food drink
negroni

It’s Negroni Week!
For a cocktail with such a simple recipe — one part gin, one part semi-sweet vermouth and one part Campari — variations on the negroni are endless. The result is a simultaneously sweet and bitter cocktail that’s perfect for an early summer day.

This week, 26 Pittsburgh establishments will join more than 1,200 bars in 16 different countries in encouraging customers to try the classic cocktail for a cadre of good causes.

Between now and June 8, participating restaurants and bars will donate at least a dollar from the sale of every negroni sold to a local charity of their choice as part of Negroni Week — an initiative spearheaded by Imbibe Magazine and the makers of Campari.

To see a complete list of local establishments participating in Negroni Week, check out the event’s official website. The Rainbow Kitchen, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation are all among the charities benefiting.

While nobody’s entirely certain of the cocktail’s origins, legend says that Count Camillo Negroni invented the cocktail at a bar in Florence, Italy in 1919 by asking the bartender for a stronger version of an Americano (Capari, semi-sweet vermouth and soda water). The bartender replaced the soda with gin and used an orange peel to garnish the drink to denote its difference from the Americano.

Wigle celebrates Central Lawrenceville
NEXTpittsburgh is a proud sponsor of the third installment in Wigle Whiskey’s 92 Neighborhoods program series that will take place Friday, June 13 with a celebration of all things Central Lawrenceville. Tender Bar + Kitchen will be on hand with snacks and a signature cocktail, and Lawrenceville merchants Wild Card, Mid-Atlantic Mercantile, 720 Records and Tugboat Printshop will also be on hand, and the event will include a keynote address from Lawrenceville developer and Row House Cinema founder Brian Mendelssohn.

Tickets for the event are $20 and available through Wigle’s events page.

On a related noteâ€Ĥ

Atlas Bottleworks opens Friday
Atlas Bottleworks, a craft beer outlet which its owners aim to make one of western Pennsylvania’s largest, will open this Friday to coincide with the week-long soft opening of its sister business, Row House Cinema.

“We’re going to be starting with a few hundred beers on Friday and hoping to get to 500 or 600 by the grand opening on June 21,” Mendelssohn says. “The goal is to be at 1,000 beers by the end of the year.”

Matthew Wein is a local writer, editor, blogger, storyteller and proud native Pittsburgher. Once described as "a man of things," he covers city design, spirits and craft beer for NEXT, where he keeps all of the editorial meetings light-hearted and interesting. His interests include sorting books, looking at old things and candles which smell like old-growth pine forests.