La Casa Narcisi is a beautiful winery in Gibsonia that's more than just a tasting room.
It's more like an estate, complete with a restaurant, outdoor seating area, and stages for concerts. In our opinion, there isn't much better than sitting on the patio on a warm summer night, listening to live music with a bottle of wine and a classic Italian meal.
Although new breweries have been popping up all over the region the past few years, a newer trend is breweries that have their own restaurants. Cinderlands Beer Co. in Lawrenceville is one such brewery/restaurant hybrid that offers creative and delicious beers with interesting small plates and entrees.
Cinderlands Beer Co. has three locations, one right on Butler St. in lower Lawrenceville, a second in the Strip District, and one in Wexford north of the city.
While the bulk of this review is based off our visits to the Lawrenceville location, we've also enjoyed The Warehouse in the Strip District many times as well. The Lawrenceville spot features cozy wooden booths along the length of the restaurant, an upstairs seating area, an exposed brick wall with a huge Cinderlands logo painted on it, and of course, the sophisticated bar that makes you feel like you've been transported back in time.
But Cinderlands has more than just good looks. We visited shortly after they opened (and several times since) and one thing that strikes is just how interesting and good the beers are for being such a young brewery. Tea kolsch, coffee double IPA, and strawberry sour IPA are just some of the unique beers you'll find here. And although the food menu is somewhat small, we really appreciate the effort they're putting in to crafting and creating these dishes.
If you are familiar with the cocktails in Pittsburgh, the name Spencer Warren may be familiar to you.
For those who are not, the short of it is that Spencer Warren is a local cocktail specialist who has made a name for himself with craft creations at his previous bar, Embury (now closed).
Since then he became the force behind the local edition of the international Miracle pop-up bar (which his team managed), consulted on cocktail menus at many of your favorite local bars, and is finally returning to the spotlight with his new bar, The Warren, in the Cultural District.
As we missed being able to try cocktails at Embury, our experience with Spencer Warren's cocktails have only been on the periphery. But we liked what we saw, and made sure to make our way down to The Warren shortly after opening to give his cocktails a try.
Tina's Bar in Bloomfield is not your typical Pittsburgh bar. It isn't quite a dive, but it isn't an upscale craft cocktail bar either.
In fact, it is a bit of both, and if you're wondering how that would work out well together you're not alone. We wondered the same thing.
But we're happy to report that this one walks a fine line in a modern retro theme, and while that may not make much sense right now, we're going to do our best to highlight why this is truly the case!
Eighth & Hays is a premium wine bar located in Homestead, PA, just a stone's throw from the popular Waterfront shopping district.
While this one offers an array of high-end wines for sampling, the bar does a fantastic job balancing their offering with more conventional wines, beer, and cocktails- perfect for all drinking interests and budgets!
Pittsburgh's alcohol scene is growing at an incredible pace, and over the last few years we've been fortunate to have many breweries, whiskey distilleries, rum distilleries, and even a vodka distillery open and call the region home.
One alcohol style we have not been fortunate enough to have is an infusion producer. This all changed when Bella Bambini Cello opened its doors in Coraopolis in late 2017.
If there is any Christmas popup bar that we try to visit at least once every December, it would be Miracle Bar.
To call this holiday pop-up bar popular would be an understatement, as seemingly everyone wants a piece of the action- Miracle Bar is routinely the most popular and can have lines to match.
Thankfully, in subsequent years the bar has moved into larger and larger spaces to accommodate guests, and has truly grown to be the premier holiday bar in the city!
Note: Photos in this article may be from past Miracle pop-up iterations and may not be fully reflective of this year's popup design.
Tequila Cowboy is a country-themed bar on the North Shore that features a mechanical bull, karaoke room, and live country music.
This spot is perfect for those who like to sing and dance to country music when they go out- be it for a birthday or bachelorette party or even for varied drink specials with a lively ambiance.
It's also the kind of place that most people will either love or hate.
And we can safely say that we sway towards the latter.
In February 2020, Boyd & Blair Vodka stopped offering their Saturday tours and tastings as mentioned in the below article. Instead, the distillery is moving towards offering ticketed cocktail classes and other events that will give guests a chance to tour the property and try their spirits. We will update this article accordingly once we take a class to share what the experience is like.
Most everyone in Pittsburgh knows about our resident whiskey distillery, Wigle Whiskey. For those who are even more into local spirits, you may know about our resident rum distillery, Maggie's Farm Rum. But did you also know that Pittsburgh is home to a vodka distillery as well?
Located just outside the city limits in Glenshaw, PA, on route 8 is Boyd & Blair, a distillery that has been gaining a reputation over the last decade as one of the finest vodka producers in the state- if not the country.
Pittsburgh's brewery scene is pretty astounding. In the past ten years we've gone from having just a handful of breweries to having well over four dozen in an hour radius with another couple dozen set to open in the next few years.
As such, tackling them all can be quite tricky unless you're able to go out for a beer every single weekend.
To help get you out to more breweries in one go, City Brew Tours launched a Pittsburgh beer tour to help introduce beer fans into Pittsburgh's growing and thriving craft beer scene.
We were invited out by City Brew Tours to check out their After Hours Brew Tour which was just the evening out we were looking for.