictionary will take it up,” the yarn concludes.

CityLab’s Andrew Small traveled to Pittsburgh to visit our speakeasy inspired bars, including the Speakeasy at the William Penn and Accasia on the southside. Small also met up with John Schalcosky, who updates the Facebook Page, “The Odd, Mysterious & Fascinating History of Pittsburgh.”

New Book Explores Pittsburgh Cocktail History

Local authors, Cody McDevitt and Sean Enright, have recently published a book on the history of cocktails in the steel city, “Pittsburgh Drinks: A History of Cocktails, Nightlife & Bartending Tradition.” You can read an excerpt of “Pittsburgh Drinks” on Littsburgh and listen to an interview with Sean and Cody on episode #80 of the Marta on the Move podcast.

Related articles

April 25 is Gobblerito Pumpking Day at MadMex

UPDATE: Looking for details on the 2019 Gobblerito Day? Head over to Very Local for an update to this post.

Yes, Pittsburgh, for one day only, you can celebrate Thanksgiving in April. The Gobblerito is the much loved thanksgiving-dinner-in-a-burrito that MadMex offers each fall. But according to the most recent newsletter from Big Burrito (the parent company of MadMex), Tuesday, April 25, 2017 is Gobblerito Pumpking Day.

It’s Thanksgiving in April as The Gobblerito comes out of hibernation for just one mad Tuesday, and brings along the last of our Southern Tier Pumking stash.

Both are available while supplies last. Avoid the crush, do lunch!

It looks like both the Gobblerito and Pumpking will be available at all of the MadMex locations.

If you haven’t met the Gobblerito yet, here is a sampling of love letters to this thanksgiving treat…

Never miss another Gobblerito day again! While researching this post, we stumbled upon this handy Google calendar of BigBurrito events. You can subscribe and view all of these important dates with your own calendar.