What to Eat in Pittsburgh

Brace yourself. This is a little bit of a long, convoluted story, but it’s worth it.

What to Eat in Birmingham has been our baby, our lovechild, for the past several years. The best thing to ever come from that blog was the relationships we formed with food people – chefs, restaurant owners, and of course, our blog fans. The best thing to ever come from those relationships was the Pizitz Food Hall consulting project.

Two years ago, we were approached by a property company who owned a beautiful, historic vacant department store in downtown Bham.  They were beginning their plans to renovate it, and had their hearts set on developing the first floor into a food hall (a la Reading Terminal Market in Philly, Eataly in NYC, or Krog Street Market in Atlanta). And they wanted us to be food scouts for the project. YES, PLEASE.

At the very beginning, we promised ourselves that we would use this as an excuse to make one of our biggest Birmingham food dreams come true. Ever since the very beginning of the blog, the most common question we would be asked was, does Birmingham have Ethiopian food? Sadly, the answer was no. Having lived in Philly for 10 years, a place with a vibrant Ethiopian community and our favorite Ethiopian restaurant Dahlak, this was at the very top of our wish list too.

It took a year, multiple trips to Atlanta, and some incredible leg work by Mr. Foodie (he gets 99.9% of the credit) – Ghion Cultural Hall Ethiopian Restaurant opened with much fanfare. From the restaurant’s opening night:

It was splendid. Of course, we wrote a mega-post about it. As part of our research for this mega-post, we cited (and linked to) this wonderful website, Mesob Across America.

Several months after the post went up, I received an email from none other than Mesob Across America’s author, Harry Kloman. He was reaching out to say thanks for the link (a very nice thing of him to do).

I noticed his email address….. @pitt.edu! He was in Pittsburgh! We were moving to Pittsburgh. I told him this, and we emailed back and forth a bit. Turns out, he travels all over the US eating Ethiopian food and was intrigued by our description of Ghion. And top of my mind was, is there a good Ethiopian place in Pittsburgh? Thank goodness the answer was yes….

Fast forward several months, Harry, Mr. Foodie, and I make plans to meet up at Tana. When Harry entered Tana, although it took a moment for us to know who he was, he was well-known to all of the staff. They greeted him like the old friend that he is. Tana has a homey, friendly, family feel.

Mesob (the colorful straw stands on which food is often served) were displayed in the corner, but the food is served at Western-style tables. That’s where Western-style ends at Tana. The aroma is fantastic – a merging of all of the spices used to cook Ethiopian food. The menu is geared towards sharing, and everything is served with fresh injeera. We used the fact that they have a veggie platter (as is usual at Ethiopian restaurants) and a meet combo platter to order, basically, one of almost everything. Many thanks to Harry for labeling these dishes. Here it is:

A few additional notes: kik alicha is yellow split pea stew, tikil gomen is cabbage mixed with carrots (my personal favorite), gomen is collard greens, misr wot is spicy red lentils, and butecha is ground chickepeas.

I could go through each individually but let me just summarize to say: delish. I highly recommend getting a wide variety, part of what makes these meals fun is that every bite is different.

Everything was just as it should be – perfect amount of spices, cooked until tender. At Tana, they expect you to use the injeera on the bottom of the plate – my favorite, since it is steeped in all of the juices and spices – and you can order more if it is needed. Of course we ordered more, and soon enough we were staring at empty plates and drifting into food coma.

Ghion Cultural Hall will always have a special place in our hearts. But we feel lucky to get to know another great Ethiopian place in our new backyard.