The former service station on Beverly Road in Mt. Lebanon doesn’t look like much now, but later this year it will house a new restaurant from a member of an old Pittsburgh restaurant family.
Brooks Broadhurst, former senior vice president of food and beverage at Eat’n Park, plans Block 292 as a sustainable food market and restaurant. The meat on the menu will be sourced by Jamison Farm in Latrobe, and will include sustainable beef and pork, and of course Jamison’s legendary lamb.
“The goal is to have a nice, neighborhood butcher shop where you can get what you need for dinner that night,” Broadhurst says. The restaurant will have 50 seats and a bar. Given that Mt. Lebanon is a very walkable community, he adds, the goal is to have Block 292 fit into that ecosystem. “It’s going to be a neighborhood restaurant that provides people what they want. If they want to order online and pick something up on the way home, they can do that, or they can come in and sit down for a nice meal.”
In addition to the butcher shop, the plans call for selling prepared foods and fresh produce.
Broadhurst says he’s been looking at the Beverly Road space for a while and talking with Sukey and John Jamison about collaborating. He finally felt the time was right to break away from Eat’n Park, where his brother Jeff is CEO, following in the footsteps of their father Jim who was CEO before stepping down in 2008.
“I thought if ever there was a time I would try something different, this would be it,” he says. Brooks is s still on Eat’n Park’s board, whose list of restaurant holdings includes The Porch in Oakland, Six Penn Kitchen Downtown, and the various Hello Bistro locations. He bought the Block 292 property late last year.
Block 292’s future location at 292 Beverly Rd. is a prime spot in one of Mt. Lebanon’s business districts, on the same block as Lincoln Elementary School, Bado’s Pizza, café io and Party Cake Bakery. It will serve a niche in more than one category.
Broadhurst lives in the neighborhood.
Built in the 1930s, the building was a variety of different gas stations over the years, so before any demolition and reconstruction could begin, the gas tanks had to come out. Broadhurst plans a menu that will play off what’s available
Broadhurst plans a menu that will play off what’s available in a given day, but will include a rotisserie oven and five or six dinner entrees, designed by chef Eliza Jamison of the farm family. Her resume includes jobs at restaurants in New York, Florida and Chile.
And no, there won’t be any Smiley cookies on the menu. “This is going to be something different, a little more like an old-style community market that serves good food,” he says.