My Favorites for Pittsburgh Restaurant Week

It’s a great week to enjoy summertime crops cooked up by Pittsburgh’s skilled chefs.

By Leah Lizarondo
The Brazen Kitchen, Pittsburgh Magazine

If the Pittsburgh Restaurant Week Winter Edition is my oasis in the dreary cold, its summer edition is just what I need to put my favorite season of the year on the good side of “over-the-top.”

It’s no secret that I love to cook at home — especially in August, the peak of our preciously short growing season. Tomatoes, peppers, summer squashes, greens, beans. There’s so much good stuff that’s available from our local farmers. And truly, this time of year is the best to experience vegetables at their peak and taste the just-harvested goodness. It is no exaggeration that they taste amazingly different.

As much as I enjoy cooking with vegetables at their peak at home, I also love to explore our restaurants and taste the creative dishes our local chefs are cooking. There is no better (or easier) time to shift to a vegetable-forward menu: Nature is offering us such a great palette to work with! It is great to see some Restaurant Week menus that are doing just that — celebrating the season.

Restaurant Week officially begins Monday, but some spots are kicking things off this weekend. This time my list of picks includes some “classics” along with new, exciting restaurants.

Best reason to get out of the city: Eighty Acres Kitchen & Bar in Plum

It is with great embarrassment that I admit that I am “one of those” people whose average daily or weekly (OK, monthly) travel radius stays within the 5-mile mark. BUT I do travel for food. By plane even.

This week, I am making my way to Eighty Acres because how could I miss this three-course dinner for $30.15? For the first course, a choice of chilled buttermilk vegetable soup or a roasted garlic (peaking right now!) and kale soup. For the second course grilled peaches (heavens) with wild arugula and soba or pickled cauliflower (be still, my heart) with shaved fennel quinoa and shallot vinaigrette. And to top it off, brown-rice fritters. (It’s so hard to write this whole post without getting hungry.)