Day 2 of Steeler Country

Pittsburg's Strip District

October 11, 2009

12ish

We woke up Sunday to a simply beautiful, quintessential, Midwestern fall day. The air was crisp and cool, but you still felt comfortable in just a light jacket. This is my type of day! The trees had turned and the hills looked so warm with their oranges, yellows, and reds in contrast to the cool water of the Allegheny river.

We were definitely happy to be in Pittsburgh on such a day! We quickly got dressed for an after the wedding brunch at the Omni William-Penn and met our family. We leisurely ate pastries and yogurt, drank enough coffee to compensate for our late night, and then offered congratulations and good-byes to everyone before checking out and taking off the explore the Strip District for a few hours before heading back to Ohio.

We got to the strip district around 12 pm and parking was a little more difficult to find than the previous day, but still not a problem. The Steelers were playing away in Detroit, but there were still plenty of people selling Steeler gear and plenty of people wearing Steeler gear as they worked on finding the perfect place to watch the game. These are people just as serious about their NFL football team as we are about OSU!

As we walked around what I noticed most was how eclectic this district is. There are the sports fans trying to find a bar, there were teenagers hanging out in line for a concert to be held later that night, there were people doing some grocery shopping, and there were families out just exploring. The mix of people around also spoke to the mix of businesses that call The Strip home. The warehouse and train track background speak to the working class roots of the District and some of these merchants are still around. You can see the history in places like Stan's Market that still features fresh produce, the Italian American roots of the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, and a classic breakfast diner in DeLuca's. However, interspersed with these classics are some signs of change. In between the history is a mingling with the future. There are Asian markets, gourmet spice stores, gourmet kitchen supplies, dried flower shops, homemade pottery stores, coffee shops, and upscale chocolatiers.

I really appreciated this diversity, especially given that I can be as happy attacking a burger from Thurman's as I can dining at The Refectory. It's a mingling of 2 very fine worlds.

The upcoming descriptions of places are by no means an extensive list of great places on the strip, but it is a sampling of the things that were open (it was Sunday so some places were closed) and that impressed me. First, Stan's Market had a ton of fresh produce ready to go and I noticed the prices were great (at least much less than I'm used to spending in Columbus)! We also noticed there were some people selling fresh flowers on the street that were beautiful and also priced less than I'm used to seeing at farmer's markets around here. If I didn't have to worry about fresh flowers getting squashed by all the luggage I HAD to bring with us, I definitely would have bought a few bunches to spruce up our house with some fall color.

The first place we ducked into was In The Kitchen, a gourmet kitchen supply store. We loved browsing through all the specialty cookware items and ended up buying some Steeler colored chocolate covered sunflower seeds and fall shaped cookie cutters for our friend who was house sitting and watching our dogs. We were definitely tempted to buy more by the samples of pumpkin whoopie pies and pumpkin butter. One friendly staff member even gave me a tip on how to get the whoopie pies to have extra flavor!

From there we explored Penzey's spices and ducked into Mancini's bread to get a closer look at the pepperoni rolls we saw so many people enjoying. Granted the roll looked very good and was tempting, but ultimately we decided we'd prefer somewhere we could sit down and relax for a bit before driving home.

We loved the expressions on the clay pumpkins at Penn Ave Pottery, but were unwilling to spend around $40 to take one home. Maybe we'll reconsider when economy turns back around. :)

DeLuca's Restaurant looked amazing and had a line out the door! We figured it had to be good diner fair, but considering we had already eaten breakfast we were looking more for a lunch spot.

We ducked in Roxanne's Dried Flowers and were immediately enchanted with the fun displays of flowers mingled with antique looking Halloween decor. We bought a whimsical butterfly ornament for our Christmas tree that reminded me of some antique ornaments my great grandmother had.

We were impressed and enticed by the rich chocolately smell of Mon Aimee Chocolat. However, looking was about all we could afford to do here. I was in awe of the decadent display cases, chocolate bars from around the word, and different mixes of cocoa powder. They even had the chocolate covered bacon I had heard so much about a few months ago! However, the prices were hard for me to swallow. The chocolate covered bacon, I think, was around $8 and we found a regular sized candy bar for $24! Suddenly the $40 pottery pumpkin was looking like a steal.

But eventually the heady chocolate smell of the store did get the better of us and we ended up buying 2 small truffles, one peanut butter flavored and one pumpkin flavored. The peanut butter one was divine and reminded me of a very soft and velvety cross between a buckeye and a Reese's cup. The chocolate in the pumpkin flavored one was had a equally soft, velvety mouth feel. However, the flavor of the pumpkin was just not as good as the peanut butter.

We then explored the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company. Now this is an Italian grocery! The cheeses, the pastas, the meats, the oils, the olives... I could go on and on about this place of beauty. If I lived in Pittsburgh this would be a favorite stop of mine and I'm sure my Italian dishes would never be the same! Since actually traveling in Italy this is the closest I've seen to a true grocery like in the "old country".

With seeing everyone eat the pepperoni rolls and then seeing all the Italian food staples, we decided we needed Italian food for lunch. The day before, as we sauntered around trying to find Primanti Brothers, we drooled over a table enjoying a pizza. We ended up trying our own for lunch at Bella Notte. Stay tuned for my next to hear how that went!

Bill Total (for food): $1.20 for the 2 chocolates, samples at In the Kitchen were free, and for the rest of the places we just looked!

Overall Strip Rating: 5 buckeyes~This place is a food paradise!