Eat/Drink is NEXTpittsburgh’s weekly roundup of the latest happening in the food scene.
Randita’s opening an Aspinwall location
Randita’s Grill, the vegan café venture from husband-and-wife team Dale and Randy Cinski, has been thriving since taking their menu to a permanent restaurant in Saxonburg last year. The business that started as a food truck in 2012 has grown so fast that the Cinskis plan to establish a second location in Aspinwall.
PopUp Embury to pop up elsewhere
Spencer Warren continues to shake things up with PopUp Embury, a pop-up bar which will run at Butcher and the Rye every Monday through the end of March from 6 p.m. to midnight before moving to the Wigle Whiskey distillery on weekends in April.
“I show up and take over a bar. We do different themes or concepts like the Gin Showdown, classic cocktails versus new school versions as well as bringing in bartenders from all over the country to show them how great Pittsburgh is,” he says.
Warren owned Embury, the city’s first craft cocktail bar, located downstairs in the former Firehouse Lounge — the space currently occupied by Bar Marco. While he looks for a new home for the bar, he’s keeping the name alive and keeping himself busy.
“I make beer ice cream and alcohol sorbet and gummies,” says Warren. “We also do ‘Emburspheres’ where the cocktail is inside a sphere of ice. Most importantly we make the classics how they are supposed to be made.”
Warren also consults on menus for restaurants like Tamari in Lawrenceville, where he’s working on pairings for a series of cocktail dinners, the next of which will take place on April 24.
A’Pizza Badamo expanding
Mount Lebanon’s popular A’Pizza Badamo is expanding its dining room and will unveil its new space on Wednesday, March 19.
The pizza shop opened at 656 Washington Road in 2010 and is now more than doubling its dining room area from 12 to 30 seats and adding two more pizza ovens. Owner Anthony Badamo acquired the open space next door.
“We will be able to handle more customers, more volume — it was definitely needed,” says Badamo, adding that his business has doubled in the past year.
