El Burro is a tiny little Mexican joint on Federal Street in Pittsburgh's North Side neighborhood. While not necessarily a dining destination in its own right, if you find yourself in the neighborhood visiting the Mattress Factory, Randyland, or the Aviary, for example, it's a great place to grab some quick grub.
Although they have a small amount of counter-type seating, this place is really more suited to takeout- making it especially suited for residents of the North Side like us!
Thai food is one of our favorite cuisines and one that we make a lot at home, so it takes a really good Thai restaurant for us to get excited.
Luckily there's no shortage of Thai restaurants in the city for when we just don't feel like cooking- Nicky's Thai Kitchen being one of the most universally loved and acclaimed.
If you've spent some time working your way through our meal and restaurant reviews on this site, you'll know that my general pattern for ordering items is if it sounds weird or is a flagship/namesake menu item, I must try it. At Peppi's Old Tyme Sandwich Shop, this came in the form of The 7, also known as the Roethlisburger.
With a sandwich named after Big Ben himself, there is no other that I would rather try- and now I can't order anything else from their menu.
In 2022, Subba moved around the block to East Ohio Street. We have not visited the new location yet and this is from the former iteration. When we return we will update our review accordingly.
Nepal isn't known as a culinary capital of the world, but during our travels we fell in love with the country's unique cuisine– specifically the momos (a local dumpling) and daal bhat (a common feature in traditional lunch sets).
We weren't expecting to find this cuisine in Pittsburgh, but to our surprise a local Nepali family opened Subba Asian in the North Side which features dishes from India, China, and their home country of Nepal.
Naturally, we had to try the Nepali food we fell in love with during our visit.
Our quest to find Pittsburgh's best burger brought us to the popular local chain Burgatory, which prides itself on having organic and all natural ingredients, massive portions, and a devious selection of meats ranging from Wagyu beef to grass fed elk.
With multiple locations around Pittsburgh, including in PPG Paints Arena and Acrisure Stadium, we hoped that the burger chain would shine where its major competitor BRGR fell flat. Luckily, after sampling our way around the Burgatory menu, we can most certainly say that it does.
When a friend of ours told us to go try out Quik-It Chicken, a chicken restaurant located in the same building as a gas station in the North Side, we thought he was kidding. Â Gas station food is generally something we wouldn't consider good dining in any capacity. Â But knowing this friend, and his off-the-wall recommendations actually being amazing most of the time, we went for it and do not regret the decision in the slightest.
When it comes to contemporary art, you never know what you are going to get. This is part of the fun in visiting these museums because there never seems to be one particular style that is on display. Sometimes it is disappointing, other times thought provoking, but overall you never really know what will be around the next bend.
At Pittsburgh's contemporary art museum, Mattress Factory, we found each exhibit to be more interesting than the last and left wondering why it took us so long to visit this museum in the first place.
Pittsburgh's massive specialty stores have a way of embracing their size and end up turning into museums for all to enjoy. There is Artifacts, the import store for the rich and famous; Construction Junction, the re-use store for the rest of us; and in our latest exploration we visited Bicycle Heaven, the store for bike lovers.
Much like the other unusual stores we've visit in the city, when we say that Bicycle Heaven is large, we mean it. The store claims to be the largest bike shop in the USA, sells tens of thousands of items on eBay, and covers two floors with about a dozen rooms in its North Side warehouse.
Naturally, this sounds exactly like the kind of place we want to explore when enjoying our city.
After a somewhat disappointing visit to Spak Brothers in Garfield, we've been taking pizza recommendations in Pittsburgh with a grain of salt. It wasn't until we met up with a group of acquaintances who shared our opinion of Spak Brothers (and Pittsburgh pizza as a whole) that we started to get excited about another option they were raving about.
That pizza joint was Slice on Broadway in Beechview, and it wasn't but an hour later that we were in our car driving out to give it a shot.
One of Pittsburgh's most popular museums is the Kamin Science Center (formerly the Carnegie Science Center) on the North Side. This massive complex is home to several wings featuring displays of unique sciences including aerospace, water, sports science, physics, medicine, and more.
As engineers and self-described science nerds, this was one museum we have been very eager to check out.