Pittsburgh Food & Flavors

Regional Specialties

• Banana Split
  What? You didn't know this confection was invented in a Latrobe drugstore in 1904?
• Burgh Bits & Bites Food Tours
  Take a tour of the Strip District, a fantastic food destination.
• Cabbage Rolls (Golabki)
  Very humble but very much loved (even revered) here in Pittsburgh.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Cabbage Roll Queen of Southwestern Pennsylvania is prepared for Pig Fest
    Josephine Gresko makes 1,200 cabbage rolls for Carmichaels Pig Fest, October, 2009 and provides her recipe.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Ethnic lunch to fuel South Side house tour
    Another recipe, cooked on top of sauerkraut.
• Chipped Chopped Ham
  Wikipedia will tell you what it is.
  • Isaly's
    Makers of Ice Cream (Klondikes) and Chipped Chopped Ham, Isaly's website includes their recipe for ham barbecue using chipped chopped ham.
• Halusky
  Polish noodles and cabbage. An Eastern European side dish that is so popular here they sell it at marching band competitions.
  • Food Network's Chef Guy Fieri at Kelly-O's
    Kelly O shows Guy Fieri how to make haluski with noodles, cabbage, onions and bacon.
  • Guy Fieri's Holy Haluski Recipe
    He makes it a bit more gourmet with pancetta, fresh thyme, garlic, pancetta, capers and white wine.
• Italian Sausage
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Fresh Italian Sausages With Peppers
    A recipe for this Pittsburgh Italian favorite is include in this article from Feb. 24, 2002 about Uncle Charley's sausages.
  • Italian Sausage with Peppers and Onions
    This is a common dish at large get-togethers. Watch this YouTube video from Isernio's Sausage Company that will show you how to make it.
  • Accidental Hedonist: Italian Hot Sausage Sandwich - Still Yet Another Pittsburgh Super Bowl Recipe
• Italian Wedding Soup
  Italian Wedding Soup is a standard at Italian restaurants in Pittsburgh.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Kitchen Mailbox: Italian Wedding Soup: a delicious link with tradition
    The Pittsburgh Post Gazette posted this recipe on January 13, 2000.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Kitchen Mailbox: An Italian Wedding soup to crow about
    A PG article from January 24, 2008
  • WQED-TV: Crockpot Italian Wedding Soup
• Kielbasi
  When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1979, the first meal I cooked was kielbasi and pierogies. I guess that's why I haven't left.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Iconic Pittsburgh Food
    PolishPierogi explains why kielbasi deserves that title and where you can get it.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Duquesne Hungarian church carries on kolbasz tradition
    A November 22, 1999 article telling about the annual kielbasa sale at the Hungarian Reformed Church of Duquesne.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Multinational kielbasa boasts many flavors, spellings
  • Epicurious: Kielbasa in Recipes
    Here are some sophisticated ways to serve it from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Mrs. Fedur's Homemade Noodles
    An article from August 12, 1999 based on a recipe from the Free Hungarian Reform Church of McKeesport. You can make these and use them in haluski.
• Mystery Sandwich
  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published this recipe that Jane and Michael Stern came up with for Joe Chiodo's Mystery Sandwich (hamburger, kielbasa, ham and sauerkraut on an italian loaf).
• Nut Rolls (or Potica)
  You can make them at home from this Slovenian recipe in the Post-Gazette (Thursday, April 08, 2004) or order them from Bubba.
• Philly Cheesesteak with Pepper and Onions
  Oh, my. A recipe from the east. But popular in Pittsburgh, none the less.
• Pierogies
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pierogi Passion defies all ethnic lines
    A Thursday, October 04, 2001, article by Rafal Geremek.
  • Pierogies Plus
    These pierogies are prepared in the Polish tradition by eastern Europeans. If you want more authentic pierogies, you'll have to fly to Warsaw or Krakow. They now have an online store where you can even buy DVDs on making your own pierogies and cabbage rolls! In the January 2011 issue of Saveur Magazine, Pierogies Plus made their Top 100!
• Pittsburgh Salad
  This is a tossed green salad, topped with grated provolone cheese, french fries and either grilled chicken or steak. The Union Grill on Craig Street in Oakland can show you how it's done. And if you are worried about the French Fries, you can try this recipe using rutabagas instead.
  • Heinz Red Zone Recipe: Pittsburgh-Style Steak Salad
    Raina Harris gives a recipe for a Pittsburgh salad but doesn't mention that you can top it with grilled chicken instead.
• Primanti Brothers Sandwich
  Yes! This is the one with the french fries and cole slaw piled on top. Makes for a quick night snack in the Strip District when you're loading up produce at 3 am... In 2007, they were awarded an America's Classics Award from the James Beard Foundation.
  • The Steel City’s Signature Sandwich
    An article by Skylar H. Riddle, Spring 2009, about the famous Primanti Brothers sandwich with its french fries and coleslaw inside.
  • Epicurious Recipe for Primanti's Sandwich
    Courtesy of Lidia Bastianich.
• Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve
  This custom from Italy is now fairly common in Pittsburgh. Whatever you do, remember not to eat chicken on New Year's Eve but instead, pork or fish since pigs root forward and fish swim forward but chickens scratch backwards.
  • Seven fishes feast flavors Christmas Eve
    This Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article can help you get started.
• Tuna Melt
  The Tribune Riview says Eat'n Parks serve thousands of them during Lent and they are easy enough for a kid to make: put a scoop of tuna on toast, top with cheese and melt in the toaster oven. The link above is to a lighter tuna melt recipe from Eating Well.

• Vareniki
  A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recipe from Out of this Kitchen
• Wedding Cookies
  • The Wedding? I’m Here for the Cookies
    "For as long as anyone here can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead — sometimes months — mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. Then, on the big day, hungry guests ravage the buffet, piling plates high and packing more in takeout containers so they can have them for breakfast the next day." An article from the December 15, 2009, New York Times.
  • NPR: What's a Wedding Without Cookies?
    "The must-have cookie table is a tradition reflecting the diverse ethnic communities of steel-mill towns, especially in western Pennsylvania." "The wedding-cookie table tradition in many steel-mill communities has its roots in Italy and Eastern Europe." June 13, 2007.
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Youngstown lays claim to the cookie table

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Food Articles

• Pittburgh Post-Gazette: This is Pittsburgh Food
  A series of stories and videos on local traditions by Gretchen McKay and videographer and photographer Steve Mellon.
  • Bell's, a tiny market in Braddock, keeps serving its community
    A May 31, 2012 article about the tiny shop at the corner of Braddock and Sixth, one of a handful of independent retailers still standing in a town that just a few years ago was almost given up for dead.
  • Almost ended by a fire, an Easter bread tradition is resurrected in a new church
    An April 05, 2012 article about Mary Battaglia's Italian Easter bread, with a recipe for a dozen loaves.
  • A century after it started as a cart, Wholey's draws hungry crowds
    The iconic fish store in the Strip District is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with a giant party in September. Learn more about Wholey's history in this 2/23/2012 article.
  • Making sausage: Local Italians gather to preserve meat as well as traditions from the Old Country
    This is the first in a series of articles from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2012 exploring Pittsburgh food traditions. There is also a video to go along with it.
• Family's traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes celebrates Christmas Eve vigil
  An article from the Monday, December 19, 2005, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Virginia Phillips about the Italian traditional meatless Christmas Eve meal of seven fishes.
• "Christmas Eve feast of the fishes"
  A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from Monday, December 20, 1999 describing the Italian tradition that is still observed by many Italian-American families in Pittsburgh.
• "Dining Through the Decades"
  100 years of Pittsburgh Food! Check out this piece of Pittsburgh memorabilia in today's Post Gazette! See how much YOU can remember... An article by Woodene Merriman from December 17, 1999.
• "Food historian shows how immigrant recipes have survived, and served, America"
  An article from the Thursday, July 22, 2004 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Diana Nelson Jones talks about Donna Gabaccia, Food Historian and Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and immigrant food in Pittsburgh.
• "A Hot Dog Program"
  Looking for a good hot dog stand in Pittsburgh? Our favorite documentary filmaker, Rick Sebak, takes a tour across America. There's also an article in the May 1999 Pittsburgh Magazine especially about places in Pittsburgh.
• Klavon's Ice Cream Parlor
  Read this Post-Gazette article from June 24, 1999, about the rebirth of a Strip District landmark.
• "Sandwiches that you will like"
  This is the companion website for the national TV program produced by WQED and Rick Sebak.
• Take a bite out of Kennywood
  A June 20, 1999 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about the food thrills that compete with the roller coasters at the Pittsburgh amusement park. Like the 1 pound servings of french fries with gravy, melted cheese, barbecue sauce, etc at the Potato Patch.