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Enrico's in the News
Enrico's buys coffee from La Prima Espresso, in the Strip District. Here's why:
Strip coffee roaster receives organic certification
Thursday, July 05, 2007
By Marlene Parrish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Do a good deed when you get your caffeine fix today. Sip a cup of organic fair trade coffee, and you help to support a farmer while you promote organics.
Many Pittsburghers are familiar with La Prima Espresso, the popular coffee bar and sidewalk cafe on 21st Street in the Strip District. The business end of the operation, the roaster, is in the long terminal building on the Allegheny River side of Smallman Street. La Prima recently received Pennsylvania Certified Organic certification. After owner Sam Patti applied for the certification, it took 18 months to get the certificate in hand.
"We're a small-batch coffee roaster. That's the coffee version of a microbrewery," he says. "We've had organic coffees all along. But that's different from being certified. We must follow strict rules about storing, roasting and cleaning."
Once the green organic coffee beans are delivered to the dock at the Smallman Street operation, the sacks are stored separately from conventional coffee. Designated grinders and scoops are used. The area around the roaster is maintained with certified products.
"When it's time to roast a batch of organic beans, we purge the roaster of conventional beans," Mr. Patti adds.
La Prima's organic coffee is also Fair Trade. Many food products we buy in the United States are grown by farmers in developing countries -- often farmers working for extremely low pay. Fair Trade Certified coffee means that farm workers around the world are paid a fair price, there is direct trade between producers and importers and sustainable farming practices are used. La Prima also collaborates with Building New Hope -- a Pittsburgh based nonprofit organization -- that imports organic coffee from worker-owned cooperatives in northern Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Twenty six percent of La Prima's coffee is now organic and fair trade. "We are slowly increasing those numbers," Mr. Patti says. "In five years, we may be up to 75 or 80 percent."
La Prima's organic fair trade coffees are sold on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, at Pick-Me-Up in Lawrenceville, 61C in Squirrel Hill and at all 10 Crazy Mocha outlets in the Pittsburgh area.
"When the Pennsylvania Certified organization people came for inspection, they asked me, 'Why do you want to do this?' " says Mr. Patti. "I had to think before I answered. I said, at my house we love to cook and food is a precious thing. We get our weekly farm produce box from farmer Don Kretchsmann. I belong to Slow Food. And I care about sustainability for myself, my business and my community."
The salmon scene: Fresh, farmed and wild
Thursday, October 27, 2005
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette
Sara Pozonsky shows samples of salmon to Enrico's restaurant owner, left, Neil Tomer and chef Jason Sicher.
Sara Pozonsky doesn't look like a fishmonger.Armed with cell phone and laptop while seated in the dim afternoon light of Enrico's Ristorante in Shadyside, she resembles nothing more than an affluent soccer mom until the moment she pulls a large side of vacuum-packed wild sockeye salmon out of a chic green tote bag.
"Try it and see what you think," she tells Enrico's chef, Jason Sicher. "I can get you more within 24 to 36 hours of being caught. This," she says, tapping the fish package with a perfectly manicured fingernail, "is fresher than you'll get anywhere else."
Other Pittsburgh fish purveyors might disagree, but there's no question that Ms. Pozonsky, an Alaska native who lives in Washington County and runs her own wild-salmon wholesale and retail business out of her home, represents a sea change in the fish industry.
Even as pressure on the world's fish supply increases -- U.S. consumption in 2003 went up nearly a half pound per person from the year before -- consumers have an unprecedented range of choices.
Besides traditional sources like Giant Eagle or Shop 'n Save, or wholesalers with smaller retail outlets, such as Benkovitz and Wholey's in the Strip District, you can buy your tilapia or tuna steaks at Costco, Sam's Club, Whole Foods and high-end specialty wholesalers and retailers online, from Seafood.com to Ms. Pozonsky's www.WildAlaskanSalmonCompany.com.
Ms. Pozonsky might represent a tiny fraction of the local fish market, but she's busy nonetheless, and that's in part because she and her fellow wild salmon suppliers in Alaska are benefiting from some bad press that their biggest competitor -- the farmed salmon industry -- has received in recent years about contaminants in fish and pollution from salmon farms.
While farmed salmon sales plummeted, wild salmon quickly became chic to eat, even though it's much more expensive and available fresh only a few months out of the year.
The salmon wars are only the most visible example of the fish industry's ongoing identity crisis, however. And the American consumer is right in the middle, bombarded with conflicting information about fish's health benefits as well as warnings about possible contaminants in seafood and risks to health and the environment.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has announced its intentions to expand aquaculture dramatically over the next decade, allowing fish farms as far as 200 miles offshore. That's set the stage for another epic battle between the industry, who say such expansion is critical to meet the growing demand for fish such as salmon by consumers, and environmentalists, who say problems with current offshore fish farming need to be addressed first.
So what's a fish lover to do?
"I eat both farmed and wild salmon often," says Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, who says reports about wild salmon being healthier than the farmed varieties are overstated.
"We are certainly not telling people not to eat fish. ... We're telling them to eat less farmed salmon," countered David Carpenter of the University at Albany, N.Y., co-author of a much-contested 2004 study that found higher levels of PCBs, an industrial contaminant, in farmed salmon than in wild salmon.
Still confused? You have every reason to be.
For the most part, health experts say seafood is good for you. The American Heart Association and numerous nutritionists recommend eating two servings of fatty fish such as salmon and light tuna a week to prevent heart disease and combat obesity. Just last week, researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago reported that eating fish once a week was associated with slower cognitive decline in adults over 65.
Use caution
But in the same breath, scientists and nutritionists caution us not to eat certain types of fish too frequently because of the presence of mercury, PCBs, dioxins and other toxins. While most people aren't at risk of adverse effects from mercury by eating fish and shellfish, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency issued joint guidelines for women of childbearing age, pregnant or nursing mothers and children under age 15 to steer clear of swordfish, shark, tilefish and mackerel, which have high levels of mercury -- and also happen to be among the most overfished. White albacore tuna should be limited to one meal a week because it contains more mercury than light tuna.
But there's confusion about mercury, too. While a number of studies have found that consumption of high levels of mercury by mothers can pose a risk of health problems in their offspring, a recent University of Rochester study of children in the Seychelles islands whose mothers ate lots of fish high in mercury showed no adverse effects.
"The studies are on both sides of the fence, but the science is not there yet," said Dr. Philip Davidson, author of the Seychelles study, who contends that the existing research on mercury is not conclusive about its risks. "If you are of childbearing age, you may want to think twice about eliminating fish from your diet, since fish contain micronutrients that are clearly beneficial to the offspring."
But these days, salmon wins, hands down, as the fish that most people are baffled about.
On the one hand, salmon is prized for its healthiness -- it's low in mercury, and loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to protect against heart disease, stroke and Alzheimer's.
But then there's that 2004 study published in the journal Science which found PCBs -- which have been shown, in high concentrations, to cause cancer in animals -- in farmed salmon at higher levels than in wild-caught salmon and in any other kind of fish. Mr. Carpenter, the SUNY researcher, and his co-authors at Indiana University concluded that eating more than one meal of farm-raised salmon a month could slightly increase the risk of getting cancer later in life.
That prompted protests not just from the farmed salmon industry, but by many prominent epidemiologists and nutritionists, that the study was alarmist. Critics noted the PCB levels detected in farmed salmon were well within FDA's safety limits, while the study's authors had relied on much tougher -- and more controversial -- standards by the Environmental Protection Agency (to date, the agencies have not reconciled their differences).
Fishing industry critics also noted that PCB levels in the feed supplied to salmon have been lowered dramatically since the study was conducted, with greater ratios of vegetable matter to fish oil and fish meal, which are sources of PCBs.
While some of the PCB levels measured might be toxic to animals, "there are to my knowledge no known deaths or serious diseases in humans associated with current exposure of PCBs," said Dr. Joyce Nettleton, a nationally known expert in fish nutrition and author of one of the first books in the 1980s about the benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids. She noted that heart disease presents a far greater danger to Americans than the slight possibility they might get cancer from eating salmon with trace amounts of PCBs, which are found at the same levels in meat and dairy products as well.
"There is no question in my mind that the health benefits of eating salmon vastly outweigh the risks," she said.
Jury's still out
Others, however, cite the 2004 PCB study as a warning.
"There is not widespread agreement out there about the issue," said Jennifer Dianto, program manager for Seafood Watch, a well-known consumer education initiative at Monterey Bay Aquarium, which conducts extensive scientific research into seafood. "The potential human health risks of PCBs in salmon and other fish have not been rigorously examined, but that study, which involved two metric tons of farmed and wild salmon from around the world, tells us that further investigation is needed."
Farmed salmon presents other problems, too, Ms. Dianto and other environmentalists say, citing environmental degradation at farms in which thousands of fish are stocked in floating ocean pens, their waste creating water pollution and sterile "dead zones" in the ocean. Other problems include overuse of antibiotics and salmon escapes into the wild, especially in the Atlantic. There, farmed salmon can spread disease and breed with wild salmon, causing a kind of genetic pollution.
Supporters of aquaculture claim farming salmon relieves pressure on wild fish stocks, but studies by the Pew Charitable Trusts have shown that two to three pounds of feeder fish are required to produce one pound of farmed salmon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disputes those studies, however, claiming that just one pound of "feeder" fish is now required.
Currently, there's not much the U.S. can do to regulate salmon farming, since very little of it exists in this country except for a few farms off the coasts of Maine and Washington state. Most of the farmed salmon Americans eat, in fact, comes from overseas, 60 percent from Chile, 30 percent from Canada and about 5 percent from the U.S. and other sources.
Whole Foods gets most of its farmed salmon from Iceland, Ireland and the Shetland Islands, said Steve Parkes, a Whole Foods facility team leader in Gloucester, Mass., one of the company's three distribution centers. He says the company is satisfied that the growers are engaging in environmentally sound practices.
"The bottom line is that the husbandry has improved dramatically from even three to four years ago," he said.
Joe Benkovitz, president of Nordic Fisheries, handles Giant Eagle's seafood program, obtaining its farmed salmon from Chile. On a visit there several years ago to a farm operated by international giant Fjord Seafood, he said conditions were spotless.
"If I had gotten sick, I would have said don't take me to the hospital, take me to the salmon farm," he joked, adding more seriously that he believed that the industry has made "tremendous improvements" in the technology of harvesting salmon. His comments have been echoed by representatives of Chile's salmon farms, who note that fish pens are now placed in stronger currents to more effectively sweep away waste and that fish "escapes" into the wild have declined.
Some environmental groups remain skeptical.
"Both the laws and the enforcement of the laws dealing with environmental issues are not as well-developed in Chile as in other salmon-producing companies," says Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana, an international ocean protection organization.
"Other countries have experienced growing pains," acknowledged NOAA spokeswoman Susan Buchanan, adding that problems overseas just highlight the need for expanded aquaculture in this country.
"The U.S. can capitalize on the mistakes made by other countries that have led to environmental problems," she said. "In filling increasing demand, we might as well grow the supply ourselves, rather than importing what might not be up to par with U.S. standards. We need to get into this game."
(Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at mcarpenter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1949.)
March 2005:
from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Chefs look to the country in search of fresh, simple dishes
by Karin Welzel
Call it peasant. Call it slow. Call it comfort.
Regardless, the upper class and bourgeois more and more are looking to the country in search of eating pleasures. The fresher, the simpler, the better. Throw in a wood-burning oven, and you have the latest haute cuisine that harkens back to a humbler time.
"It's kind of 'free' -- that's peasant food," says Mary Legas, executive chef at Enrico's Ristorante-Shadyside, owned by father-son team Herman and Neil Tomer. "You utilize everything."
And that means fresh, she says. Neil Tomer -- he's the one wielding a pizza peel in the restaurant's stamp-size open kitchen -- drives to the Strip District early in the morning every Monday through Saturday to examine and buy the ingredients for each day's dishes.
"Along the way, the produce people might suggest certain things they have, and I will start thinking about specials for the week," Legas says. "I'll tell them to hold me a handful of this or that."
Enrico's wood-burning oven is a hallmark of the restaurant, Legas says while flinging another piece of wood into the fire. The oven has a personality of its own -- hot spots, cold spots, low temps, high temps -- that a cook must learn to recognize.
Once one gets the hang of it, she says, "You can make anything in there -- bread, quiches, lamb stew, pizza, roasted chicken, a whole fish."
All of these items might not be typical of the fare that poor farm workers and laborers subsisted on centuries ago, but the point of peasant cuisine remains the same: robust dishes featuring basic ingredients, the vegetables usually cooked, an emphasis on soups and stews -- flavorful, wholesome and sure to warm a body on a cold day.
"Peasant fare is what it's like if you went back home to Mom's house for a Sunday 2 o'clock dinner, the roast beef, the carrots and the potatoes, all cooked in one pot," Legas says.
"We laugh about what we call 'mashed potato windows,'" she says, pointing to the steamed-up picture windows.
The concept of peasant cuisine isn't new. But it appears to be enjoying a renaissance among discriminating palates weary of fusion fare, fast food and frozen dinners.
Ahead of her time, cooking teacher and cookbook author Perla Meyers recognized the value of peasant fare three decades ago when her book "The Peasant Kitchen: A Return to Simple, Good Food" (Vintage Books, 1975) was published.
Meyers, who has based much of her teaching and writing career on seasonal cooking, was merely returning to her childhood in Barcelona, Spain, by introducing peasant cuisine to the American kitchen.
"Peasant food is about very simple things," she says from her home in Manhattan. "It's direct contact to the soil, to freshness, preferably organic -- but not necessarily.
"Spain is moving away from peasant cooking, but not that much. In this country, a lot of chefs are turning toward peasant cooking. Not those into fusion; the ones that have a bistro or trattoria, very Spanish or Italian -- those are very much peasant cuisines."
Meyers, whose latest book is "How to Peel a Peach and 1001 Other Things Every Good Cook Needs to Know" (Wiley, $29.95), says there even is a restaurant in New York City called Peasant, a modern dining spot.
But food enthusiasts have to be careful to keep peasant cuisine within the context of seasonal foods.
"When people come to my house in Connecticut this time of year, I'll be cooking with cabbage and root vegetables," Meyers says, "not asparagus or wonderful plums or persimmons that might be on restaurant menus right now. Those are seasonal in Chile and New Zealand and Israel, but not here."
Meyers' venture into promoting peasant cooking in the 1970s "was a disaster," she says. "The idea was to call the book 'The Pleasant Kitchen' instead. No one in America knew what peasant cooking is, although they did know about cooking from the country. But, they didn't understand -- what's peasant about garlic, what's peasant about an artichoke?"
Meyers has seen the cooking of her childhood come full circle. "It's about simplicity," she says. Unfortunately, traditional peasant foods -- such as the seafood-rich bouillabaisse and former trash fish skate -- have jumped in price as the cuisine rises in popularity.
Enrico's Legas enjoys the creativity challenge of peasant cuisine. A former private chef for A Fare to Remember and cook at Enrico's Biscotti Co. in the Strip District -- owned by founder Larry Lagattuta -- Legas likes to improvise. She describes the allure of veal bones roasting in the fire-breathing oven; of a fresh-market whole fish adorned with little more than olive oil, salt and pepper -- "what more do you need?" -- selling out within an hour; and "gorgeous" presentations of one-plate wonders served with rustic bread or soft polenta.
Since Meyers and fresh-food culinary icons such as Alice Waters and James Barber ("The Urban Peasant") have been spreading the peasant philosophy (which sometimes encompasses organic foods), a parallel movement, called "Slow Food," has been making headlines since the late 1980s in favor of a return to celebrating good locally produced food. In addition, Slow Food, founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini, aims to preserve the genetic diversity of agricultural products and livestock breeds to quell the standardization of flavors.
Slowly, too, peasant-cooking books -- not the CrockPot kind -- are surfacing on U.S. bookshelves. Recent offerings include "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook" by Paula Wolfert (Wiley, $34.95); "The Essential Cuisines of Mexico" by Diana Kennedy (Clarkson Potter, updated and revised, $35); and "Italian Slow and Savory" by Joyce Goldstein (Chronicle, $40).
Goldstein writes: "Fast food temporarily fills us up, but it will never replace the deep satisfaction and sense of well-being that come from taking time to relax and savor the food and the company. ... We remember those meals, those unforgettable tastes, those aromas that, even today, can summon up a face, a date, an occasion."
Her book is a warming array of soups, sauces, grains, fish and shellfish, poultry and rabbit, meats and vegetables prepared in old-fashioned ways.
Tom Quick, executive chef and owner of Epiq Bistro in Concord, Ohio, outside of Cleveland, approaches Meyers' description of offering "refined" peasant food. He calls it "comfort food with a really nice finesse, some classic touches."
Quick cooks according to the seasons -- his current menu features comforting risottos as sides to grouper and cod. Not ordinary risottos, mind you, but ones studded with artichokes and lobster-claw meat, surely the stuff for celebrating instead of a family meal.
But upscale peasant can be served at home.
"The prep time is minimal," Quick told an audience at a Food Fest cooking demonstration earlier this winter at Lakeview Golf Resort & Spa in West Virginia. "And you even could use a slow cooker."
March 2005:
Enrico's Chosen as Pittsburgh's Best Runner-Up Italian Restaurant!
AOL® CITYGUIDE -- THE NATION'S #1 ONLINE LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - NAMES ENRICO'S RISTORANTE AS PITTSBURGH'S BEST RUNNER-UP ITALIAN RESTAURANT IN THE 2005 "CITY'S BEST™" POLL
Pittsburgh - February 2005 - AOL® CityGuide, the nation's leading online local entertainment guide*, has announced the 2005 City's Best™ winners and runners-up in more than 35 cities across the country, and Enrico's Ristorante in Pittsburgh was named the Runner-Up Best Italian Restaurant. More than 350 local establishments in each city were nominated for excellence in dining, entertainment and nightlife. Consumers voted on everything from Best All-Around Restaurant and Best Pizza to Best Cheap Drinks and Best Romantic Restaurant, with a focus on each city's very best cuisine and entertainment offerings. AOL CityGuide is available free on the Web at aolcityguide.com.
Enrico's Ristorante, on Ellsworth in Shadyside, features market fresh cooking: meals are roasted in a handcrafted woodburning oven imported from Rome, Italy. No freezers, deep fryers, or microwave ovens are used, but instead, personal attention is given to every meal served. The tony setting sets off the peasant fare, which is further complemented with a premier Italian wine selection. Details about Enrico's ambiance, menus, and wine program are available at www.enricos-shadyside.com.
"Our annual City's Best program gives us a chance to shine a spotlight on the best of the best in local dining, nightlife and entertainment by letting the true experts -- the millions of people who actually visit and enjoy these establishments -- determine the winners by voting on AOL CityGuide," said Scott Richman, Vice President and General Manager, AOL CityGuide.
"Enrico's Ristorante offers a unique Italian Bistro setting with great food and an unmatched Italian Wine Program. Daily wine specials, monthly regional wine tastings, and magnificent quarterly wine dinners have received rave reviews from our customers, and we're very proud of that" reported Executive Chef Mary Legas, also reporting that, "Enrico's wine specialist, Eric Leskovar, provides unmatched knowledge and unsurpassed service to the many wine lovers who return to Enrico's again and again. We have more than 40 unique wines offered by the glass, and that is unusual."
All City's Best establishments were nominated based on recommendations from AOL CityGuide's local correspondents who live and work in the cities they cover, the editorial insights of CityGuide editors and user feedback. Consumers' votes ultimately determined which venues were chosen #1 in their categories. More than one million votes were cast across the country during the November-December 2004 voting period.
As the ultimate tool for people who want to know where to go and what to do in the cities where they live, work and play, AOL CityGuide focuses on dining and restaurants, bars and nightlife, tickets, movies, events and includes the City's Best program, with detailed information like directions, editorial recommendations, event tickets, and user rankings and reviews. Formerly known as the Digital City® service, AOL CityGuide can be found free on the Web at aolcityguide.com or at AOL Keyword: CityGuide.
*Source: comScore Media Metrix, December 2004
from the January 27th Pittsburgh Post Gazette "Nibbles" Column
Pile it on: These lunches are loaded
Beans and Greens -Enrico's, Shadyside. 412-661-1050.
"One of my favorite lunches, veggies or otherwise, is the Beans and Greens at Enrico's in Shadyside. Kale, cannellini beans, olive oil and garlic, and a little butter, usually served with a piece of fresh baked real bread. Delicious and nutritious!" Myron Arnowitt
January 2005
Enrico's Introduces Executive Chef Mary Legas
Enrico's Ristorante in Pittsburgh has announced that Mary Katherine Legas of Pittsburgh has been promoted to Executive Chef for the upscale Italian restaurant in Shadyside. "Mary is the heart and soul of our operation," reports Neil Tomer, partner in the restaurant. "Our customers walk in our doors looking for Mary. I’ve heard them ask if she’s Enrico.
“Starting with details is part of my criteria, rather than simply finishing with them,” Mary explained. “That's why people like me in the kitchen. I intend to make the food like nothing you've had before. The philosophy of downhome cooking works great in Enrico’s upscale interior.” Legas is currently considering offerings such as an artisan bread made with house-seasoned olives, and developing a new Spring menu by offering new dishes as winter specials. “I consider our menu a process that starts with the terroir and ends with our customers,” added Tomer.
Enrico's features "market-fresh" Italian meals and wines. No freezers, microwave ovens, or deep-fryers are needed for the simple ingredients that make up the delicious peasant fare at the restaurant. All food is purchased daily in Pittsburgh's Strip District. “I am a hands-on executive chef, taking care of the nuts and bolts,” Legas explained. “I have taken charge, and am working this winter to get everything into place. The food will be like it's never been before. We're planning the Spring menu right now. It will be very fine tuned, people will be surprised. I’m incorporating our wonderful wines and lots of beautiful features.”
Legas trained at the Culinary Institute of American and has met all the qualifications of an Executive Chef. Following her training, Ms. Legas worked at various establishments as sous chef, and provided exclusive catering services in the Pittsburgh area. She has served as General Manager of the Enrico's Shadyside site since it opened in the fall, 2003. “I have worked on every aspect of Enrico’s, from polishing the bar to the overall design. We’ve been open over a year now, and the internal architecture of Enrico’s has really developed. We’re always thinking ahead to details, like the patio for Spring. “
“Mary will bring strong leadership to the kitchen, which will show up in the food. I expect a uniqueness matched only by our boutique wines,” Tomer said. The many details of Enrico’s include a sommelier to facilitate the excellent wine selection.
Legas is the daughter of Edith and the late Henry Legas of Brookline. She is the proud mother of Amy and Erin Feth of Pittsburgh, and of Army PFC Daniel Feth now stationed in Bamburg, Germany. She also has four grandchildren, and resides in Shadyside. “I work very hard,” Mary said, “and I want news about Enrico’s to be something I can send to my son.”
By Jean Horne
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, September 20, 2004
The brick oven was roaring at Enrico's, the neighborhood ristorante in Shadyside that's a haunt for foodies seeking rustic retro classics. The dining area opened to the sidewalk on Monday with a fast-forward crowd celebrating the charmer's first birthday, while raising funds for the Homeless Children's Education Fund.
Celeb chef Luigi Caruso tossed pasta with owner Larry Lagatuta, David Caliguiri tended bar, his mom Jeanne waited tables, the flavor of Italy was in every dish, and Izzazu's Emilio greeted the grateful fed. They included HCEF prez Joe Lagana; Herman Tomer; Scott and Tony Accamando; Steve Massaro; Bonnie Tambellini; Mary Legas; Cheech and Bruce Capristo; Joey Vallerian; Tom Yargo; Franco D'Amico; Lolli Rendina; Carole Clifford; and Reid Vogel.
That's amore.
From AOL cityguide - Pittsburgh:
Enrico Ristorante
Ever-changing daily goods keep Shadyside fresh.
A few standards -- pizzas, paninis and pasta at lunch, or the New York strip steak at dinner -- are always on the menu, but the Enrico Biscotti Company prides itself on the "market-fresh" daily specials written in chalk above the bar. It features seasonal offerings and best buys available each day from wholesalers in the Strip District, where the original Enrico Biscotti restaurant (made famous by the film 'The Bread, My Sweet') is located. Save room for dessert, because biscotti and other fresh-baked treats are a specialty here. Sundays feature a special brunch menu with pastries, quiches and roasted vegetables. Wines from small Italian vintners round out the menu. This 40-seat eatery is packed for lunch hour, and customers often take advantage of the shady outdoor seating on nice days. -- James A. Stewart
Enrico Ristorante puts care into every delicious bite
Situated along Ellsworth Avenue in the red brick and glass-windowed building formerly occupied by Le Charcuterie, Enrico Ristorante creates Italian bistro-style dishes the old fashioned way -- without microwaves, freezers or deep-fat fryers. Pizzas, pastries, breads and even sausages are made on premises.
Food is purchased each morning in the Strip District, then cooked in the wood-fired oven that can be seen by patrons sitting at the bar. "Everything is cooked in that oven," manager Mary Legas says. "Not just pizzas. The vegetables that go in the soup get the same kind of love."
The list of specials listed on the chalk board changes almost daily, indicating a restaurant where the chef enjoys the day-to-day challenge of creating fresh, seasonal items for customers.
Enrico is the vision of Larry Lagattuta, one of its three owners and the man who created Enrico Biscotti in the Strip District. Those who know the bakery's narrow coffee shop that operates on Saturdays only already are familiar with the thin, chewy pizzas and panini sandwiches available at the Shadyside restaurant.
Enrico Ristorante is much more formal, though. White cloths cover tables whether inside or outside on the sidewalk. There's a list of 40 Italian wines, priced from $30 as well as a selection of by-the-glass wines in the $5 and $6 range.
While the pizza, soup and salads are available at dinner as well as lunch, there's also a nice selection of fish, meat and poultry entrees.
The signature dish is a whole Oven-roasted Chicken ($25 for two) stuffed and scented with lemons, garlic and fresh rosemary. It arrives already carved and sitting atop a generous pile of oven-roasted vegetables that included strips of sweet red pepper, zucchini, yellow summer squash and tiny potatoes. The skin was crisp and the chicken succulent, if a little dry. The vegetable were perfection -- completely cooked but still firm and exuding a rich broth that we sopped up with chewy bread from a tableside basket.
Along with the chicken and vegetables, we shared a Big Fat Salad ($9), a humongous mound of fresh field greens enlivened with crumbles of sharp Gorgonzola cheese, dried cranberries and bits of walnut. We hadn't figured on it being served with enough shredded chicken for it to serve as an entree in itself. While it was delicious, it was a redundant choice to accompany the Roast Chicken.
On another occasion, we tried the house special pasta -- ricotta and spinach stuffed Ravioli with a pink and creamy but hearty, meat-studded Bolognese Sauce ($9 at lunch, $11 at dinner). While not made on the premises, the ravioli are handmade from fresh pasta. That makes the little pillows pliant and light, a perfect pairing for the creamy, parsley-flecked tomato sauce.
Observing that diners at almost every table had started with Beans and Greens ($5) we joined in. Reportedly roasted in a pot buried in the oven's ashes, the beans -- as well as the cloves of garlic -- almost melt in your mouth. The generous helping of kale that's mixed in makes it an appetizer large enough for sharing, especially when there's that chewy, in-house baked bread for soaking up juices.
We also tried the house special soup which that day was Chicken Vegetable ($3 cup, $4 bowl) and found it to be most satisfying -- shredded chicken, slices of carrot and onion in a golden, full-flavored broth.
Families that can't agree on which meal of the day they're eating will be happy to be able to order a Pizza ($9) or an Entree-sized Salad ($9 to $12) while others tuck into the Veal Chop ($29) or Tilapia ($18). We enjoyed the Margherita Pizza ($9) with its thin, but chewy crust, and a whiff of oven-fired wood smoke that served as delivery system for a chunky sauce of fresh-tasting tomato pieces, basil leaves and just-melted fresh mozzarella.
As you might expect from a restaurant whose roots are a bakery all the desserts are made on premises. And very good they are. A huge slice of Chocolate Hazelnut Torta ($5) was dense, dark and rough-textured with bitter chocolate and small nuggets of hazelnut. There was no question that the red raspberry sauce that accented it had been freshly made from ripe, fresh raspberries. That sauce also enlivened the Ricotta Pie ($5), a firm yet fluffy, refreshingly not-too-sweet delight that almost made us overlook a surprisingly gummy crust. Better was the Lemon Ricotta Cake ($5) that balanced the citrusy sting of lemon with more of that fruity sauce of fresh raspberries and the crunch of almond slivers.
Also good on a hot day is the Panna Cotta ($6) a small dish of firm, cool, creamy vanilla custard overlaid with a golden sugar syrup spiced with ground cinnamon.
With fewer than 10 entrees, the menu at Enrico Ristorante might seem brief to some. But the good news is the selections change not just with the seasons, but on a daily basis.
That means there's always a reason to return, not just to revisit old favorites but to see what's for dinner tonight.
So often, successful small restaurants are spoiled when they try to join the big leagues. Overthinking the decor, overspending on a wine list and overestimating a kitchen staff's ability to transition often kills the elusive, intangible magic of a restaurant that just works.
But it's a wonderful thing when a modest, well-loved operation expands successfully, as has Enrico's Ristorante, in the Shadyside space long inhabited by the glacial decline of La Charcuterie.
In the Strip, the narrow back room at Enrico's Biscotti Company was a congenial, sparsely furnished hangout with a loyal base of Saturday diners. Seated at long, communal, wooden trestles, you were likely to befriend the person whose elbow landed in your pizza.
The soups, pizzas and large salads always satisfied, and the monthly dinner series provided a showcase for something chef/owner Larry Lagattuta does well: tasteful rustic fare such as roasted meats, dressed poultry and fish on the bone.
This unpretentious fare comprises the menu at Lagattuta's new restaurant. Suited to its tony Shadyside address, the space is far more elegant than its Strip District counterpart and the food is more serious.
Converting a deli/specialty store into a place that is nice to sit and eat in is a challenge. Enrico's Ristorante captures the polish and urbanity of Shadyside with a high, curvy marble bar, low-hanging lights and a classy bistro black and white color scheme. A wall of windows is treated like a wall of plaster: Framed prints and black and white photos are suspended there, and the room is filled with light.
The restaurant is good-looking, if chilly; when the door swings wide, the wind sweeps in. Wear a sweater.
Along the drafty full-length windows are small bistro tables draped in linen. Opposite is the wine bar, lined with square stools, which flows into the kitchen, where the huge wood-fired oven is shingled with copper fins to resemble a ball of flame.
The restaurant seems popular already; there are always people seated at the bar, sipping away. Enrico's offers many unique wines by the glass, and the straightforward list of bottles is both affordable and interesting. The house red and white wines are Lacryma del Christi, "tears of Christ," fruity, refreshing wines from Napoli. At the bar, the beautiful $15 cheese plate, loaded with generous chunks of soft, hard, ripe and quiet Italian cheeses, is the ideal companion.
Enrico's basic Italian peasant fare is often wonderful.
White beans are prepared in the traditional Tuscan way, as fagioli al fiasco (beans in a flask): the beans are fed into a glass bottle and buried in the smoldering ashes of the fire overnight. This method of gentle, slow cooking renders the bean meat tender and the skins imperceptible. The result is a warm, creamy paste, dense and rich, subtle with garlic and sage, splashed with good olive oil and served with slices of Enrico's dense, crusty loaf. It's a perfect example of "pane e companatico"-- a little bread and something to go with it.
As is the plain and good greens and beans. Warm, vegetal juice bleeds from the frilly greens and mingles with olive oil. It is perfect for sopping up with bread.
On the menu are many familiar dishes. The good panini sandwiches and the big fat salads sprinkled with bleu cheese are available. The pizzas are as fine as they ever were in the Strip: thin and supple in the Neapolitan style, topped with a few simple ingredients. The Lust pizza was hot with puttanesca sauce; the Love pizza was a cuddlier, creamy pie topped with roasted chicken.
Items from the Market Fresh menu are more upscale than longtime Enrico's fans may be accustomed to.
Fig and wild mushroom-stuffed chicken makes an inexpensive meal for two. The chicken is stuffed, roasted, split and doused with warm gravy. A cornucopia of roasted root vegetables -- beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips -- spills over the plate. The flavors are earthy and sweet, and the figs add gritty oomph to every bite. It was a nice touch, on the server's part, to pack up the half-chicken we wouldn't be consuming immediately, for home.
Enrico's ever-changing daily specials promise that there will always be something different to try. Roasted turkey, soaked in sage cream and served over pappardelle, was unctuous comfort food. Barely blanched asparagus, drizzled with herbed vinaigrette, was refreshing, and the combination of grilled fresh anchovies and roasted tomatoes was particularly nice. Hearty hunters stew was robust on an icy afternoon: thick with beef, rabbit and root vegetables, it was served over a pad of creamy polenta.
Soups change daily: a bouillabaisse-like fish soup, packed with mussels, scallops, fish and shrimp, was a spicy success. Mushroom consomme was somewhat blander.
Some meals are not so well executed, possibly because the kitchen staffs, visible behind the high counter, were as different daily as the entree specials. One evening, our check was misplaced and our order wasn't fired; we waited an extra 20 minutes for miserable entrees. The mixed grill that arrived consisted of dried-out meats arranged on a base of mesclun greens. If ever an entree cried for a starch, this was it. With bland boar, chewy rabbit and a singed house-made sausage, there wasn't a meal on that plate.
Similarly, a whole black bass, stuffed with sausage and crabmeat, was full of translucent, razor sharp bones. The fish was so dried-out, it might have been mistaken for jerky.
What a shame: Red snapper, given the same treatment a mere week prior, was another matter entirely. The white flesh, cloaked in soft skin, was sweet and tender, the sausage/crab filling a mild, creamy accompaniment. The pliant snapper bones were less intrusive. Its side of risotto was perfection: al dente, buttery and thick.
Enrico's kitchen is capable of surprises, like the beautiful goat cheese pistachio cannoli that was crunchy, milky-tart and wonderfully unsweet. You may be familiar with Enrico's fine desserts -- biscotti, cookies, tarts, cakes -- from the Strip District bakery. Hazelnut chocolate cake is appropriately dense and nutty, but it wanted a dollop of ethereal cream to set it off. Coffee is of the high-octane variety. Cappuccinos are first-rate.
Expect leisurely service, to a fault. At lunch, we waited 20 quiet minutes after we were seated until we were handed a menu. On another occasion, waiting for the check was our tedious post-meal pastime.
The dining room seems to lack ventilation. When I left, I smelled like I'd cooked my own garlicky dinner. My coat still reeks of the smoky oven -- not an altogether unpleasant association in this cold weather.
The room is noisy; there are no carpet or drapes to buffer sound in all that spotless marble and metal. The room echoes. Voices sound a low roar. As the waitress described specials, I caught every other word; her voice reached us like the elusive radio station you try to catch while driving through mountains.
Despite these shortcomings, when the kitchen is on, there are few simpler and utterly satisfying meals to be had in Pittsburgh. We appreciate our peasant fare and understand its underlying principle: Good food is simple, and simple food can be transcendent. Enrico's white beans -- modest and marvelous -- are proof.
We offer espresso, cappuccino, coffee, tea, and a full bar.
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