Only Here For The Beer!
Written: Aug 20 '01 (Updated Aug 20 '01)
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Pros: Four thriving, varied brewpubs, PNC Park, Sharp Edge, Chiodo's.
Cons: More Yuengling taps than Iron City. Confusing to drive here; sober, even.
The Bottom Line: Great beer without many beer geeks, four outstanding brewpubs, friendly non-pretentious bars, good rib-sticking food. Largely walkable.
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| beerfly's Full Review: Pittsburgh |
There is so much more to this City than Iron.
Say "Pittsburgh beer" and most people will say "Iron City." This is one of the very few beers left that are tied so strongly to a city: Dixie, in New Orleans, and Budweiser to St. Louis, perhaps, but nowhere else is the beer tied by its name. Pittsburgh is "Iron City," or less charitably, "hell with the lid taken off." This is where America's industry went shopping for steel (and glass and paint), and where until about 20 years ago you could still smell the pungent stank of coke mills on the air.
Things have changed, and the beer is changing too. I've reviewed and mourned Iron City beer elsewhere (http://www.epinions.com/fddk-review-4AF1-450B05C-39D1F370-prod1, but it's still part of this town...if people want it. And they should! Anyway, like I said, I've done that already, so let's talk about other things.
First, do we really have to talk about Pittsburgh's supposed bad rep? Forget it. This is a great town, a visually dramatic town. Come into town from the south or the north, and the view as you pop out of The Tubes or down through the steep hills of the North Side will thrill you. Pittsburgh is pressed into The Point, bounded by rivers, and springs up from that base into your face. It's got new ballparks, new riversides, new construction, and new attitude.
Sure, I remember back in the day, when it was depressing and depressed, but that's so over now. Luckily Pittsburgh, unlike a bunch of towns, didn't throw out the baby with bathwater. It's still a town of beautiful 1890-1930 architecture, a town of friendly, easy-going people, a town more midwestern than eastern.
So. You'll like this place, okay? Good people, good-looking town, prices are quite reasonable, transportation connections are good. Err, there is a small problem with ground transport in the city. I know what I'm doing and still have problems sometimes, even with a map. But I'll try to give you some pointers around that problem in a bit.
On to the beer! I went to grad school in Pittsburgh back in the early 80s, and the only place that's still around that I went to regularly is Chiodo's. Not technically in Pittsburgh, but just across the Monongahela at the down-end of the Homestead High-Level Bridge, Chiodo's is one of my favorite bars anywhere. Everytime I've been there, first time to the latest, I've felt instantly at home.
What's Chiodo's like? Well, there's a bizarre (and wholly authentic) assortment of ... stuff hanging from the ceiling, and it's honestly accreted, not bought from some bar-decor store. There's a dining room and a long bar in separate rooms, and a grapevine covered deck out back. There's the famous "Mystery Sandwich," clean draft beer, and a good selection of very reasonably priced imports and micros. And there's Joe Chiodo, if he's still alive... because if there's breath in Joe's body, he'll be there. I can't recommend this place enough as a great hangout bar.
Well, we started on bars, let's stay there for a bit. Downriver in South Side there's Smokin' Joe's, with a wall of taps and a crazy night crowd. Joe's is a great place, but I happen to like the chow and the bartenders better at Fat Head's, two blocks down on Carson St. Fat Head's has the Headwiches, a line of immense sandwiches that will scare your heart just looking at them, and 20 great taps of beer. Right across the street is Piper's Pub, an excellent bar I just found on my last trip to Pittsburgh, thanks to a bunch of mad brewers I was hanging with. Outstanding whisky selection, and some fabulous beer: any place that regularly has Spaten Optimator on draft can't be all bad!
Right, across the river and into town. If it's after 7:00, just head for The Strip District (well-marked with street signs). Not what you're thinking! "The Strip" is just the area of town with all the produce and seafood and meat markets. At least, during the day it is, and that's a great time to go, too: wander around, picking through the markets, stopping in the little restaurants.
But at night, the Strip gets nuts. For beer, check out Roland's. Downstairs are some taps and a really cool 'make-it-there' seafood grill right in the bar, but upstairs is the biggest beer selection in Pittsburgh, 100s of bottles and some pretty good taps. Warning: it gets FULL. I've been to Roland's four times, and only actually managed to get upstairs the last time. Go early.
Also in The Strip is Kaya, a funky Caribbean-influenced place with a neat little bar and a bigger dining room. One of the better selections of spirits in Pittsburgh complements a large array of taps that pour something other than the usual suspects.
Head over towards the University of Pittsburgh to the Oakland neighborhood for two more good bars. Mad Mex's may look a bit dingy, but it's an act: you'll find great Tex-Mex food here and some clean-pouring micros you won't find elsewhere. They take beer seriously at this place, and that's a good thing. The Fuel and Fuddle is much brighter, cheery, and dominated by a big pizza oven. Good pizza, good beer, if not as wide a range as some. There's another place in Oakland (two more, actually, but you'll get the second at the end of the review) I almost always hit: Original's, at Forbes & Bouquet, a great late-night stop for foot-long dogs and great fresh-cut cheese fries...and maybe just one more beer.
One of the best selections of Belgian beers outside of Philly is at the Sharp Edge, about two blocks from where I used to live in Pittsburgh, in the Shadyside neighborhood. Jeff Walewski has about 20 taps, and about half of them are Belgians. But this is completely unlike any other Belgian-heavy bar I've been to: it's a corner bar, with booths and loud, friendly people eating potato pancakes, burgers, and Reubens. Comfy, and reasonably priced, a great bar by any standard.
Okay, brewpubs. There are four in the town and they're closely grouped and they're great. I can recommend each one without any reservation. Start on the North Side with Penn Brewing, the biggest micro in PA. They make lagers and weissbier, and they make them great: you'll find their beer all over Pittsburgh. The pub is fantastic, a real German gasthaus-y kind of place with everything just-so and with a sharp eye for the details. Best of all, the wall on the gleaming copper brewhouse is all glass, and it's great to see where your beer is born! (When you're done, if you're a big boy and bwave enough, walk back over the hill on Vinial Street, and you'll come to The Bierhaus. This bar looks a bit divey, but they're really friendly and they have an amazing collection of old beer cans, trays, tap handles, and so on!)
Then you can cross back over the Allegheny and go down to Smallman Street, just east of downtown, to Valhalla. A very sophisticated, adult kind of brewpub, Valhalla is home to the excellently brewed lagers and weissbiers of brewer Sean McIntyre. A fusion kind of menu complements the cool, impressive beer.
Head east on Smallman to the Foundry Ale Works, where brewer Aran Madden takes over the beer barrage. The Foundry is in an old foundry, and the beam crane overhead is original. Aran brews a wide variety of beer, and makes some up as he goes. He makes a killer dry stout, be sure to try it. Menu concentrates on smoked seafood and meat.
Slide over to Liberty Avenue and head up the hill, and just as you make the bend at Pittsburgh Brewing, look to your left. It might look like a church, but it's the Church... Brew Works. Church is inside a former Catholic church, and head brewer Bryan Pearson works right up on the altar. It's an awesome experience, drinking here, and not just because of the scene: they make excellent beer. (Great pizza, too!)
One more place to go for beer: PNC Park, Pittsburgh's new baseball stadium. Penn Brewing has about 50 taps here, an amazing placement for a micro in a major league park. I love this place, and, well, not just for the beer. The food's tremendous (they got in Pittsburgh-area restaurants, try the Vincente's Pizza!), the stadium is amazingly well-designed, and the view of downtown Pittsburgh is stunning.
Now, just one more thing. When you've been out all night drinking and having a great time, but the bars have closed, where do you go? PRIMANTI BROTHERS! This "almost famous" Pittsburgh tradition has restaurants in The Strip (the original), Oakland, Downtown (pronounced "dahn tohn"), and on the South Side: convenient, eh? There's one in each of the two new ballparks, too. Primanti Bros. is "almost" famous for their sandwiches, which come with fries and coleslaw -- in the sandwich.
This unique sandwich was first made for produce truckers in the Strip district back in the 1920s, who wanted something they could grab and get going with. Primanti Bros. didn't short them on the sides, they just stuffed them in the sandwich! Everyone eats them now. My favorite part is the wall-mounted menu, with its list of sandwiches (bacon and cheese, kolbassi and cheese, fish and cheese, bologna and cheese, double egg and CHEESE...and it goes on for about 20 sandwiches) and down in the corner the note: "extra cheese: 25¢." A classic.
That's a rough list on Pittsburgh. To make it easy to get around on this drinking tour, why not get a hotel out in Oakland? You can walk to the bars there or take a cab (pretty cheap cabs, and the cabbies speak English) to The Strip. Once in The Strip, it's safe to wander around to the bars or two of the brewpubs (Valhalla and Foundry). Church and Penn are both easily worth trips on their own, as well.
This is a great, and almost always overlooked, beer town. It's a great town, truth be told, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. If you like beer, and circumstances steer you towards Pittsburgh, rejoice, partner.
This is beer heaven with the lid taken off.
This is the third installment of my "Only Here For The Beer" reviews of American towns starting with "P": previous ones include Portland, OR (http://www.epinions.com/content_36320480900), and Philadelphia (http://www.epinions.com/content_36506078852). More may or may not be forthcoming.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 82 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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