‘Sandwiches’
Many times I have stated on this meat blog that I am not a fish fan. Yet, when it comes to grabbing lunch with a group that includes a vegetarian I am willing to compromise. Thus, I found myself at Penn Avenue Fish Company in Pittsburgh’s Strip District staring at a menu chock-full of just about every variety of seafood. It was a difficult time for me, but damn if I am not a nice guy for making the sacrifice.
Craig Street in Oakland is a great little refuge for Pitt and Carnegie Mellon students looking to get off of campus for a meal. Unfortunately, I have yet to find anything there yet that’s stuck out to me as being truly special. Hoping to change this, I found myself at Lucca, an Italian spot that I hoped would be great in a city filled with great Italian food.
As the various neighborhoods of Pittsburgh become more and more gentrified, it’s only inevitable that the hipster vibe that inhabits Lawrenceville will make its way to other parts of the city. One of these areas is Bloomfield, where Bread and Salt Bakery has taken up business in what seems to be a back alley. Replete with a man in cutoff shorts and pizza that is charged by the pound (because obviously everyone knows how much a pound of pizza looks like), the place has become popular for its bread. Which is good, because up until recently that was about all they had to offer on their menu.
In need of some food to soak up the booze of the night before, we found ourselves at Les 3 Brasseurs in downtown Montreal. Of course, in English this translates to The 3 Brewers, so it seemed like a good place to get our fill before leaving the lovely city of Montreal. Because it seemed necessary, we started with a couple orders of poutine for the table – including one non-traditional that had pulled pork and bacon.
The Jewish influence on Montreal’s food scene goes beyond the bagels and into the realms of meat. Specifically smoked meat and there is no better-known place to get the smoked meat than at Schwartz’s, which has been making the stuff since 1928. Today Celine Dion weirdly has some sort of ownership in the place, but I went hoping this had little to do with the popularity.
Layovers are never fun. And I don’t mean the extended layovers that give you time to leave the airport to explore a city. I mean the layovers where you are just stuck in an airport waiting for a connecting flight. Yet, amidst that suck a lot of airports have begun to move away from only offering crappy fast food and overly expensive generic sports bar food. One of these places is Philly’s F Terminal, where a cheesesteak spot going by the name of Tony Luke’s can be found.
Great Harvest is like the small mom and pop answer to Panera. It’s a franchise, but one that allows the owner to make the store truly unique. Take, for example, the Great Harvest that opened up in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty not too long ago. It features a bunch of local Pittsburgh food, plus sandwiches and breads chosen by the owner. And since the afternoon was ripe for a sandwich, Great Harvest seemed like a good place to be.
While staying at an Airbnb (in Fajardo) for the first time, I felt there would be no better way then to get a food recommendation than by asking our hosts. While we had a panaderia from Yelp in mind, they pointed us to a place called El Meson, which we were told had great sandwiches for breakfast or otherwise. When we walked in, the first thing my buddy said was that it looked like a Puerto Rican Panera Bread. This was hardly a compliment, but the place was pretty crowded so we figured we should give it a shot.
I don’t exactly come from a family that is into fancy food. This may be apparent in my reviews, but if not it should be apparent in the fact that for my mom’s 60th birthday all she wanted to do was eat at Heroes in Waterford, Michigan. You see, Heroes isn’t in any way a bad place, but it is at its basest level a bar and grill. A bar and grill, however, with whitefish that is too good for its own good.
Apparently Winghart’s in Downtown Pittsburgh’s Market Square had itself a bit of a fire problem. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this when I wen down to try one of their famous burgers. Yet, having made the trek already I ended up eating at DiBella’s, an “old fashioned” sub place. I could imagine that it was a pretty popular lunch spot, but at night it was completely dead.