Wise County Biscuits & Cafe is a breakfast and lunch spot serving up their delicious homemade biscuits, breakfast sandwiches, and more in their adorable North Side cafe.
We have long been fans of their biscuits and are regular customers at their farmer's market booths, so we are ecstatic that they now have a brick-and-mortar shop where we can continue to get our biscuit fix all year long!
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!
Fat Cat Lounge in the North Side is a new concept from the owners of fine dining spot Fig & Ash next door. With a retro vibe, casual food and drinks, and a second floor music venue, Fat Cat adds to the growing list of destination eating and drinking spots on East Ohio Street.
Fig & Ash is one of our favorite restaurants in the city, so when we heard the owners were opening up the Fat Cat concept we were thrilled. On our recent visit shortly after their opening, we were instantly amazed at the transformation of the space.
The front door opens into the bar space with a retro vibe including 70s-style couches and old cartoons playing on the TVs. To the left of the bar is a separate dining area that continues the retro theme, and upstairs is an open space that serves as a music venue, complete with another bar.
Yes, this space will do just nicely, and thankfully the experience got even better from there!
The era of the social club often feels like a distant memory. But Pittsburgh is actually home to many private clubs focusing on heritage, sports, and a whole lot more.
Perhaps one of the most well known is Teutonia Mannerchor, the German club residing in none other than Deutschtown in the North Side. Not only is this one of Pittsburgh's oldest and largest private clubs, it is also somewhat difficult to get into without knowing a member or joining yourself.
Thankfully, Teutonia Mannerchor offers a number of public-facing events throughout the year. For roughly nine days each summer, the aptly named Sommerfest is your chance to check out this beautiful building, listen to German music, eat German food, and, of course, drink copious amounts of German beer!
As we have a soft spot for all things German beer, we naturally visited as soon as possible.
Pittsburgh is a sports town, and for the past several decades it seems like the Pirates have not gotten the memo.
Despite the fact that the Pittsburgh Pirates have been, well, awful, PNC Park is often ranked among the best ballparks in the country- and we agree. It really is hard to beat taking in a game at this stunning ballpark.
So whether you are an armchair Pirates fan, a baseball fan at large, or are a die-hard Buccos loyalist, there are many things to keep in mind when visiting PNC Park for a game.
In this guide, we want to share everything you should keep in mind before visiting!
EYV in the North Side is a vegetable-forward restaurant that focuses on utilizing local produce from regional farms. On our recent trip, even in the middle of winter, we were surprised and delighted at the use of local vegetables in all of the comforting, delicious plates.
When it comes to dining healthy in the city, we could certainly use a few more places like this one!
Finally, Pittsburgh has a space museum!
If you follow space news at all, odds are good that you know Pittsburgh's robotics companies are at the forefront of innovations for upcoming missions off-planet. One such company, Astrobotic in the North Side, is designing many new technologies that can be used for upcoming missions to the moon in particular.
To showcase their work and the goals of these missions at large, the company has opened a modest educational museum, aptly named the Moonshot Museum, at their North Side production facility in late 2022.
We got the chance to visit this one just before it opened to the public and share a bit more about what you can expect when visiting!
Whenever we think about restaurants we wish Pittsburgh had more of, our thoughts often go to international food in styles that are horribly underrepresented. Trinidadian food is one such country. Vegan food is one such style.
Enter ShadoBeni- a vegan Trinidadian restaurant that has now found its permanent home in the North Side in the Mexican War Streets.
Throw in the fact that this one is delicious, cheap, and rather approachable (for both takeout and limited dine-in seating), and, well, you can see why this one checks the boxes for us!
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!
There are conventional tours at amphitheaters like Star Lake. Then there are larger stadium tours, like concerts at PNC Park. And then there are the biggest, most outrageous stadium tours for the world's most famous performers.
In Pittsburgh, only one venue is large enough for an event of this size, and Acrisure Stadium (formerly Heinz Field) concerts have historically attracted acts like Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney, Beyonce, U2, and perhaps the most legendary of them all, The Rolling Stones- who we finally got to see at the stadium in 2021.
So in this one, we thought we'd share a bit about what the show was like, thoughts on the seating and sound at the stadium, and other venue-specific points you may want to keep in mind!
Note: Photos in this one were taken at various focal lengths with our phone. True-to-view shots as seen from our seats will be noted in the captions.