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A FLOURISH OF GARLICKY OLIVE OIL UNITED THE WHOLE SEAFOOD-PIZZA ENSEMBLE
JAVA OF THE STARS {BY ALEX ZIMMERMAN} Celestial navigation has existed for thousands of years, but it’s easy to miss Constellation, a new Lawrenceville coffee and espresso shop on Penn Avenue. But owner Amy Weiland is busy making the shop more visible (a new logo on the front window and outdoor seating), and she’s hoping to build an atmosphere that will reflect “a place to navigate the neighborhood by.” Weiland, 26, is taking over the location and much of the equipment from Cats and Dogs Coffeehouse, but she’s banking on a philosophy that treats coffee like craft beer, an experience that can enlighten the palate — and the brain. Weiland explains my espresso: It’s a single-origin seasonal Ethiopian Wazzalla ($2.60) with a fruity initial flavor that transitions into something more complex and earthy. For more info, there are laminated handouts — for instance, “Mexico Santa Teresa” is a bean with “butter croissant + cherry aromatics” and a “delicate mouthfeel.” The aesthetic is part coffeeshop, part mom-and-pop diner. A newly installed bar will soon offer pies by Louis Butler, and the menu board was purchased from a Florida snack bar. And even though the shop will satisfy the caffeinated elite (she’ll soon be serving drinks made from beans aged in cabernet sauvignon barrels), Weiland doesn’t want to alienate. You can still buy a regular latte ($3.50-4) or hot cocoa ($3), though she isn’t interested in “building drinks with lots of sugar additives.” Here, the bean matters. AZIMMERMAN@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
4059 Penn Ave., Lawrenceville
the
FEED Register now for the
CANNING SWAP
, sponsored by Slow Food Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Canning ng Exchange. Trade your jam for or beets. Submit your pickles ckles to the pickle contest, test, or be a pickle judge.. To be held Sun., Nov. 3, at the new Pittsburgh Public Market (2401 Penn n Ave., Strip District).. $5 to swap, submit or judge. udge. More info at www. canningexchange.org. e.org.
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{PHOTOS BY HEATHER MULL}
{BY ANGELIQUE BAMBERG + JASON ROTH}
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HERE’S SOMETHING about red-sauce Italian. You’d think its fate would have been sealed a generation ago, when Northern Italian restaurants began to creep out of Little Italys and into malls and Main Streets. With their dark, sophisticated sauces and starched white linen, these restaurants raised the bar for Italian cuisine by teaching Americans that the old macaroniand-meat-sauce combos, so simple they could be sold in a can, were but a faint echo of real Italian cooking. And if that wasn’t the end of the redsauce restaurant, then surely the rise of regional Italian cooking in the 1990s, when risotto and crespelle joined the lexicon, would drive a stake in its heart. In the 21st century, restaurateurs have even developed a rebuttal to the pizzeria: the wood- or coal-fired oven serving Neapolitan-grade pies in casually classy BYO bistros. How could the old style of Italian-American dining persevere? And yet here we are. Many Italian restaurants are now in their third generation of serving lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs to ever-appreciative diners, and new
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.23/10.30.2013
Aged Delmonico steak and asparagus
places are always opening to rehearse the old recipes. For all of Italian cooking’s subtlety and sophistication, it turns out there’s something deeply appealing about what Italian-Americans cobbled together in the middle of the last century.
MATTEO’S
3615 Butler St., Lawrenceville. 412-586-7722 HOURS: Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers, soups, sandwiches and salads $9-15; pizzas and pastas $13-26 LIQUOR: Full bar
Matteo’s, on Butler Street, doesn’t play the retro card. There are no raffia-covered chianti bottles in sight, no red-checked tablecloths, no plastic grapevines or oil paintings of Venetian canals. The vibe is thoroughly modern and chic, but the menu is firmly grounded in the old school of ItalianAmerican cooking, even if the preparations are contemporary. Perhaps nothing captured this as well as the bread course. The small braided loaf
— just the right size for a family of four — evoked American Italian bread with its firm crust and airy interior. But while “Italian bread” as we know it is nearly flavorless, Matteo’s had a crust that was browned to a toasty caramel, while the interior uncoiled stretchily and tasted slightly, addictively rich. Seafood pizza was similarly upgraded to a thin and chewy flatbread topped with stringy cheese and a shellfish trio of crabmeat, shrimp and scallops. This is a typical seafood-pizza combo which has frequently disappointed us in the past, but not at Matteo’s, where the shrimp and scallops were plump, the crab tender and just warmed, and a flourish of garlicky olive oil united the whole ensemble. These satisfying beginnings were the highlights of our meal. Mussels with bacon and blue cheese were a welcome departure from the usual white-wine broth, which can be soupy. In this preparation, there was little watery broth hiding the main attractions, but also not enough bacon or blue cheese to bring these interesting flavors to the fore.