Powder Witch & Company

I got another chance to run downtown recently. A friend had recommended Arsenal park as a potential story setting. Sadly for the series I'm working on (which you can find in the fiction section of my blog) the park is on too low ground. And the old civil war arsenal is too short.

But he also mentioned that the park is reportedly haunted. Since it's also in a part of town I haven't been to before, so I had to check it out.

My trip out was fairly smooth, barring one truck that though nearly clipping a bus to get out of a turn lane was a good idea. But I only had a 7 minutes for the bus downtown and about the same for the bus out to the park.

I'm actually writing this section at the park (Hi everyone from the Allegheny county offices who are just here to take a break). I haven't found any ghosts yet, unfortunately. Just some abandoned construction projects, and a locked bathroom.

There's also a playset and some swings out here. The swings are technically intended for kids, but they held up to my weight just fine.

After I'd finished up at the park (it was too cold to stay very long) I set to finding lunch.

There were a few places nearby that caught my eye, but then I remembered how close I was to the strip. I went back and forth in my head for a while before heading to Peppi's.

The atmosphere in here is fantastic, soft radio music playing hits from the 80s, the conversation of other customers, the hum of the kitchen, and the phone ringing (and I mean literally ringing, like it's been there since the 90s at least). I feels storied, if that makes any sense. And I haven't even gotten to the food. (I'm writing this part in the restaurant. Literally as I finished that last sentence, my food arrived.)

I'm a sucker for all things pizza, so when I saw they had a pizza steak sub? Well, no surprises here. The sub was a behemoth. It looks deceiving with the amount of filling visible. But it was a little longer than my forearm, and a good 6 inches thick. To some, just a typical sub style, but to me a daunting challenge.

It was stacked with a solid inch of thin sliced grilled beef, a good dose of their house pizza sauce, and topped with a layer or provolone. They had the option of lettuce, tomato slices, and a few other extra toppings, but I'd chosen to go with just the basic version.

Peppi's also does some amazing looking fries. The fries are a separate order so I didn't get any, to my initial dismay and later delight.

Delight, because, by the time I'd finished the first half of my sub I was about full. The second half was a delicious slog, and by the end I was wishing for a splash of hot sauce or some pickles to add another flavor. I finished my sandwich more by force of will than capacity of stomach. And at time of writing (this part) its been almost 4 hours and I'm still full.

I left soon after and headed back downtown. On the way I noticed that Katz Plaza, one of my favorite places to hang out and the common thread of all my visits to Pittsburgh before this final move, was closed. The timing was unfortunate for me, I'd been hoping to stop there during my outing, and I haven't been able to find a reason why it was closed.

So instead I settled on a different last stop for the day. There's a coffee shop in market square, Nicholas Coffee & Tea Co. I'd seen it in passing on many past trips downtown, but I'd only been inside once before. So I'd completely forgotten about their "coffee of the day." On this trip they had an Ethiopian blend, which was very nice.

I'm not as versed on coffee flavors, yet, so the best I can tell you was that it had a richness to it. I add sugar to mine, by preference, and once it had cooled to a drinkable temperature it combined to the perfect bitter sweetness.

So in the future, look forward to my clumsy steps towards becoming a coffee snob.

The bus back home was a smother ride that the one into town, only having to wind around the various construction projects that cropped up since I was last out that way and stop for a school bus.

I swear next time I go downtown I won't be eating at the strip. There are other parts of town I want to visit.