Your Favorite places in the CITY!

[mercurypa]

I just wanted to start a new thread that can tell people about their favorite places with the city limits. I think its good to keep your money in the city, but Pittsburgh can be a tough place to discover, but there are so many gems.

Here is a new one to get us started!

Six Penn Kitchen. Downtown on Sixth/Penn. Right in the cultural district. A beautiful 2 story renovation and roof top dining/bar to open in the spring. Stop by and see Tom the bartender. He gave me a great tour of the place!

Let us know your favorites both new and old!

Viva Pittsburgh!

[Evergrey]

Abay - East Liberty - Pittsburgh's only Ethiopian restaurant!

Spice Island Tea House - Atwood St. - Oakland - affordable and DELICIOUS southeast asian cuisine!

Nico's Recovery Room - Bloomfield - Love their karaoke night!

Make Your Mark - Point Breeze - randomly discovered this little place this weekend! Cozy coffeehouse with live music performances.

[balistpgh]

Cocoa Cafe in Lawrenceville - Brunch on Sunday there is fantastic.

Bar 11 on the Southside - Gotta love the crazy little toys and highlighters.

[mercurypa]

Union Grill on Craig St

Abruzzi's Italian-Southside 10th st.

Beehive Cafe- Southside CoffeeHouse

Tazza d'Oro-Highland Park Coffeehouse

Piccolo Forno- Lawrenceville =Italian Food, great Lasagna

Buffalo Blues-Wings- Shadyside/East Liberty

City Grill- Southside

[Evergrey]

Club Cafe - SouthSide - Chic concert venue... great sound and atmosphere

Fiori's - Brookline - Capitol Ave. off of W. Liberty - awesome "everyman" pizza

Gooski's - Polish Hill - Fun dive bar brings in an eclectic crowd... crazy jukebox!

Crazy Mocha - 6 locations in the city - all those delicious coffee drinks..... and their generous portions of cheesecake destroy Cheesecake Factory!

Enrico Biscotti - Strip District - best biscotti ever!

[tooluther]

Piccolo Forno: Awesome restaurant in Lawrenceville

PNC Park: I know its cliche but I love the views there

Kopys: My second home on the south side!

South Side Works: Best mixed use development ever

[Evergrey]

PNC Park: I know its cliche but I love the views there

I always go for section 316 myself...

[mercurypa]

A great pic Evergrey! Do any of us work for the PR team for the city? Im beginning to think we should!

The Southside Works development is amazing! Here are my favs there.

ZGallerie- My favorite furniture store in CA, followed me here!

Joseph Beth Booksellers- A beautiful store with a fireplace and friendly staff. A nice alternative to Barnes and Noble.

Kenneth Cole- Always great clothing.

Urban Outfitters- When you are feeling hip.

Qdoba- I could pig out there everyday.

Sur La Table- yuppie cooking at its finest

Cheescake Factory- another CA great that followed me here.

[UrbaniDesDev]

Living on the North Side, there is a place where I take my dog during hot summer days. Its not a club or a restaurant. Just a quiet place I love. just up from the 16th Street on the North Shore of the Allegheny, under great shade trees there is a plot of shady grass where my dog (and I sometime) like to go swimming. Great city views, ducks and geese and boats going by.

Isn't it summer yet???

[TheGerbil]

I'll repeat a few from above and add some of my own:

Bar 11

Union Grill

Crazy Mocha

Spice Island Tea House

Boomerang Barbeque (a great Australian barbeque place in the Strip)

Joe Mama's (Italian place in Oakland - the atmosphere is fun and they have good drinks)

Original Hotdog Shop

Non-restaurant places:

The reservoir in Highland Park

South Side Works (the whole thing)

Schenley Park, along the trails when you can see various parts of the city but you still feel like you're in the middle of nowhere

Point State Park, by the river

Oakland on a warm day, just walking around

[Kasper]

Nothing makes me happier than going to Pamelas in Squirrel Hill on a Sunday morning for Omlettes and Chocolate/Banana crepes and then heading over to Littles Shoes. I swear that is the best shoe store in the world, it is the first place my friends from NYC want to go when they come to visit.

Shopping

Littles, Squirrel Hill

Pgh Jean Company, South Side - Best selection of designer Jeans I've seen anywhere (I could do with a little less Juicy Coulture crap though)

Footloose, Shadyside, Mt. Lebo - Great designer clothes

Pelora, Southside - Amazing furniture

10,000 Villages, Squirrel Hill - Bizarre stuff from around the world

Anthropolgie, Mt. Lebo - Love it

Food

Hyholde - Out by the old airport. It is very posh and very strange (a really old house). The food is AMAZING. A great place no one knows about for special occassions.

Tin Angel, Mt. Washington - Best food on Mt. Washington

India Garden, Oakland

Little Tokyo, Mt. Lebo - great Sushi

Buffalo Blues - Great to watch Penguin games

I'll get back to you on the bars, I have to think about that one as it is too important to not reflect upon properly!

[PghUSA]

Evergrey, that is a fantastic shot of PNC Park! Great work, I've seen lots of pics of the skyline beyond the park, but that one has to be top 3 in my mind (the Majestic behind there beautiful!)

I might be glorifying the past here but I MISS TOP OF THE TRIANGLE! Now that Windows on the World is gone (the other great skyscraper restaurant) and Skybar? in Toronto is not exactly a U.S. place, we should bring back TotT!

Oh all those places on the list are making me hungry now (in more ways then just food )

[mercurypa]

I must add the remodeled Giant Eagle on Centre Ave. A great new urban concept store, geared towards the urban consumer instead of the suburban ones! The underground parking is great in cold weather. Plus the mod condos above are almost done!

[chucka]

Here is a great link for great things in Pittsburgh:

I heart PGH

The website highlights places and things that is most loved about Pittsburgh.

I love Pittsburgh SO MUCH!

I even bought the t-shirt.

[TheGerbil]

Great website! I had never seen it before. It is added to my favorites list now

[mercurypa]

Here are a couple of my local haunts in Highland Park:

The Taj Mahal Restaurant- Great Indian Food, friendly staff. Located in the embryonic Bryant Street business district of Highland Park.

5904 Bryant St, 15206

http://www.tajmahalinc.com

The Union Project- A church turned community center, soon to have a coffeehouse. Its a great cause, and an innovative use of empty church space.

http://www.unionproject.org/Homeh

[PghUSA]

Chucka that is an awesome link!

I like what I see with that Unionproject Merc

[mercurypa]

Thanks PGH! The Union Project is very dear to my heart. It is representative of everything that makes American cities great!

They have a fund raising project right now that involves paper recycling. You can take all your forms of paper and place it in the green and yellow dumpster in the alley behind the church. You help the environment and support a great cause. They are located on Negley/Stanton at the junction of Highland Park and East Liberty. Thus the name Union.

[Evergrey]

Pittsburgh seems to do well when it comes to adaptive reuses of churches.

Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville

Halo Cafe in South Side

Sanctuary dance club in Strip District

Mr. Smalls Funhouse (concert venue and recording studio) in Millvale

[PghUSA]

^^ Good point, we do afterall have the highest percapita of churches then anywhere in the U.S. outside of Utah, basically anywhere in the U.S. that doesn't have a strong church-founded-the-state tradition.

Glad to see how we are using that resource to make Pittsburgh viable in the 21st century as older churches go "offline" and with population declines.

Merc, of all the uses I've seen I think that Unionproject is the one that gives the most back to the city, I hope we can have more great assets like that in the region!

[mercurypa]

We could probably create a micro design industry on adaptive reuse of church's just with all of the reuse capital that we have here.

When I first moved here in 04 we almost rented a huge 4000 sq foot loft on in a church on 40th/Liberty. They redid the church into two lofts and the rectory house next door. Its is amazing. I love this idea.

[TheGerbil]

I live in Highland Park too. A couple of my favorites for that neighborhood:

Enrico's Taza D'oro. Nice little neighborhood cafe.

The Italian Ice cart by the entrance to the park. The same guy has been running it for years, and you can rely on him being there if there weather is at all warm.

I wish Highland Park had more of a business district than it does, but at least it is convenient to East Liberty, the Waterworks, and Butler Street.

[mercurypa]

Howdy neighbor! I wonder if there are any committees etc, to try and attract more businesses to Bryant St? I think its an enterprise zone with tax breaks, but not to sure. Its a great neighborhood with lots of people who would frequent the business area. At least a few more restauraunts, maybe a little nightlife?

[PghUSA]

I got one, maybe this is a bit strange but for a history/poli sci major you'd understand . . . Trinity churchyard downtown where although some have been moved to the almost park like Allegheny in Lawrenceville, you can still see Pittsburgh 18th century history first hand, that is if you can decifer some of the well weathered inscriptions. For a history buff such as myself that and the Ft. Pitt Blockhouse and the Duquesne ground stones at the Point are extremely interesting. Trinity churchyard actually inherited the gravesite from the French who started using the bluff in the 1750's after the first flood at the point, and who in turn inherited it from the Indians of the area as a place of reverance. The juxtaposition is stunning, in the middle of 21st century glass and steel and corporate global titans is a trip back in time, climbing the stairs to it and it's placement between an early 1900's tower and a gothic cathedral that could take you back to the middle ages is also very thought provoking. Just me but the fact that lots of the F&I war leaders and Mt. Oliver's namesake are interred there is quite a history lesson!

Here's a good article on it's historical significance:

http://pittsburghcitypaper.ws/archive.cfm?...omplete&ref=338

[Evergrey]

I went to a couple of my favorite PGH places yesterday...

The Quiet Storm - really incredible and unique coffeehouse/performance venue/hangout/vegan cafe, etc in Garfield. Their Mexican Hot Chocolate is sooooooo good!

Rose Tea Cafe - Taiwanese place in Squirrel Hill... the Chunk Chicken is a delightful culinary experience