Soured by Pennsylvania's ridiculous liquor laws

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – Pennsylvania appeared to be stepping out of the Dark Ages when its lawmakers permitted the sale of six packs of beer at select grocery stores two years ago.

The store in Pittsburgh with some of the best brew turned out to be a Giant Eagle Market District, which stocks top shelf craft beer in its “cafe.” The megagrocery store gets around the state’s liquor laws, though, by pretending to be a bar where customers can only purchase single serve food items prepared at its nearby food gallery. The sale of groceries, something as insignificant as a quart of milk, is not permitted in the fenced-off beer department.

Regardless, the store in Robinson Township quickly became a regular stop, a place where I could easily satisfy my odd taste for a gourmet chocolate brownie or cupcake washed down with a good India Pale Ale.

That convenience has come to an end. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and store’s management have decided a couple of cupcakes are not single serve food items. Two cupcakes have to be purchased at a different cash register in the store, the cafe clerk said Thursday.

“I have always paid for them here,” I replied.

“Not anymore,” the clerk said, while aiming her bar code reader at the six pack of Dark Horse Brewing Co. Crooked Tree IPA that I had selected. The two raspberry iced cupcakes were set aside, with instructions to pay for them around the corner at the coffee bar.

“How could they not be single serve food?” I said. “I could easily sit down over there and polish off a half-dozen of them.”

“They’re not,” she said. “They’re from the bakery. I cannot sell them to you.”

Now this has to sound ridiculous to those of you who live anywhere else in the union, in any number of states where beer is commonly sold in grocery and convenience stores.

Here in Pennsylvania a guy often has to walk into a dark beer garden wrenching of cigarette smoke to buy a few bottles of beer to take home to drink. And most often the selection is limited to boring six packs of Budweiser or Coors Light or 40 ouncers of Colt 45.

Or, he has to travel sometimes a good haul to a place called a distributorship, where beer is only sold by the case or keg.

So I take my IPA and two cupcakes over to the woman at the coffee bar, while working en route on those anger management skills.

That clerk took one look at me, rolled her eyes and said, “I know. You are frustrated.”

Then she said something about her having just taken one of the store’s employee classes on selling beer and decided the rules are too complicated.

Give me the fruit off the vine

 
The fruit smootie, which I have named the purple slurple

By Scott Beveridge

The like-new fruit smoothie maker came my way 10 months ago in a small inheritance.

I had purchased the white plastic blender nearly as many years ago for my mom when she was first diagnosed with cancer, thinking adding more fruit in her diet would boost her immune system.

She might have used it once, and then left it on her counter to fool me into assuming it had become a useful appliance in her kitchen. She twice beat cancer, though, before dying of complicating factors from the disease and after, instead, choosing green tea as her elixir of life.

Then the smoothie machine sat atop my clothes dryer waiting for me to decide whether to put it to good use or donate it to a charity thrift shop.

The wait ended Friday at the start of a long weekend away from the newsroom. I decided to ingest fruit smoothies as, either a detox, or a road to improving my diet as I approach my mid-50s. A vegetarian diet is not an option because I would need rehab to break my habit of eating an occasional bacon cheeseburger, or deep counseling over a compulsion to toast marshmallows made with seaweed rather than animal hooves gelatin.

I turn to Google to find recipes for the healthiest smoothie recipes only to find many using yogurt as a base. That stuff literally makes me gag, as does tomato juice, no matter how much I want to like those things.

A number of other smoothie detox drinks call raw granola, oatmeal, wheat germ or flaxseed, roughage that sounds better suited for horse feed than a refreshing morning fruit cocktail.

So I decide to concoct the following recipe:

1 lime, peeled

1 large naval orange, peeled

1 unpeeled apple cut into quarters, seeds removed

Small handfuls of frozen blackberries and blueberries

1 banana, peeled

½ cup of Ocean Spray 100 percent cranberry juice

2 tablespoons of confectioner sugar, for good measure

OK. The results. The first glass went down smooth, while the second took a bit of coaxing. Sure. I did feel an energy boost, but not one similar to those crash and burn highs derived from drinking a pot of coffee. On the third day I concluded I’d rather eat fruit the way it comes off the tree, bush or vine. The remaining blueberries and blackberries will taste great atop scoops of Ben and Jerry’s French vanilla ice cream.

So long smoothie maker, and your labor intense route to a healthy diet.

Artists peform surgery on skull masks

A fractured skull sculpture, "Bro," by Specter Studios artist China Horrell. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – One never knows what creativity will inspire when artists are given a fresh sheet of canvas on which to express their individuality.

It’s another thing altogether when they are handed the same 10 pale fractured skull masks and then asked to transform them into art for a gallery show in Pittsburgh. No doubt fake plasma will flow from at least one of the movie-prop quality masks produced locally at Specter Studios.

“There’s a little something here for everybody,” said Kim Lyons, marketing director for the artist factory.

She is wearing a black and white furry cape to greet visitors at the studio’s Friday opening reception for the mask modification show at ModernFormations gallery in the city’s scruffy Lawrenceville section.

“If you’re into the Halloween blood and guts, there is some of that,” Lyons said. “If you want something romantic looking with roses, there is some of that, too.”

It’s difficult to get romantic over that skull, which has an embroidered rose across its forehead and stitched cobwebs over it jawbone. Titled “Bitches get Stitches,” the work of Leigh Ferraro certainly stands out in the pack if that’s even possible because hers' is situated beside a skull buried in a freaky sculpture shaped like an ice cream cone.

The two-day show, Osteotomy: Mask Art by Specter Studios, is a ghoulish testament to the fine quality of the talent at this business, which strives to give local artists a place to sustain their crafts in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh pediatrician Scott Tyson and his partner, Mark Marsen, purchased the struggling business in 2004. It has evolved into a factory at a former plumbing warehouse in the city’s Sharpsburg section with 17 full-time employees who also hand make masks of such creatures as zombies and frightening clowns. The best-selling item is a half-mask of the big bad wolf with a bloody red tongue appearing to lick its lips.

This is the second attempt by Specter Studios to promote the work of its employees at a fine art gallery, and another show is planned for October. The company is considering asking Pittsburgh artists it does not employ to take on the challenge to decorate a skull mask for the next show timed for the Halloween season, Lyons said.

“It’s amazing what you will get when you give 10 different artist the same palate and they come up with 10 so uniquely different pieces,” she said.

Surely she is speaking with that mask over there in mind, the one with glowing eyes, blood dripping from its ugly yellow tongue and bat wings sprouting from its ears.

"Transistus Fluvii" by Michael Passafiume, another artists at Specter Studios (Scott Beveridge photo)

(This show has its final run from 8 to 11 p.m. today at the gallery at 4919 Penn Ave.)

A touch of Vietnam in Pittsburgh

A bowl of tasty sate soup with peanut sauce special served at Tram's Kitchen in Pittsburgh (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – The host of an established Vietnamese restaurant in Pittsburgh is known for rushing his customers to a seat in his tiny storefront business that, from the outside, almost resembles a steelworkers' bar.

The sign in Vietnamese above the door to Tram's Kitchen in the city's Bloomfield section holds the first clue that Iron City does not flow from the taps here and is served with pickled egg appetizers.

The doors give way to long and narrow walls painted robins egg blue and lined with black lacquer artwork featuring mother of pearl designs of butterflies and fish.

Within seconds of being seated the greeter hands me a menu and quickly recommends the spicy sate soup. I order spring rolls and follow his lead, ordering the sate, even though I had come here with pho on my mind.

Pho is a broth soup featuring chicken, beef or shrimp and served widely across Vietnam, where it is considered the national dish. It's typically better stewed with American meat, which, thanks to hormones and antibiotics, is more plump and juicy than the scrawny chicken and beef found in Southeast Asia.

I was unaware of sate, and more familiar with satay, or skewers of beef and chicken served in a golden brown hot sauce at Thai restaurants. But it's apparently the same flavoring used at Tram's, which is probably the closest thing to an authentic Vietnamese restaurant in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The wait was brief for the food in this restaurant with two rows of tables covered with green and white plastic tablecloths. A small television screams an unrecognizable game show from the counter beside the cash drawer. Then only thing missing from the place is an ancestral altar, something that can be found in nearly every house and business in Vietnam. The altars are where everyone places offerings of fruit and incense to honor their deceased parents and grandparents.

Tram's spring rolls have sticky, not fried, rice wrappers. They are plump and delicious, too, and likely healthier than those served dripping in grease. This raw version is what sets Vietnamese rolls apart from the others. Mine are perfectly filled with pork, shrimp, rice and lemon grass and cost just $1.95 apiece.

I could have eaten a half dozen of them dipped in peanut sauce tinged with red hot pepper jelly. However, it was imperative to save room for that fantastic large bowl of soup, which brought the check to $12.95.

Tram's spring rolls with peanut sauce and red hot pepper sauce. (Beveridge photo)

Chasing the golden eagle

West Virginia University professor Todd Katzner explains his groundbreaking study of Appalachian wildlife focusing on the Eastern golden eagle, using roadkill deer to bait animals to trail cameras. Click here for more of the story.

Craft beer is making this bar a destination

Bartender Devon Keeliher of Beaver, Pa., draws a pour from one of 16 taps that deliver exclusively craft beer at Bocktown Beer and Grill near Pittsburgh. (Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – Chris Dilla laughs now about the bankers who looked at her as if she were crazy for wanting money to open a craft beer bar in a strip mall where other businesses were struggling.

“They were not real receptive,” said Dilla, who would eventually win the support to invest in Bocktown Beer and Grill in North Fayette Township. “They just didn’t understand craft beer.”

What they also didn’t get was that beer created by independent, specialty brewers has loyal followers who will travel distances to places, like Bocktown, where such brew flows in great volumes from the taps.

“Beer is making the place a destination," Dilla said. "We’re not just a bar, but a restaurant that just happens to have an incredible beer selection.”

Craft beer tends to be heavy on flavor and made by passionate, creative brewers who are not to be afraid to experiment by adding flowers, fruit and different spices to the barrel, she said.

There are always 16 of them on tap at Bocktown, with such names as Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, Coney Island Mermaid Pilsner, Rock Bottom Uppity Jagoff IPA and Furthermore Fallen Apple.

“We try to be regional first,” said Dilla, whose Pittsburgh suppliers include the Pennsylvania Brewing Co. and East End Brewery Co. Those made by the big corporations, such as Coors and Budweiser, come here in bottles that are tucked away in a cooler for those rare customers who don’t show up here with a discriminating palate.

The commitment has paid off as her business has grown by as much as 10 percent a year, even during the recession, and the price of a draft does not come cheap.

Dilla said she owes her success to a number of factors.

There has been a trend growing at restaurants across the country of customers seeing a beer list as more important than the wine list. Younger adults have been raised in a food and beverage culture where they have been given many more choices, Dilla said. Meanwhile, the number of craft brewers has been growing since the 1980s, she said.

However, Dilla is especially savvy in the way in which she uses social media – Facebook, Twitter and foursquare – to grow her customer base via smart phone communications.

“It’s a great marketing tool, and it’s free,” said Dilla, a guest speaker at last year’s PodCamp Pittsburgh, an “UnConference” run by and for technology nerds. She is known there as an entrepreneur who has developed one of the best social media business models in the city.

The magic has worked so well for her that customers often encounter long waits for a table.

It’s also not uncommon for two or three kegs to kick behind the bar in 10 minutes’ time.

Bocktown is tucked away at 690 Chauvet Drive in a near-vacant Pool City Plaza, across the parking lot from Target, where four surrounding stores have closed since the bar opened four years ago.

“And our sales have done nothing but boom,” said Dilla, who is about to open a second location at Beaver Valley Mall, and looking to open a third somewhere in Washington County.

Another is under consideration in Monroeville.

She knew her plan would work because she, too, loves a good craft beer and grew tired of driving around looking for a good restaurant with craft beer.

“I would find even (restaurants) in Washington County, where I would say, ‘Oh, thank God they have that beer,’” she said. “And then we’d go back and they were giving it away to get rid of it.

“I just knew the commitment would have to come from within the business rather than the customers coming in and asking for the beer.”

(This story first appeared in Living Washington County magazine, a publication of the Observer-Reporter)