Chef Curtis Gamble is gearing up to open the much-anticipated Station in Bloomfield. Leading up to the July opening of the Mediterranean-influenced restaurant, Gamble has been busy hosting a number of Station sneak peeks, most recently an appearance at Yelp’s Big Top event at the Children’s Museum and a pop-up at Thin Man Sandwich in the Strip. You can catch more previews this spring, including an upcoming No Menu Monday at Bar Marco on May 4, the Urbanist launch on April 25 and DinnerLab on May 29.
His best meal last week?
Last week was pretty crazy—the Station team worked hard to prepare for our pop-up at Thin Man Sandwich and we worked for two days in the commercial kitchen at the Pittsburgh Public Market.
Those two days were spent grazing through all the food available at the Pittsburgh Public Market—trying out all the vendors and people giving us things. There is a communal vibe to the market; it was great.
The best meals I had last week were from the market.
I had three different tacos at La Palapa. I had a beef tongue taco which was perfect in a tortilla with rice—it was almost indulgent. The chicken and chorizo tacos were also amazing. It’s home-style Mexican food and it was so good.
Billu’s Indian Grill was cooking right alongside us and he gave us a pile of his cumin and onion fritters to try—it was off the chain good! What was also amazing is that he was cooking for a catering job for 300 people, but what he was doing just looked so effortless.
Then we also had Beth from Root System Juice Company working at the kitchen and every day we pretty much got a different type of juice from her. We got them right after she made them and they were so fresh.
Her juices were really, really good. In fact, we had a vegan customer at our pop-up and we ended up using her watermelon and basil juice in the dessert.
Then we also had some stuff from Nathan’s Family Farm Creameries—the whole milk and buttermilk were so fresh it just reminded me of how chefs like to cook—to find really amazing simple ingredients and let those ingredients speak in the food. This freshness and simplicity was so evident in the buttermilk we got from him—it is so different from the commercial kind; in fact we threw out the commercial brand we had.
Those meals at the Pittsburgh Public Market were definitely some of the most satisfying food I’ve had in a really long time.
Check out Pittsburgh foodies’ other Best Meals.
