I lived in Pittsburgh for two years while I attended the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon – that’s car-NEH-ghee, people, not CAR-neh-ghee – but we lived in Shadyside and my wife worked in Squirrel Hill, so we didn’t spend much time in downtown Pittsburgh. Of course, the fact that downtown Pittsburgh was kind of a dump didn’t help either, but at least that has improved since we left town in ’99.
My one dinner outside the press box was at Seviche, a new “tapas” place on Penn Ave. Since I wasn’t starving, tapas sounded appealing, and I thought I might get some authentic seviche for my trouble. While that may have been a logical assumption, the folks behind Seviche take a fairly substantial liberty with their namesake dish. What they call “seviche” is actually raw fish, more like a Japanese sashimi preparation than an actual seviche. Seviche is raw fish that is chopped and marinated in a citrus-juice mixture for hours or even days; the acidity of the marinade denatures the proteins in the fish, “cooking” it without heat, and of course killing any little beasties that might call the fish flesh home. I sat down and saw the chefs preparing the seviche (the kitchen is half-open to view), so I asked the waitress what the story was, and she told me everything was prepared to order. Um, no, that’s not seviche, sweetheart, and you’re going to kill someone if you’re not careful.
Anyway, she swore up and down that she eats the stuff all the time and hasn’t gotten sick, so I tried their “traditional” seviche with tuna. The fish was indeed very, very fresh – I was not aware you could get fish this fresh in Pittsburgh, but between this place and Nakama on the South Side, someone has figured out how to obtain it – but the sauce was overpoweringly tart. That may be a way to compensate for the lack of marinating time, but it made the dish a little tough to eat.
I ordered two other dishes, both of which took some liberties with authenticity. The salmon croquettes on the menu had been replaced by chorizo croquettes, but the finished product was very greasy and the contents weren’t whipped or puréed smooth as they would be in proper croquettes; I ate one of four and left the rest. The barbecued-pork and queso blanco “empanadas” were probably the best-tasting dish; the pastry was delicious and the pork was smoky but still moist. However, by serving one large empanada sliced into four pieces, the chef let half of the heat out of the pastry and it was already lukewarm by the time I got to piece #3; they also get points off for listing queso fresco (which I really like) on the menu and substituting queso blanco without telling me.
Café Richard is a small sandwich shop with short hours located in the Strip District, on Penn near 21st Street. A side project of the chef behind Nine on Nine, which I am told is a highly-regarded fine-dining restaurant in the ‘burgh, Café Richard is cute, done up to look something like a little French boulangerie, and it has a fairly extensive menu of sandwiches. I went with the pan bagnat, a classic sandwich of southern France that is a salade Niçoise on a split baguette or bun, and that is typically pressed or weighted down for a few hours so that the vinaigrette really penetrates the bread. Well, Café Richard got most of it right, using good olive oil and very clean-tasting anchovies, but the sandwich was made to order and not pressed at all, so the bread was a little tough when a real pan bagnat is softened by the oil and vinegar. Great value at around $9 including a bottle of water.
I also revisited one of my old haunts from my Tepper days, Pamela’s, a local chain of greasy-spoon diners best known for their breakfast potatoes and their huge, thin pancakes. I went to a new location (new to me, at least) on the Strip both mornings for breakfast. The first meal was excellent – standard EMPT meal, but it’s all about the potatoes, a hybrid of hash browns and potatoes Lyonnaise that are soft and delightfully salty in a food-Gestapo-run world. On day two, though, whoever was manning the flat-top was a little liberal with the butter, and the pancakes – delicious with their trademark crispy edges – were drenched in the butter that greased the stove, as were the eggs I got alongside them. I probably should have sent them back, but I was in a bit of a hurry and just ate what I could. I can vouch for the pancakes, at least at the Shadyside location (on Walnut Street), which are usually outstanding and don’t need to be wrung out before you can eat them.