Purely Random

Yesterday marked an exciting day in the life of Mike Beattie: I made my first trip to the Saturday Cafe at Enrico Biscott. As you my have gathered from my previous effusion, I hold Enrico’s in high regard. The Saturday Cafe is an opportunity to experience some of their excitingly rustic food without committing yourself too the bread class. If you’re not sure that you want to take my advice and enroll in their bread class, at least give the cafe a try.

The cafe is only open on Saturday, and I’ve heard that it can become quite packed during peak hours, so I went with a group of friends for an early lunch: around 10:30. We must have arrived at just the right time. We had no problem finding one of only two table big enough to house our group. Just a few minutes later, but people really started to pile in just after we sat down.

The menu is simple and fits on front and back on a single sheet of paper. I wish I would have grabbed a copy while I was there to jog my memory for this post, but so it goes. You can be certain that everything on the menu is filled with exciting flavors and textures emulating a rustic Italian kitchen. I’ve never been to Italy, but I enough have faith in Larry’s dedication to form to just assume that it would taste something like my trip to Enrico’s (if I found the right place). Everything on the menu has a very humble construction—relatively simple without any unnecessary effort to steal attention from the basics.

Based on the recommendation of a friend at work, I ordered a “sangaweech,” which is not just your typical deli sandwich. This version of a sandwich is baked into a bed of Larry’s pizza dough. I picked the version made with artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers and salad greens. I was worried it might be a massive amount of food, but it was actually quite a reasonable size. The contents were nice and hot as if the dough was baked with them in it, but I’m not certain of the exact preparation method—the salad greens were still fresh. My current hypothesis is that they baked the pizza dough flat with the non-lettuce fillings on one side, then added lettuce and folded upon remove from Larry’s wood-burning oven. However they made it, the result was delicious.

I’m rating Enrico’s Saturday Cafe as another must-visit place in Pittsburgh. If you’re reading this, then you should go there. While you’re at it, take a stroll through the exciting shops and markets in the Strip District.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Ongoings, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.