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pghcitypaper.com Pittsburgh City Paper’s annual food magazine
Contents
Power Food 20
Icing with Intent 6
Pop-Up Prestige 22
Hive Mentality 12
A Few Bad Apples 28
Soup for You 14
More Than Muffins 32
Editor-In-Chief LISA CUNNINGHAM Director of Advertising JASMINE HUGHES Director of Operations KEVIN SHEPHERD Managing Editor ALEX GORDON Senior Writers RYAN DETO, AMANDA WALTZ Staff Writers HANNAH LYNN, JORDAN SNOWDEN Photographer/Videographer JARED WICKERHAM Digital Media Manager JOSH OSWALD Editorial Designer ABBIE ADAMS Graphic Designers JOSIE NORTON, JEFF SCHRECKENGOST Events and Sponsorship Manager BLAKE LEWIS Senior Account Executive JOHN CLIFFORD Sales Representative KAITLIN OLIVER Operations Coordinator MAGGIE WEAVER Events and Marketing Coordinator BRYER BLUMENSCHEIN Business Manager JUSTIN MATASE Circulation Manager JEFF ENGBARTH National Advertising Representative VMG ADVERTISING 1.888.278.9866 OR 1.212.475.2529 Publisher EAGLE MEDIA CORP.
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Roll Models 16
The School of Chocolate 34
PITTSBURGHCITYPAPER C OVER P H OTOG RAPH: JARED WICKERHAM TAS TE LOG O AN D IL LUST RAT IONS: ABBIE ADAMS
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THE RESORT WITH 22 STARS
LAUTREC
WOODLANDS SPA
THE CHATEAU
FALLING ROCK & AQUEOUS
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR REMARKABLE NEMACOLIN TEAM! Their hard work and dedication made these accolades possible!
TASTE MAGAZINE 2020 PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 5
Icing with Intent BY MAGGIE WEAVER // MWEAVER@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
6 PGHCITYPAPER.COM
CP PHOTOS: JARED WICKERHAM
“Cookie activist” Jasmine Cho displays her artwork.
L
“
AST YEAR WAS NUTS.”
Jasmine Cho laughs as she says this, but it’s no joke. In the past year, the artist, cookie activist, and founder of Yummyholic has published a book, given a TEDx talk, been featured in national media like NPR and the Huffington Post, placed first in a Food Network competition, and had Mayor Bill Peduto officially proclaim January 28 Jasmine Cho day; all of this achieved while Cho pursued an art therapy degree from Carlow University. Cho’s step into the spotlight has stemmed gradually from her unique combination of cookie art and social justice. Today, the Los Angeles native and current Pittsburgher uses cookies to initiate conversations on race. Cho creates intricate portraits of important Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, using cookies to give representation to a historically underrepresented community. But merging activism with sweet treats wasn’t always her intent. In fact, baking wasn’t even something Cho did much growing up. Her first experience with the science — or “magic” as she calls it — didn’t happen until her sophomore year of high school. >>
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“I was suddenly able to create the delicious and beautiful treats I liked to eat so much,” Cho says. “But the best part was being able to then create something that I was able to gift and share with everyone that I love.” Soon, Cho found herself with a new dream: to open a bakery and cafe of her own. It would be 2010 before she took any “actionable” steps towards this goal, finally founding Yummyholic, not as a bakery, but as a foodie apparel company. Slowly, she shifted the brand towards baking and by 2015 — the year Cho identifies as Yummyholic’s turning point from clothing to cookies — she was looking for real baking experience. Using YouTube videos of her baking, Cho landed a job at Bella Christie and Lil Z’s Sweet Boutique in Aspinwall, a position that affirmed “this passion of [hers] wasn’t just a hobby; it’s something [she] would love to suffer for.” Cho designed Yummyholic to be a brand — the “Hello Kitty of food,” she says — a place for people who, like her, were addicted to the pursuit of all things yummy. “But my passions for social justice just kind of took over,” she says. Cho can’t pinpoint a definitive moment when Yummyholic turned into a platform for education, but 8 PGHCITYPAPER.COM
remembers a Squirrel Hill Night Market as one of the first times she iced with intention. For this market, she created a giant landscape of portrait cookies that featured locally influential Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders like Leah Lizarondo of 412 Food Rescue and former Steeler Hines Ward. It was a class at Chatham University that solidified her movement towards cookie activism; Cho found herself learning important pieces of Asian-American history that otherwise would have been left out of her education. “Privilege is when your history is taught as core curriculum while mine is taught as an elective,” she said to applause in her TEDx talk in Pittsburgh. Since then, Cho has put her platform to work, telling the untold story of Afong Moy, the first known immigrant woman from China who was put on a 17th-century display of “Chinese curiosities.” Cho has brought Sammy Lee — the first Asian-American diver to win an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. — to life on a cookie. She’s iced portraits of modern celebrities and her own role models like Ali Wong and Awkwafina. “These are all remarkable stories of American history, but I can guarantee that some of you, possibly many of you, have never heard of these names or stories until
just now,” she noted on stage at TEDx. The response to her work — not only from Asian Americans across the nation but adoptive parents as well — has simply re-affirmed once again “how much representation matters.” “Ten-year-old Jasmine was hungry for that kind of representation,” she reflects. “I always assumed and expected there were other 10-year-old girls out there like me.” In her TED talk, Cho brings up the response of a friend’s teenage daughter who toured Cho’s cookie exhibit in the City-County Building. Cho’s art inspired an enthusiastic response from the young woman, who was soon googling the stories behind each portrait. Another affirming moment for Cho was in 2018, when she visited a Shadyside Academy kindergarten class with a number of Asian-American students. “Once [the students] saw me, they were like, ‘She has hair like me, she looks like me, is she Chinese like me?’ It starts so early, that sense of identification and belonging,” Cho says. And cookies “make everything more palatable.” From her first step toward cookie activism, Cho has been continually surprised by the reach of her work. But this doesn’t come without caution. “It’s startling, your face in illustration,” she says, referring to her first big media >>
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break in Pittsburgh. “I remember feeling, ‘This is important, but I don’t want to be tokenized.’ I am just one voice in this huge umbrella identity. It’s impossible for me to be totally representative.” For Cho, it was meaningful to gain national attention “to have it confirmed that there’s a larger context outside of Pittsburgh.” Now, as she looks toward a graduate program in Brooklyn, Cho is trying to figure out her next steps. She’s separating activism from the name Yummyholic, instead putting the social justice work under her own name. Baking as therapy has taken a huge role in the future of her career, and as part of this, Cho has sidelined any advancement of Yummyholic to focus on her therapeutic work with the Children’s Hospital and Center for Victims. A big bakery, community cafe, and personal kitchen are still in her vision for the future, but as of right now, Cho is concentrating on simply staying open to possibilities that may come. “Imagination is so limited to what I only know, ” she says. • 10 PGHCITYPAPER.COM
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Randall Hall of BEEBOY Honey
Hive Mentality BY HANNAH LYNN // HLYNN@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
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ETTING LOCALLY PRODUCED honey from BEE-
BOY Honey is no easy task. It’s not sold at farmers markets or grocery stores. It sells out about a month after it’s harvested, and that’s it. Beekeeper Randall Hall doesn’t push his bees any farther than they’ll naturally go and makes his local, urban honey in limited quantities, selling to a few select coffee shops and breweries, or people who contact him directly. “I’m from a newer school of beekeeping. It’s much more sensitive to the needs of the bees versus the economic benefit from harvesting honey,” says Hall. “I do make money, but that’s not my goal anymore. My goal is mostly to keep the bees healthy and to do the best job I can as a caretaker for them.” He manages several hives around town, sometimes in friends’ yards or on the property of a business, like the one at Spring Hill Brewing where the honey gets used in beers. “I have way more people asking me to put bees in different locations than I could possibly keep up with,” he says. BEEBOY can also be found at 4121 Main in Bloomfield, Espresso a Mano in Lawrenceville, and Shadyside Nursery. Part of his work as a beekeeper is simply raising awareness about bees, and reminding people that not only are they all around us, but their existence is a massive and necessary benefit to the ecosystem. Hall sees some of the rising interest in urban bee-
keeping and local honey as stemming from heightened awareness of the plight of bees. A little over a decade ago, scientists and beekeepers began noticing Colony Collapse Disorder, which caused an increasing number of dead bee colonies and fears about the future of the bee population. “I’m always encouraged by how much knowledge the public has about bee crises,” he says. “People come pretty well informed about this stuff.” Hall’s focus on the well-being and survival of bees doesn’t produce as much honey as highvolume beekeepers who cut corners by giving the bees antibiotics and feeding them sugar water. But it does give BEEBOY Honey the advantage of being hyper-local. Hall will often sell the honey in the same neighborhood in which it’s produced. “I’ll make honey in July in Oakland and I’ll sell it as close to Oakland as I can, and really let people know that this is exactly where and when it came from,” he says. “I started doing that at the beginning just for myself ’cause I found it interesting, and it’s turned out to be that people really respond to that.” With this model, the more that people know about where their honey comes from, the more attention they pay to when the bees are most active. “I’m trying to get people to think about what trees are blooming, what flowers are coming up next month. Has it been raining a lot? I wonder if that affects the bees?” •
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Soup for You BY MAGGIE WEAVER // MWEAVER@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
@brothmonger on Instagram CP PHOTOS: JARED WICKERHAM
Sarah McAlee Sausage tortellini soup
T
HERE’S NOTHING QUITE like homemade soup.
Cheaper than ordering at a restaurant and more flavorful than what comes in a can, nothing beats soup from a home kitchen. Nobody knows this better than Sarah McAlee, the brain behind the popular Instagram account Brothmonger. Every weekend, McAlee makes two soups from scratch — one vegan, one non-vegan — and shares them with her followers on Instagram. It’s a first-come, firstserve operation; land in her DMs early enough, and you can buy one or two of the coveted quarts. McAlee started Brothmonger first as a friend-tofriend business, simply expanding on her regular practice of delivering soup to sick friends and family. It was a post from Rick Sebak, whom she sold soup to at the Pittsburgh Vintage Mixer this fall, that propelled her into public renown. Since then, hyped by influencers and writers, she grew her pool of followers to more than 1,000. And for a business like McAlee’s, that’s everything. Without a website, her sales rely on a strong, engaged group of followers. Buying soup from McAlee is like a game. There’s limited quantity — between 15-20 quarts of the regular soup, 10-12 of the vegan option — and if you snooze, you lose. (The few times I’ve bought from her page, I’ve set multiple alarms on my phone.) Typically, both kinds sell out within minutes of release.
“Some weeks are way more demanding,” she explains. “Not everybody loves every kind.” A week featuring broccoli cheddar and vegan French onion meant that McAlee turned away lots of followers, while a vegan lentil curry and sausage tortellini just barely sold out. She may tease the soups throughout the week, but refuses any attempt at pre-orders or reservations. Sunday is the only day her soup is for sale. The type of soup varies from week-to-week based on what McAlee wants to eat, requests from followers, or ingredients she has on hand. (She makes all of her broth from scratch, which often influences the soup flavors). She’s also trying to incorporate Instagram polls to gauge her audience’s tastes. McAlee has no idea what the future will bring for Brothmonger; the growing craze for her soup has been surprising enough. Already, she has moved to a commercial kitchen and is now cooking out of Badamo’s Pizza on the North Side. (Anthony Badamo is her former employer and has been a huge supporter of her business.) McAlee is throwing around the idea of hosting pop-ups with local breadmaker Wild Science Bread Co., though she does plan to keep the business on Instagram as long as possible. And she’s not ruling out the idea of cooking full time, but isn’t diving headfirst into a brick-and-mortar. For now, McAlee is simply going where the soup takes her. • TASTE MAGAZINE 2020 PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 15
PHOTO: CHRIS SQUIER
Roll Models Rolling Pepperoni brings Appalachian fare and folklore to a new storefront in Lawrenceville BY RYAN DETO // RYANDETO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
P
EPPERONI ROLLS HAVE LONG been a staple of West Virginia culture and cuisine. They were allegedly invented there a century ago by an Italian baker named Giuseppe Argiro as a portable lunch for the local coal miners, and they remain a ubiquitous favorite throughout the state today. Though just an hour up the road and with plenty of mines of our own, Pittsburgh’s pepperoni roll pedigree is less auspicious, but Rolling Pepperoni is hoping to change that. The local wholesale bakery recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign and is expanding to a storefront in Upper Lawrenceville near the 62nd Street Bridge. Owner Katt Schuler, a West Virginia native, says the new space will allow her to experiment more with ingredients in the rolls, including salami and different cheeses. She says the extra space will also boost the bakery’s efforts to collect local stories about Appalachia. Together, she hopes it will mean more people learning about and enjoying the food and culture of West Virginia. “It will be really nice to interact with customers more,” says Schuler. “I don’t really get to interact right now. And then we will have a safe space for West Virginians and the Appalachian culture and create space for makers.” Schuler isn’t sure exactly when the storefront
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will open, but says hours will be initially focused on breakfast and lunch. Along with pepperoni rolls, the shop will serve coffee, sides, and soups. The main component of the business will still be wholesale and distribution of the rolls, but Schuler says it will be “really nice to be able to provide hot rolls and snacks for people around there.”
rollingpepperoni.com On top of that, Schuler is excited to give her storytellers more attention. Rolling Pepperoni publishes stories and essays about Appalachian culture on its website, and Schuler says the investment in that side of the business has really paid off. She hopes to showcase more storytellers in the shop. Schuler says future stories will include an interview with a scientist who researches pawpaws, a rare fruit that grows in Appalachia, and a woman who rode a bicycle to the top of the Appalachian Trail. “The story series just wrapped the first year, and it has had a profound impact on us. It has been monumental,” says Schuler. “We will see where it goes for year two. We’ll have more space and more rolls. It’s going to be a positive experience.” •
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Power Bites chef Sharif Rasheed
Power Food BY MAGGIE WEAVER // MWEAVER@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
S
HARIF RASHEED IS A SNACKTIVIST. The founder of
Safi Health Co., a newly created, Pittsburgh-based snack company, believes that good nutrition fuels change. He’s bringing that philosophy to life with his first product, Power Bites. Power Bites are small, granola bar squares: non-GMO, gluten-, soy-, and dairy-free, vegan, all-natural, and on top of that, delicious. The bites were the product of parenting ingenuity, created by Rasheed for his teething child. The trained chef was looking for a nutritional option for his son, a picky eater in the midst of growing pains. So he created something tasty, healthy, and most importantly, soft. At the time, Rasheed was running Safi Juice on Penn Avenue. Once he discovered that the bites had potential for the commercial market, he started packaging and selling them to his customers at Safi Juice. The shop eventually closed but the entrepreneur felt like the bites were “a calling.” In June of 2018, he officially launched
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Eat Power Bites eatpowerbites.com
Power Bites and had three shops stocking them within a week. “I came out the door running,” he says. The chef says it’s the flavor of Power Bites that sets them apart from other healthy snacks, and he takes the “nutritious and delicious” motto to heart. His two flavors so far are almond butter crunch and salted peanut butter crunch. The peanut butter bites will trick anyone with a sweet tooth, tasting as close to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup as you can get without actually eating the candy. There’s a nice crunch in every square and the bites manage to stay soft even without dairy or gluten. One wary taste-tester even told Rasheed that he needs to add “doesn’t taste how it sounds” to the cover of each package. But the concept of “snacktivism” is twofold: In addition to providing nutritious, delicious fuel for the body and mind, a percentage of all Power Bites sales is donated to educational causes.
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Rasheed loves what he calls the “dirty work,” knocking on doors with a backpack full of Power Bites and meeting shop owners in person. To him, the fun is in the hustle. “In my juice shop, I don’t think my hands were getting dirty. I think my ego was too big. I was like, ‘My juice is the best juice out there, you should want it.’ With this product, if you haven’t tried it yet, I want you to try it. I’ll come to you,” says Rasheed. His approach has paid off. Power Bites can now be found in 34 locations in Pittsburgh, across the state, and nationwide (he ships to California, Georgia, Ohio, Delaware, Colorado, Missouri, Michigan, Texas, and Connecticut). As the distribution of Power Bites continues to grow, Rasheed is starting to develop other products. He’s inspired by big names like Frito Lay and Coca Cola, companies that started small but grew to have hundreds of products under their brands. Eventually, he hopes to have 10 products under Safi Health Co., including nut butters and granolas. •
“With this product, if you haven’t tried it yet, I want you to try it. I’ll come to you.”
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Pop-Up Prestige BY MAGGIE WEAVER // MWEAVER@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
22 PGHCITYPAPER.COM
N CP PHOTOS: JARED WICKERHAM
Co-owners of the Fet Fisk popup dinners, Sarah LaPonte and Nik Forsberg, taste test food with their staff prior to the start of their pop-up dinner at Pear and the Pickle in the Troy Hill neighborhood Salmon tartare
IK FORSBERG AND SARAH LAPONTE know that Nordic food, to most eaters, isn’t the
most appealing cuisine. But the duo’s “loosely Nordic” pop-up Fet Fisk has been consistently filled to capacity, even the most skeptical diners developing a “Fet Fisk addiction.” Roger Li, the chef and owner of Ki Ramen, Ki Pollo, and Umami, has garnered a massive following for his Cantonese Dim Sum pop-up, which is now heading into its third chapter. His second event had diners chanting, “Pittsburgh wants dim sum.” Pop-ups, like Fet Fisk and Dim Sum, have become major players in Pittsburgh’s food scene. These one-night-only eateries, raw and flawed, are chances for chefs to do something different. Li has been using the pop-up model since 2015, with sound logic to back his methods: Why spend time, effort, and resources building a new concept that the city might reject? He relies on pop-ups to gauge the response to new ideas and cuisines, starting with Umami, followed by Ki Pollo, and now with his latest concept. He comes to the pop-up scene with a slight advantage, already well known in Pittsburgh for great food — eaters here trust Li. Forsberg and LaPonte, on the other hand, come from a completely different position. They are the first to admit that “new Nordic” cuisine is an unusual pick for a restaurant, let alone a pop-up. The test kitchen element was critical to their success; based on the stigma of Nordic cuisine, a brick-and-mortar Fet Fisk may have failed, but this approach has allowed Pittsburghers to warm up gradually to their seafood-driven menu. To set themselves apart, Forsberg is taking a modern, hyperlocal perspective on Nordic food, following in the footsteps of chefs like Magnus Nilsson. He’s bringing in vegetables from Tiny Seed Farm, oysters from a small, family-owned farm in Washington, and bread from a local, small-batch purveyor. >>
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CP PHOTO: JARED WICKERHAM
Workers of the Fet Fisk pop-up dinners taste test food prior to opening.
Before opening his now-beloved Lawrenceville izakaya, Li was in a similar place as Fet Fisk: no money for a brick and mortar but a strong desire to do something new. He held a series of six pop-ups, the first at Grapperia. Partnering with other local restaurants turned out to be a win-win. One Umami pop-up could bring in upwards of 300 people, generating extra revenue in bar sales for the “closed” restaurant while giving Li the space to experiment. Today, even with three restaurants at his disposal, Li returns to his original approach. The third Dim Sum pop-up will be held at DiAnoia’s Eatery in the Strip District, and most likely, he will do most of the prep work from home.
F
ET FISK HAS BEEN everywhere. In the past year,
Forsberg and LaPonte have bounced from Penn Hills to Braddock to Troy Hill. Their first-ever popup was in the blank space that now holds Pigeon Bagels. Their erratic movement has brought with it a fun sense of secrecy. (At one dinner, LaPonte notes that diners were given a hand drawn map to find the location.) But this “secrecy” also means that Forsberg and LaPonte have had to drag burners, pans, trays, and even
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Fet Fisk fetfisk.net. @fet_fisk
Dim Sum Pop Up @dimsumpgh
tables between locations. As they head into their second year of pop-ups, the duo is thankful to have a secured tenure — complete with a small storage area — at Pear and the Pickle in Troy Hill. In Swedish, fet fisk translates to greasy or oily fish, and the Nordic duo’s unique approach to a pop-up reflects this. They’re not, per se, “polished.” They’re thrifty. The duo has “cobbled together a lot of their wares,” as LaPonte puts it, and that gives their pop-up a totally different feel than Li’s Dim Sum. They’re including you, the eater, as part of their creative process. Li comes in fully grown and looking for feedback; Fet Fisk befriends you and asks you to grow with it. Both new pop-ups are putting out fantastic food, but their pop-ups would get nowhere without promotion. There are no Yelp reviews and no storefront, nothing for an eater to base their opinion on. Li uses a guerilla-style marketing technique, proven successful by the two-block long line at his second Dim Sum installment. (His third dinner sold out in 45 seconds.) He relies on unexpected announcements, food photos, and constant updates. He’s focused on engagement — a vital piece of a pop-up — to keep social media users engaged in between dinners. >>
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Forsberg runs the Fet Fisk account, and it is the opposite of Li’s in almost every way. Forsberg describes it as a “free for all;” there’s no apparent reason for his posts. (He describes the vibe as “squirrel-y and pirate-y”). One day it’s a wall of text, telling the story of a fictional restaurant Burger Queen and a love triangle, the next it’s documenting a trip to the “local Swedish embassy,” aka Ikea. But Forsberg’s strategy, or lack thereof, is enticing. You never know what’s next. It’s also a clear representation of the duo’s vision for Fet Fisk: a place where the rewarding parts of food service come together — great food, great atmosphere, and great people — like a “parallel universe” of the food industry. Both Fet Fisk and Dim Sum have been proven successful, but that is not to say a pop-up doesn’t come without risk. LaPonte laughs looking back on her hesitation heading into their first pop-up, unsure that her $400 investment would ever see a return. Li, Forsberg, and LaPonte took a gamble with their pop-ups, attempting to break into a well-established food scene like Pittsburgh’s, one that’s ridden with longstanding, legacy-driven restaurants. And for both pop-ups, this gamble paid off. Pittsburgh presented them with a unique opportunity: There was room to grow, and a crop of eaters demanding it. •
“These onenight-only eateries, raw and flawed, are chances for chefs to do something different.”
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PHOTO: MICHAEL STURGES
A Few Bad Apples BY ALEX GORDON // ALEXGORDON@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
T
HE VOLUNTEER CIDER-MAKING group A Few
Bad Apples gets a lot of attention during the fall months. It’s an exciting time: That’s when the members are picking and collecting apples, bottling cider, and spreading their message of sustainability and waste-reduction in Pittsburgh. But wintertime is just as important, if not more so. Once the frost has settled in, it’s vital for the volunteers to prune the apple trees, rehab neglected ones, and remove dead and diseased wood to ensure a productive harvest come fall. It’s a tough job, done on weekends and in free time, but it’s worth it. “Our cider-making is not a paid venture,” says Michael Sturges, co-founder of A Few Bad Apples. “It is a labor of love. Everyone in our group has a day job.” The collective got its start around 2004 after Sturges and his friend Ryan Utz noticed that despite the prevalence of apple trees around Pittsburgh, most of the fruit ended up rotting in people’s backyards. So they collected a batch and attempted their first cider using a food processor and
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“Our cidermaking is not a paid venture. It is a labor of love.”
a cheese cloth. Ugly fruit in its natural state might not be appetizing, but who can tell when it’s in a drink? The next year, they purchased an antique cider press from 1865 and A Few Bad Apples was born. Over the past 15 years, they’ve had over 100 people involved (with a core group of 10-20) in the collection of apples that would otherwise go to waste, the foraging for other natural ingredients to experiment with, the staging of events to promote sustainability and, of course, the sharing of the cider. (A Few Bad Apples is not a commercial cidery, and does not sell its cider.) In addition to the simple fact that hard cider is good, the members of A Few Bad Apples are motivated by the desire to challenge popular misconceptions about agriculture and horticulture. Their cider — the majority of which is alcoholic, but they make some non-alcoholic versions for underage volunteers — is all natural and without pesticides, which may mean uglier fruit, but the end product is worth it. Sturges likes the idea of the group being “the few bad apples who help to ‘spoil’ the >>
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7516 Meade Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15208 www.eastendfood.coop . 412-242-3598 30 PGHCITYPAPER.COM
current conventional agricultural and cider making processes.” The majority of the cider is used to support events that promote nonprofits and community organizations, including the upcoming 2020 Brewhaha benefiting the Oak Hollow Land Trust in March; the Weather Permitting concert at Tree Pittsburgh in July; and the group’s biggest day of the year, A Few Bad Apples Ciderfest at the WBU Event Center in October. (You can stay up to date on event details at the group’s Facebook page.) “It’s hard to get someone interested in sustainability by giving them a knobby, pitted piece of fruit,” says Sturges. “But give them a glass of crisp hard cider with tiny bubbles tickling their nose, made from that same knobby, pitted fruit and you can make them a believer.” •
Funding provided in part by the Westmoreland County Tourism Grant Program.
222 MAIN STREET • DOWNTOWN IRWIN 724-367-4000 • LAMPTHEATRE.ORG
Established in 1937, The Lamp Theatre eatrre boasts a variety of entertainment from movies m mo oviees to concerts and everything in between. true n. A tru ue community project that was built and cu currently urrenttlyy staffed through volunteer efforts. We look forward to hosting our neighbors and d ffriends dss at The Lamp Theatre throughout thee year!
JOIN US FOR THESE UPCOMING SHOWS!
March 13-15
Saturday MaR. 21
Top of the World
Cyril Wecht
Carpenters Tribute
Saturday Mar. 28
Kix with Fonic 8 PM $56
3&8 PM $40
2&7 PM • $39
Friday April 3
Saturday April 4
Bowie Live 8 PM • $25
saturday April 18
Matthew Boyce as Elvis
8 PM $25
Rhonda Vincent & the rage
8 PM • $49 TASTE MAGAZINE 2020 PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 31
CP PHOTOS: JARED WICKERHAM
GetMoMuffins
More Than Muffins BY AMANDA WALTZ // AWALTZ@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
T
HERE’S THE SAYING that if cooking is an art, then
baking is an exact science, where any miscalculation could result in a collapsed cake or rock-hard cookies. But don’t tell that to Robin Stanton of GetMoMuffins. “I can’t follow a baking recipe to save my life,” says Stanton, who runs her small baked goods delivery business with her two teen daughters. After years of moving around for advertising and marketing jobs, the Pittsburgh native returned to her hometown in 2012, looking for a new career path. Not long after, she started freewheeling her way through muffins, cake donuts, and other baked goods, and with the help of a contact at Pittsburgh Public Market, went through the process of getting the required business permits. She now works out of a commercial kitchen in Carnegie, and takes orders online, which she then delivers to customers as far away as Butler. The direction is surprising considering she has no previous culinary or catering experience, not to mention a family with little interest in many of the products GetMo specializes in. “We’re not very big sweet eaters, so when I would
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“I can’t follow a baking recipe to save my life.”
make cookies, brownies, and stuff like that, we’d eat it the day it was made, and then we just wouldn’t touch it again,” she says. She tried making goodies that would not go to waste, and one of her creations, candy cane muffins, was a hit. With GetMo, she branches into different sweet and savory muffins, combining classics like chocolate chip and blueberry with more experimental flavors. On any given week, customers might find filled muffins featuring middles of peach marmalade, s’mores, caramel, or jalapeno jelly, or what she calls “dinner muffins” made with parmesan cheese and black peppercorn, or kale and bacon. But baking to the beat of her own drum has also resulted in outcomes, both intentional and accidental, that make GetMo so distinct. To avoid paying the high cost for eggs, Stanton found a way to make many of her offerings — including the muffins — without the staple ingredient. Her signature granola — an uncharacteristically soft, crumbly mix of cinnamon, cashews, almonds, dark chocolate, and cranberries — was a happy mistake. “I didn’t follow something correctly,” she says. “I didn’t
Robin Stanton of GetMoMuffins
getmomuffins.com bake it as long as I was supposed to. It was a hot mess.” Her business model also veers away from the brick-and-mortar model familiar to most bakeries. Since GetMo started, Stanton has seen a demand for delivered catering, especially with business clients tired of the same old franchise donuts or sandwiches provided at breakfast or lunch meetings. Now she gets consistent orders that could range up to a couple hundred breakfast boxes, which contain regular or gluten-free muffins and a serving of yogurt and granola. GetMo also carries sandwiches for breakfast and lunch, and tater tots smothered in a variety of toppings. But as Stanton puts it, she doesn’t limit herself to large catering for business clients. “I like to be accessible for everyone,” she says. “If a person at home just wants to order something for themselves, I’ll do that, too.” She adds that customers often order food as gifts for people who are homebound due to an illness, injury, or a new baby. Besides personally delivering every order, she also tries to keep her prices reasonable (the meal boxes usually cost less than $10), so anyone can enjoy a muffin or sandwich. “I really like it, and my goal was always that everyone should be able to eat no matter what their situation is,” she says. • TASTE MAGAZINE 2020 PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 33
PHOTO: ERIN KELLY
The School of Chocolate BY LISA CUNNINGHAM // LCUNNING@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
U
S.K. Frey Chocolates and Confections skfrey.com
Adda Coffee and Tea House addacoffeehouse.com
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NDER A SHEET OF GLASS at Adda Coffee
and Tea House on Pittsburgh’s North Side, a chocolate bar from S.K. Frey Chocolates and Confections is broken into small squares, carefully arranged into a work of art on display at the counter. Under the register, one of the company’s wrapped bars sits among a row of other hip chocolates with clean and minimalistic labels lining a shelf. It’s a bit like the craft beer scene for desserts. Artisanal beanto-bar chocolates, made from scratch with care, from the purchase of the cacao beans to the final product for consumption. Sally Frey, a chocolatier, chef, and professor in food studies at Chatham University who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, had worked with chocolates for decades before formalizing it into a brand in 2016 when she founded S.K. Frey. She aims not just to delight people’s senses with her products, but also their minds, and she’s found chocolate is the perfect tool. “Chocolate is a connector with people,” says Frey. “From an educator’s perspective, to get people interested in the food system or small business makers, the vehicle of chocolate has been a really fun one to work with.” At $8 a bar, S.K. Frey chocolates are admittedly not for everyday consumption, but they are perfect gifts or, as Frey says, “great to share over a cup of coffee.” She puts an incredible amount of care into not just choosing her sources, but who she chooses to collaborate with on bringing the products to customers. She credits Pittsburgh artist Daniel Gurwin’s beautiful package design and branding with bringing
more people to her bars. And she expresses gratitude to Adda’s two Pittsburgh coffee shops for selling the bars, the only places in town where you can purchase her chocolates. Frey met the owner of Adda on the day the shop first opened, and they’ve developed such a strong connection that she says she has no desire to expand elsewhere. Each month, she creates a new bar for the shop, including a “travel series” featuring chocolates based on her global adventures and interests. One of the most popular so far has been her Tokyo bar, made with matcha, sesame seed brittle, and Pocky sticks. “I’ve said in class a lot that I’m a nerdy chef,” says Frey. “I don’t want to not use my hands, but I also don’t want to not use my brain.” In addition to teaching at Chatham, Frey also holds occasional chocolate workshops open to the public. At the end of her classes, Frey says she likes to give her students a gift. The day after we speak, a package arrives on my desk. Inside, a chocolate in the shape of a carrot sits in a carefully-arranged piece of plastic wrap, sealed shut with a beautifully designed branded sticker. Frey shares that it’s bean-to-bar chocolate, painted with orange and green dyes made from carrots and chlorophyll. It’s the perfect way to describe her life’s work: a chef, an educator, and an entertainer, wrapped up in a thoughtfully prepared package. The carrot is so perfectly shaped and decorated, it feels shameful to destroy it with a bite, but I can’t resist. It tastes delightful. •
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