From the moment you arrive at Commerce Bar in East Liberty, you know you'll be getting the full speakeasy experience.
That is because to even access this one you need to make your way to a back alley behind a popular stretch of restaurants and seek out the door to the bar. We could tell you which door, but where is the fun in that? (The end of this article will have a hint.)
Once you enter, the fun of this bar begins.
When we first visited Sly Fox Brewing, it was for their downtown Pittsburgh location just steps away from Point State Park.
To put it bluntly, we were not fans.
While the beer was true-to-form for their traditional styles, we just generally thought the space was small, cramped even when the patio was closed, and wasn't the kind of place we would make a dedicated trip downtown to enjoy. If you work nearby it is great for a quick round, but we just never found ourselves prioritizing a second visit.
Thankfully, Sly Fox Brewing has opened a second location in Pittsburgh, at the stunning Highline in South Side (close to Station Square right on the Great Allegheny Passage), and has quickly become one of our favorite spots for beer in Pittsburgh!
We're just going to be upfront here- Pittsburgh isn't known for being a late-night city.
Part of this is cultural- the demand for late-night entertainment simply is not great (yet). Another part is due to local laws- late-night serving is often heavily restricted. Furthermore, many of our popular business districts are also nestled within residential neighborhoods where noise ordinances cause businesses to close earlier than they'd otherwise like. And yet another part is simply that those who do want a nighttime vibe almost always head to South Side.
That being said, the late-night scene in Pittsburgh is changing for the better, so in this one we thought we'd share a few great activities you may want to check out after the clock strikes midnight!
Notes: While we always recommend reconfirming hours before visiting any place shared on our site, this is especially important for late-night spots. Hours can and do change faster than even we can keep up with. One spot may be open with food service til 5 am one week, then suddenly change to 2 am, 11 pm, or 8 pm the next (the original Primanti Brothers in the Strip District is a great example- it was once 24/7 but as of publication now closes at midnight). Finally, as always, if your late-night outing involves alcohol, please be responsible and Uber or have a designated driver.
Barcadia opened in 2022 as a second-floor concept for The Market Exchange. This bar, accessed via a separate staircase at street level, boasts 35 games (a mix of pinball and arcade games), a bar, food service from nearby Slider Vibes, and access to a backroom speakeasy with separate bar menu to name a few.
For our first visit, we had a bit of time before a dinner reservation downtown and decided to pop by to play a few games with an alcoholic beverage. While I want to tell you that we liked our brief time at Barcadia, I have to admit, there were several misses here.
If you're like us, you were probably pretty sad to hear that the Allegheny Overlook was not returning for another season in 2022. This pop-up space on Fort Duquesne Blvd was a relaxing hangout spot with food trucks, great views of the Allegheny River and PNC Park, and, perhaps most importantly, beer flowing from one of our favorite breweries- Braddock-based Brew Gentlemen.
While we still lament this closure, there is good news in that Brew Gentlemen is sticking around downtown Pittsburgh in the summer of 2022 with a new pop-up beer garden at Steel Plaza on Grant Street!
Naturally, we had to check this one out shortly after it opened for the season and share a bit more about what to expect at this one.
In 2023, Lucky Sign Spirits moved to Gibsonia, PA. We visited their former Millvale location which we are told is now closed.
Lucky Sign Spirits opened in the heart of Millvale in 2020 and quickly grew its portfolio to include an array of conventional and non-conventional spirits alike.
While the distillery's space can only be described as small, and they presently are only open for quick tastings, bottle sales, and cocktails to go, this one packs a punch and has a bright future ahead of it!
We always want a good party in Pittsburgh, and when it comes to a food and beverage celebration, Pittsburgh Magazine always does it right.
In the past, we have attended events like their Best of the Burgh Party, as well as their Best Restaurants Party, which, in our opinion, is one of the greatest celebrations you can attend every year if you love our local Pittsburgh restaurants.
In 2022, Pittsburgh Magazine returned with a new spring party, aptly named the Wine & Spirits Festival, to go along with their other libations-themed celebrations (separate wine and whiskey festivals typically taking place in the fall).
We were guests of Pittsburgh Magazine for this party at Rivers Casino in its inaugural year and wanted to share a bit more of what this one was like in this one!
If you've read other articles on our site, you'd likely know by now that we are a bit wine crazy. Not only are we visiting all of the best Pittsburgh wine bars and local wineries, but we also have taken many wine certification classes through the global program WSET (Jeremy is working on Level 4, Angie has completed WSET Level 2) and even run our own wine blog as a side project.
We trace this love affair with wine back to one particular source, the wine school Palate Partners in Lawrenceville where we've visited for many of their informal First and Third Friday tastings over the years (it is also where we took our WSET Level 2 class as they are authorized instructors for some levels of the program).
The informal tastings are great for those who want to get into wine because they are relaxed and take a somewhat high-level discussion into the wines you are sampling. You don't have to know anything at all about wine to have a great time at these. But for those who want to go a bit deeper, but perhaps not into certification level, Palate Partners offers a number of other themed classes to try out each month as well.
We recently were guests of Palate Partners for a Super Tuscan class, and thought it'd be fun to share a bit more about what the focused lessons are like!
When we go out to bars in the city, we are often dismayed about how little our Pittsburgh brewery scene is represented on draft lists. In the many, many bars we have visited, it seems like local brews are generally overlooked for larger and more nationally known craft brewers.
This is, on its own, not necessarily a bad thing- we still can find a great craft beer either way. But this viewpoint comes about as we live in a region with nearly 100 breweries within an hour of downtown, and with that kind of stock, you would think more places would carry them as a focal point on the menu!
Enter Mike's Beer Bar on the North Shore. This one may look like just another bar near PNC Park, but is one that elevates their offering with over 80 beers on tap, a monster can selection (500+ bottles), and, perhaps the best part, almost all of them are local!
Lawrenceville Distilling started making craft spirits in their namesake neighborhood in 2018. Since then, their popularity increased quite a bit to the point that they were awarded the title of Pennsylvania's Gin Distillery in 2019 and Absinthe Distillery in 2020 by the New York International Spirits Competition.
Unfortunately for us, we only made it into this gem of a distillery (tucked away off of the booming Butler Street) in late 2021. While we would still say that this one only has a few spirits available to purchase, their cocktail program and resident food pop-up make for a delightful night out all around.