Etna and South Side Get Huge Upgrades to their Pizza
Well it’s the Friday before the third Monday in April which means Marathon Monday is right around the corner. The Boston Marathon takes place every Patriot’s Day (except one) and if you’re a running enthusiast like myself you know how important pizza is to marathon training. Lately I’ve been running around 70 miles a week preparing for the Pittsburgh Marathon and I’m craving two things at the end of a run: a cortado from Constellation and a large plain pizza from any pizza shop that’ll have me.
You spend miles, hours, running around the city. Tearing your body down, trading in fat, carbohydrates and calories for energy to propel one foot in front of another. Doing this day after day after day after day for one hundred days rewires your brain. Running becomes routine and you spend every mile thinking what you’ll do when you’re done running. For me, that’s often pizza.
I’m not running the Boston Marathon this year, but I’ll be running the Pittsburgh Marathon with a body built by pizza to crush twenty six point two miles of bridges, hills and pavement.
This year the Pittsburgh Marathon teamed up with Caliente to create an official pizza of the race. The winning pizza is the Pittsburgh Potato Pie. So, something to eat at the start line or fuel with throughout the race.
The Southside is an enigma to me. I hardly spend time there, not only because it’s an isolated area of the city, but there’s not much appeal for a 38 year old guy like myself. Lately, I’ve been passing through the area during long runs where I’m practicing running the marathon course or heading over to Bottle Rocket Social Hall, one of the best venues in the city.
When people ask me for pizza reccomendations I mention the Slice On Broadway shack in the Southside Works or the gargantuan slices at Benny Fierro’s. I once had a physical therapist who would spend our whole sessions talking about Benny Fierro’s as he crushed my achilles with a metal bar. I had to stop going.
But Kevin Konn, one of the cities best pizza makers and a wizard of dough, is running the pizza program at Pitch. Pitch is a new pizza and burger shop going in where Local was on East Carson st. Kevin has been given the support he needs to create an array of roman style pizza.
It’s not open yet, but keep an eye on their Instagram so you can experience supremely tasty pizza in the historic Southside. This is not to be confused with the Pitch that opened in Lawrenceville.
The Etna Slice House is open for business and boy does it look like an out-of-this-city pizza shop. Growing up, my grandma lived in Etna. After college I moved into that house with her and my dad. Three generations, one roof, lots of pizza. We’d get Amato’s, Alioto’s and, my grandma’s local favorite, Frank’s Pizza and Chicken. She loved the big globs of cheese that collected on the plates. Early in my courtship with Christa my grandma grabbed a hunk of cheese off Christa’s plate like a frog catching a fly. What a welcome to the family.
To me, those Etna pizza shops were too heavy handed with the cheese. No balance or artistry. The Etna Slice House looks to solve that problem by making pizzas that give equal weight to the different pizza attributes.
I hope to make it out there this weekend so stay tuned for more coverage.
Always great to see new pizza endeavors crop up around the city. Hope you enjoyed! Pizza ya later.
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist
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