There aren't a lot of pasta dishes that can claim a regular appearance at Major League Baseball games... with the notable exception of Pittsburgh's Pierogies. Cheese Chester, Jalapeno Hannah, Sauerkraut Saul and the highly intelligent Oliver Onion race through the streets of the city and into PNC Park at every home Pirates game, as a testament to Pittsburgh's eastern European heritage (and a generous sponsorship by corporate pierogie-maker Mrs. T's).

While the Great Pierogi Race is a light-hearted poke at a Pittsburgh epicurean tradition, there's no joking about the real thing. Stuffed pastas began appearing on plates in the Middle Ages, probably as a way for thrifty cooks to use up scraps of meat, cheese and vegetables. Baked, boiled or fried, this humble pasta is a ready canvas for experimentation. Here are three restaurants that are taking Pittsburgh's unofficial dish to new heights.

Dumplinz Café
Downtown eatery Dumplinz Café features stuffed pastas from around the world, like Russian pelmeni, Chinese wontons and Italian ravioli.  According to General Manager Denise Beloncis, the pierogies are made by hand specifically for the cafe, using a recipe developed over two months of taste-testing. Dumplinz serves pierogies in four traditional eastern European varieties: potato and onion, potato and cheese, mushroom and mushroom-sauerkraut, topped will sautéed mushrooms and onions, shredded cheese and a generous dollop of sour cream. On the sweet side, the cafe offers dessert pierogies filled with blueberries, sweet farmers cheese or sour cherries. They're also the only Pittsburgh establishment with a pierogie-based breakfast offering, featuring cheese and potato dumplings over a bed of eggs with sausage and shredded cheese. And for this price, they're a steal: a "Like Me" portion of 8 mushroom pierogies (pictured) is just enough for lunch and will only set you back $6.89.

Dumplinz Café
411 Seventh Avenue
Downtown Pittsburgh

Church Brew Works
Sous-chef John McCord turns kitchen scraps into bite-size masterpieces for the Church Brew Works' nightly specialty pierogies. Served in a heavenly atmosphere that used to be the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church of Lawrenceville, you can sample several different varieties over the course of a week, as new pierogi fillings are designed to make the best of what's around - ham and cabbage dumplings for St. Patrick's Day, for example, or the deep-fried guacamole, chili, cheddar and chorizo pierogies pictured here. Manager Susan Padolf says that the only flavor you can count on returning is the brew pub's annual anniversary rattlesnake and cactus pierogies - not a combination familiar to most Pittsburgh palates! Fortunately, you can get traditional potato-and-cheese pierogies any night of the week. An appetizer of four traditional pierogies is $6.50; nontraditional pierogies run $7 a plate.

Church Brew Works
3525 Liberty Avenue
Lawrenceville/Bloomfield

In Memoriam: Alchemy at the Bigelow Grille
Kevin Sousa offered the city's least traditional pierogi as part of the now-defunct Alchemy tasting menu* at the Bigelow Grille. As a Pittsburgh-themed restaurant inside the downtown Doubletree Hotel, the Bigelow Grille offers pierogies every day. On the weekends, however, you'd likely to run across Chef Kevin Sousa making pierogi ice cream with freeze-dried braised cabbage. This unique dish was part of the restaurant's Alchemy tasting menu, which offered avant-garde renditions of many traditional dishes using cooking techniques from the field of molecular gastronomy. To make this unique treat, Sousa put whole pierogies - pasta, potatoes, cheese and all - into a special apparatus called a Paco-Jet, which can turn just about anything into ice cream. The result was an exceptionally luscious, savory ice cream. To round out the experience, the tiny ball of ice cream was topped with braised red cabbage that has been freezed-dried like astronaut ice cream. The crunchy cabbage dissolves almost immediately on the tongue, leaving you with an intense cabbage flavor to accompany this most-untraditional pierogi.

*Since I did this interview - about six weeks ago - Sousa has moved on to the Red Room in East Liberty. You can't get this meal right now, but you can look forward to his impact on the menu at that esteemed establishment!


Photo by Matthew