Year: 2023

Sia’s Garden Grown Review – Vegan Dining in East Liberty

Sia's Garden Grown closed in early 2024.

Sia's Garden Grown is a casual vegan restaurant in East Liberty offering counter-service sandwiches, soups, salads, and desserts. Even though we're not vegan, we're always on the lookout for new vegetarian and vegan spots in Pittsburgh as our town could definitely use more options in this category.

Our recent takeout meal from Sia's hit all the right notes for us – sandwiches bursting with flavorful veggies and spreads, hearty soups, and tasty desserts combined to make a healthful and filling meal.

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Deniz Mediterranean Cuisine Review – Approachable Turkish Fare on McKnight

Deniz Mediterranean Cuisine was formerly named Ross Cafe. We visited the restaurant prior to the rename.

Deniz Mediterranean Cuisine on McKnight Road initially opened as a breakfast and brunch spot, focusing on items like omelettes, waffles, and crepes. We're always looking for bright spots on McKnight to invigorate our mundane shopping trips, and this spot seemed like an interesting break from the mold.

Our interest was piqued even further when we saw a few Turkish options like Menemen (a scrambled egg dish with tomatoes and peppers) and Sigara Boregi (rolled phyllo dough stuffed with cheese and fried). Shortly after opening, we checked out their menu again online and noticed that they had started serving dinners, too, focusing on Turkish dishes like kebabs, wraps, and pide (Turkish-style pizza). 

We went in for a meal right away and are already planning our return.

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Zombies of the Corn Offers a Family-Friendly Haunt

Everyone wants to shoot a zombie horde during Halloween, right?

If this is something you have always wanted to try, you are in luck! Zombies of the Corn in Freedom, PA, offers a chance to contain a zombie apocalypse armed with glow-in-the-dark paintballs!

Although the star attraction at this one is indeed the Zombie ride, the grounds are home to four haunted attractions and makes for a fun, (mostly) family-friendly haunt north of the city.

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Poetry Lounge – Delicious Cocktails at a Neighborhood Bar

If you've been enjoying Pittsburgh's cocktail scene, odds are good you've had a creation from Sean Enright. From local bars and restaurants, he's been found creating stellar menus at quite a few of our favorite places over the years.

But in late 2023, Sean opened his latest project, Poetry Lounge in Millvale.

This one combines a welcoming neighborhood bar with the added splash of craft cocktails featuring a mix of house creations, classics, and shots- all with reasonable price points. Just the kind of neighborhood bar we like!

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Hiking Through the Eliza Fox Trail and Riding Meadow Park

When it comes to hiking at the many parks in and around Fox Chapel, the trails feel a bit disjointed but also connected at the same time.

Running north to south, the loosely connected Eliza Fox Trail network starts at Beechwood Farms, passes through Hardie Valley and Riding Meadow, and later continues through Scott, McCahill, Salamander, and Fay Parks before reaching O'Hara Township.

Although we were not able to hit every park in the above list in our first outing, we managed to take in a roughly 3 1/2 mile out-and-back hike starting at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve through to Riding Meadow and back and made for an enjoyable morning out!

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Phipps Conservatory’s Fall Flower Show – Hometown Harvest

Phipps Conservatory is known for being one of the largest botanical gardens in the region, and also for its seasonal flower shows that are truly events not to be missed.

For 2023's Fall Flower Show, Phipps is celebrating all things harvest with the theme Hometown Harvest. From beekeeping to grape growing, apples to the harvest moon, there really are a number of gorgeous harvest designs in this one!

As with all of our show reviews, we're not going to share every room in the Conservatory (you'll have to visit yourself to see them all!). Instead, we're going to feature a few of our favorite rooms from the show to highlight a cross-section of the displays!

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Smoketoberfest is Roundabout’s End of Season Party

The Roundabout Popup was taken over by East End Brewing in 2024 and Smoketoberfest is set to return on October 19th in 2024. This review is from a Smoketoberfest hosted by Roundabout. While we expect the upcoming event to be the same, some details may be different.

When Roundabout Brewery announced that they were closing their Lawrenceville location, we were pretty bummed. Thankfully, this one did not entirely cease operations and went to remote brewing to continue hosting its seasonal Roundabout Popup space on the North Shore River Trail.

Naturally, their end-of-season event, Smoketoberfest, also remained to celebrate all things fall with fun, friends, beer, and a whole lot of smoked food from some of the best food trucks in Pittsburgh.

We had missed attending this one for many years due to seemingly always being out of town, but after visiting Smoketoberfest for the 10th annual event in 2023, we can see we made a big mistake missing out all those years!

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The Covered Bridge Festival Celebrates Local Bridges

We are quite fortunate to have a number of beautiful covered bridges near Pittsburgh, and Washington and Greene Counties just south of the city boast an impressive thirty bridges between them.

Naturally, it should be no surprise that these two counties got together to put on a Covered Bridge Festival at nine of the thirty sites, and have been doing so every September since 1971!

We made our way out to explore a few of the sites in the Covered Bridge Festival and wanted to share a bit more about what you can expect when visiting, as well as a few logistics you need to keep in mind. As far as festivals go, this one can be quite busy!

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