WV Gourmet

Fathead’s is a great bar/restaurant on Pittsburgh’s South Side.  Not only does Fathead’s have an insane beerlist, their staff is knowledgeable about beer, AND they have great bar food.  It’s pretty much the greatest place in the world. 

The food:  They have an extensive menu of sandwiches (or headwiches, as they call them) and burgers, as well as generous sized appetizers and chicken wing flavors.  On my most recent trip, I went with an appetizer of five wings and the Double D.  For the wings I went with Fathead’s Original (their version of the classic Buffalo sauce).  They were very big and meaty with a crispy exterior and a good dose of very spicy Buffalo sauce.  My sandwich headwich was the Double D, which the menu describes as follows:   “Shaved Steak grilled with onions, mushrooms & hot peppers on top of hot sausage & pepperoni.  With tomato sauce, provolone and parmesan cheese.  Buy two, who wouldn’t want a pair of Double D’s.”  This sandwich was every bit as big, unhealthy and DELICIOUS as it sounds.  I did not capture a photo of it because it was so large that you couldn’t fit it into a single picture.  I’m not kidding, it was bigger than my oversized head.  It came with homemade chips, which were also very good. 

A delicious mug of Brutal Bitter

The beer:  Even if Fathead’s didn’t have exceptional bar food, it is well worth the visit for the beer.  They boast 42 beers on tap, many of which are rotating selections.  Forty of those taps are devoted to microbrews/imports, while one is for Lite Beer From Miller and the other Yeungling Lager.  They also always have one beer served on cask.  For those of you who don’t know about cask conditioned beers, they are a rare treat which you can learn about here.  On this particular visit, Rogue Brutal Bitter was on cask, so I started off with that.  It was slightly warm (as a cask beer should be), had a great full mouthfeel with assertive, yet somewhat mellow hops.  I followed this up with Great Divide Fresh Hop Ale - a very assertively hopped pale ale from Colorado.  The grapefruity bitterness of this beer paired well with the fatty Double D.  I then tried a sample of the Sierra Nevada Brown Saison, which had nice raisin and funky flavor.  I closed out with the Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout.  Why is this beer called “Ten Fidy”?  Because it is 10.5% alcohol by volume.  This is one hell of a strong and tasty beer, with strong roasted coffee and dried fruit flavors, but also a strong hop character, in other words a damn fine beer.  

A lilliputian selection of taphandles.

After finishing the Ten Fidy, I went back to my hotel, turned on the TV and was asleep before 8 p.m.  The combination of a long day, some good football, the Double D, and some damn fine beers had worn me out.  I awoke the next morning, refreshed and ready to go to Pamela’s Diner for pancakes, but that is another story.

For a few short years, I lived in Pittsburgh.  I have made several trips back up there in the seven years since I moved away, but there are some places that, until recently, I had not been to since 2002.  One such place is Wings Suds & Spuds, located in Moon Township.  On a recent trip, I went there with my old pal Big Mike (a veteran of Wings Suds & Spuds) and Rob (a Wings Suds & Spuds virgin).

Wings Suds & Spuds has pretty much the best Buffalo style wings in the world.  They have other things on the menu,  but I have only ever had two things there: wings and fries. 

A half pound of delicious curly fries.

I will discuss the fries first, since they are brought out as an appetizer.  There is only one size order of fries: a half pound boat of fresh cut curly fries.  You will find two bottles on your table to accompany your fries.  One is a bottle of ketchup, the other is a squeeze bottle of white vinegar.  As usual, I doused my fries with vinegar and salt, put a little ketchup on the side and dug in with my plastic fork and made quick work of my half pound of fries.  Big Mike took it up a level and ordered a side of cheese sauce for his fries, which he also made quick work of.  Rob, being a Wings Suds & Spuds virgin, did not order any fries. 

Then came the wings.  They have many flavors, but for me there are only two: traditional hot and hot garlic.  On this evening, I went with traditional, but there are two modifications available on the menu, which I always make: “extra hot” and “extra wet”.  “Extra hot” is pretty obvious: extra hot sauce is added to the mix.  “Extra wet” means that they are served up in extra sauce.  I love lots of sauce.  The non-extra wet wings come to you swimming in about a quarter inch of sauce, which seems pretty excessive compared to the measly doses of sauce you get at other places.  The extra wet wings come to you in about a half inch of sauce, which makes for an excellent dip if you still have any fries left over.  The wings themselves are big.  I mean really big, not like the sparrow wings you get at some places.  These things may have been pulled off an emu.  They are cooked until the skin is crispy, which is more than I can say for some places.  The sauce has the perfect balance of hot and vinegary.  Big Mike, a native of Buffalo, has proclaimed this his favorite wing place in the Pittsburgh area, and I don’t disagree.

The place is tight and the parking lot is tighter.  I have never been there when it was not crowded, but it is worth the drive out of the city and a little wait.  The beer selection is nothing special.  I think it is pretty much Bud, Bud Light, IC Light, and Yeungling, but you don’t go there for the beer, you go there for the wings.  Another added bonus is that they have a fantastic piece of art on the wall.  Their logo is a chicken in a tracksuit, running while carrying a pitcher of beer and a tray of wings.  They have immortalized this logo in the form of a carpet mural, which hangs on the wall of the dining room.  Regretably, I did not snap a picture of this piece of art.

I used to frequent this place with The Bundick Brothers, who would always invoke the Bundick No Wipe Rule, whereby you could not use a napkin until you were finished eating.  It added a little extra excitement to the consumption of spicy, saucy dead chicken parts.  Upon my most recent visit, there were no Bundicks in attendance so wiping was allowed. 

Behold, the extra hot, extra wet.

I have now been to the Buffalo Wild Wings at Southridge.  My review is in the form of a series of haikus (or is the plural of haiku simply haiku?)

Crispy and large wings

Mango habenero sauce

Good but needs more sauce

For the side order

Undercooked buffalo chips

Ketchup was not Heinz

Service was spotty

Food came out at diff’rent times

But the beer was cold.

If if weren’t for bachelorette parties, girls’ nights out, and first dates, this place would be out of business.  Any time you go in this restaurant, there will be at least four of each of the aforementioned groups eating, waiting for a table, or on their way out.  The food here is good, but the sushi is really only alright - largely due to the criminal overuse of cream cheese in virtually every maki they serve.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the description of one of the sushi rolls at Ichiban and thought it sounded really good, then shuddered when I saw the words cream and cheese.  It has probably happened 73 million times (okay, maybe they don’t quite have 73 million items on the menu, but they do have an inordinate number of items that utilize cream cheese).  The cooked food, on the other hand, is all quite top notch.  I’m particularly fond of the Mongolian filet and the spicy thai shrimp. 

The Mongolian filet, is basically like the Mongolian beef on the menus of so many Chineese restaurants, except it is made with filet and the sauce is flavorful and spicy, not gloppy and bland like the stuff you can get at Chinese restaurants for eight bucks. 

The Thai shrimp is pretty much the hottest thing I will eat and actually enjoy.  They taste really good, but they burn going in and coming out.  You pretty much have to be prepared for a miserable morning the next day after ordering this dish, because fire will literally shoot out your ass.

Also noteworthy is the Wild Ginger Pork.

Suzi’s Hamburgers is THE place to go for biscuits.  Compared to a Suzi’s biscuit, Tudors just plain doesn’t cut it.  Suzi’s biscuits are huge cathead biscuits - kind of like Mom made but only better.  You can get the standard array of biscuit fillers: scrambled eggs, sausage, steak, bacon, etc.  The eggs are really wonderful and fluffy and all of the meats are delicous too.  The coffee kind of sucks, but what do you expect from a fast food joint in South Charleston? 

Check out the size of that big beautiful biscuit.

Although the place is called Suzi’s Hamburgers, the hamburgers are really only sort of okay.  Nothing exceptional, just a typical fast food hamburger.  This is probably because they’ve spent so much effort on making the greatest biscuits in the known world that they don’t have the time, energy, or resources to focus on the burgers. 

If you go, make sure to take an appetite and don’t plan on eating again for several hours.

Mama Rosa’s is kind of a hidden gem in Charleston’s West Side.  Sure, it’s kind of smack dead in the middle of a somewhat sketchy neighborhood, that doesn’t matter, the food and service are excellent.  My trusty sidekick had been telling me for a year about how great this place just down the hill from her place is, and I had not tried it until recently and WOW was I impressed.  Is the pizza as good as Lola’s?  No, but it’s really damn good and you don’t have to stand around and wait all day to get a seat, nor do you have to pay four bucks for a craptacular beer, like PBR.* 

Both times I’ve eaten at Mama Rosa’s (once take out, and most recently inside), I’ve had the Mediterranean pizza.  The Mediterranean pie has lots of feta and olives on it, so it’s loaded with salty goodness.  The crust is thin and crisp, yet soft on the inside and a bit sweet.  The pie is also served with a garlic butter dipping sauce, which is really good if you’re like me and enjoy garlic and butter. 

For our appetizer, we had the grape leaves.  They were very good, and stuffed with ground lamb and rice.  They were served warm, with a yogurt dipping sauce that went well with them.  I am told that the baba ghanouj is really good, however, I have not had it. 

Also, they have draft beers (nothing special, just Bud, Bud Light, and Amber Bock) for 99 cents or $4.99 a pitcher.  Also, there is a buy one get one free calzone night, though I don’t know which night that is (I’m sure that Megan will post on here with that information).  There are several televisions and a poker room too.  We also saw a really sweet mullet during our visit.  It was probably the best mullet I’ve seen in quite some time. 

In summary, if you’d like a tasty pizza, some middle eastern food, cheap beer, and maybe see a bitchin’ mullet, then go to Mama Rosa’s.

*Yes, I’m aware that Lola’s has a selection of very good beers, such as those from Great Lakes and Rogue, but some folks (not me) don’t like good beers and want something cheap and fizzy and while a PBR at Lola’s is certainly fizzy, it ain’t exactly cheap.  Also, I don’t really remember if a PBR is four bucks at Lola’s, however anything higher than fifty cents for a PBR is highway robbery.

Taylor Books is one of my favorite places in Charleston.  They have great coffee, good food, excellent baked goods, books, wine, and mopey singer songwriters on the weekends. 

The other day, I popped in at lunch time and got soup and a salad to take back to the office for lunch.  The soup of the day on this particular day was cock-a-leekie soup.  Now, I’d never had leaky cock soup, so I had to try it.  For my salad, I went with the BLT salad.  Cock-a-leekie is a simple, delicious soup consisting of chicken and leeks that tastes wonderful.  I will be getting this soup again.  The salad was good, but not great.  The greens were crisp, the boiled egg was okay, but nothing to write home about, and the bacon was decent, but not outstanding. 

I pretty much pop in there every day for a large black coffee on my way into the office.  Every now and then I have to wait behind people who are getting vanilla bullshit things, but the staff is generally pretty quick to get you served.  From time to time, I skip breakfast and get some sort of baked goods to go with my coffee.  More often than not, I go with one of their blueberry bran muffins, which are nothing short of outstanding, however from time to time they serve the elusive bacon and cheese scone.  The bacon and cheese scone is nothing short of breathtaking. 

If you’ve never been, put Taylor Books on your list of places to visit in Charleston.  They’re located at 226 Capitol Street.