The Pittsburgh Dish
Do you really know the food scene of Pittsburgh?! The Pittsburgh Dish introduces you to the people, places, and recipes that make our regional cuisine so special. By sharing personal stories, weekly recommendations, and community recipes, we aim to inspire you to connect with local taste makers and experience the unique flavors that shape our city.
The Pittsburgh Dish
011 Beth Kurtz Taylor's Bakery Journey and Pittsburgh's Edible Heritage
(01:10) Embarking on a career change is no small feat, but for Beth Kurtz Taylor, the pivot from child development to the realm of pastries and sourdough is a journey marked by resilience and an unwavering passion for food. Join us as Beth, the spirited co-owner of Pittsburgh's newest delight, Third Space Bakery, cooks up tales of her transformative path through a passion for food and the people behind it.
(10:52) Beth shares her lens of cherished local establishments like Pitaland, Enrico Biscotti, and Stamoolis, uncovering the connections that flavor our local food scene and preserve the legacies that have served our palates for generations. We also share how a unique cookbook club out of Chatham University, knitted together a community of shared culinary adventures.
(34:46) We also explore the ultimate steak location for a special night on the town, and share a retro dish studded with family history in our recipe of the week. Pull a chair up, and get ready to dig in!
Welcome to the Pittsburgh Dish. I'm your host, Doug Heilman. Want the inside scoop on some of our best food neighborhoods? This week's guest knows her stuff. Looking for that celebratory meal for that meat lover in your life Our friend Raquel has just the place and want a fun and retro sweet salad recipe that's easy to remember? We have one for you in our recipe of the week. All that ahead, stay tuned. We want to thank all of our listeners that have taken the step to support The Pittsburgh Dish. If you're finding value in what we're doing week over week learning new places, hearing the stories of interesting people or learning about a new recipe that you want to try at home we'd love it if you would consider supporting the show as well. Just go to our website at www. pittsburghdish. com and look for the support button. You can sign up for as little as $3 a month and cancel anytime. Thanks so much for listening and supporting The Pittsburgh Dish. Now on to the show. Hey, so welcome to the show and thanks for coming over.
Beth:I'm so happy to be here.
Doug:Would you introduce yourself and what you have going on right now in food?
Beth:A lot. Okay, so my name is Beth Kurtz-Taylor. I'm one of three owners of Third Space Bakery that will be opening this spring in Garfield. We will be a bakery by day, specializing in rustic French pastry and sourdough breads. We'll have lunch and breakfast items as well, but at night we will convert to be a cooking classroom where you can come and take baking and cooking classes.
Doug:I love it. Okay, so the bakery is opening this spring, but you and I got to know each other a couple of years back through I always like to say a kid's cooking camp. It's called Camp Delicious.
Beth:Yes.
Doug:How did you get involved in that?
Beth:So one of my business partners, Erika Bruce she and I got to know each other through a cookbook club and she's a chef and a pastry chef and she was approached to help run the camp and she knew I had the experience of working with children and running a teaching kitchen. I worked for three years for YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh running their kitchen in the Samson family YMCA and she asked if she could bring me on board as well and the two of us collaborated to create the curriculum for two years and execute the camp with. First year was 2021, which was, you know, the first post pandemic camp, so that was a little challenging. And then the next year, in 2022, is when you came along and joined us. I was so scared.
Doug:I actually was so afraid to ask. I didn't want to be butting in, but I was just looking to do a little bit more real life stuff, as opposed to some things I was doing on social media, and you guys were A so gracious and B really put me to task.
Doug:I don't know if I'll ever make a mole again live but the kids are so amazing and you know, through that experience I think it really raises everybody's confidence in the kitchen. It raised mine. I learned something through you all and I also learned about your love of cookbooks. So that's how I got introduced to you. But I'd love to take you a little bit back. I know you said you had really started a career in child development and child education. Where did your journey into food really begin?
Beth:It's pretty funny because I always say I wish I had those wonderful stories of cooking in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother, but I don't. My mother always wanted me to focus on studying and being a student and having a career. So I worked with children. It was really ironic. Every population I worked with I made sure the kids cooked. I worked with special needs preschoolers three to five-year-olds that had a mixed bag of issues and we cooked every Friday with those kids. We made something.
Beth:And then I went on to work with hospitalized children at Children's Hospital. We figured out ways to cook there and, yeah, it was always central to and I was always learning. You know, as a newly married wife, I had maybe about four or five cookbooks and I read them religiously and every time my husband bought me a new cookbook I was just thrilled and would try everything out, tried to teach myself how to make pasta from scratch, and you know all kind of I was. I was very adventurous and this was like early to mid nineties. And then our cable was I think it was Comcast at that time was the only cable in Pittsburgh that carried the early, early, early food network when they actually had cooking shows that you could learn something from Exactly.
Doug:They're much fewer on that type of network now.
Beth:So I could go down a rabbit hole about that. But I started watching and I'm talking Emeril early in the day when he was like camera shy and awkward and you know. And Food Network was a new concept. The only food shows you ever saw was like PBS on a Saturday. You know I religiously watched Great Chefs of the West for years and that was about the only thing Martin Yan, maybe.
Beth:and what's the Frugal Gourmet? There was just a few you know, after Julia Child and Graham Carrow. But I just started, you know, cooking along with Sarah Moulton and learning all you know. Just following all these chefs and learning pre-social media, pre-facebook, all of that, but picking up cookbooks when I could and just teaching myself and taking classes locally at the Crate.
Doug:The Crate is the cooking school over in Green Tree.
Beth:Yes, yes, they started out. They were first in like Scott Township, mount Lebanon area at that time, but then I started. You know, I learned how to make pasta from them because my home attempt was a big fail and you know it just grew from there.
Raquel:So, you're self-taught.
Beth:Yes, for the most part I've taken classes along the way, but then life-changing circumstances. I unfortunately lost my husband in 2006. I was fortunate to be able to just do some part-time work to keep my brain active and be there for my son, and that was my biggest focus. So he hits middle school Doesn't really need me that much anymore. You know, like what am I going to do when I grow up? And the thought of culinary school I'm like God. I don't know if I want to like work in a kitchen eight hours a day.
Aunt Jane:Look at me now.
Doug:It actually has. It came across my mind in my late thirties to forties, but I'm like do 30s to 40s.
Beth:But I'm like, do I want to do that?
Beth:I know I know, and that's when the um program in food studies was taking off at chatham chatham university and you have a master's, a master's of arts and food studies. Chat from chatham, that was 2015 I graduated in 2015. I started the program in 2011. I took a little bit longer because it was going super part-time being a mom. You know, so, yeah, I just tried about everything I could to learn about the food system and the local food scene from you know, spending a summer at Churchview Farm.
Doug:Oh yeah, if folks don't know Churchview Farm, you should check it out. Their farm dinners are amazing, oh yeah.
Beth:Yeah, and it was a family farm that's really been untouched by modern agriculture and this younger granddaughter of the immigrant family that came there took it over and just turned it into this amazing little oasis on top of a hill in is it Baldwin Boro? I believe? Yeah, and they do really cool things there. She grows what like 20 varieties or 40 varieties of tomatoes.
Doug:It's ridiculous, yeah yeah, and everything else and goats and chicken you know, and a couple of really nice dogs and cats.
Beth:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Doug:It is up in Baldwin. I was trying to think too, because you feel like you're still in the city, but you make a couple turns and you are on the farm.
Beth:Yes, yes, up this gravel road. I haven't been for a while but the last time, yeah, but I started leading food tours walking food tours in the city for a company called Berk Bits and Bites.
Doug:Oh, wow.
Beth:Locally. I did that for 11 years. Let's take a sidestep here, tell me a little bit about a food tour Like what were like one or two of the neighborhoods you would go. So they're still touring at this point in Lawrenceville. The Strip. District which, of course is the most popular. I helped develop tours both in Saxenburg and Allentown. Now the Allentown tour is no longer live, sadly, but I also. There's one on the north side and south side. Oh, and then one of, probably one of my favorite is the uh brookline tour.
Beth:Oh, yeah, it's a Pita land and you know, yeah, it's a great little tour. So, yeah, I had to pull back from that because I've just become too busy with the bakery, but it was great fun. We would meet people, buy tickets online or sometimes as a private group, and we would meet at the first tickets online, or sometimes as a private group, and we would meet at the first stop on the tour and gather and get to know each other and then explore six to seven businesses within the neighborhood. Now, it's not always a restaurant. It could be an ethnic food store, it could be a formal spot or a more casual spot, but it's great fun.
Beth:Or a more casual spot, but it's great fun, and we always try to mix in the history of the neighborhood and maybe something non-food, like, for example, the Lawrenceville tour. We stop in a great art gallery In the strip. We start at St Patrick's Church, which has a fabulous history and a beautiful inside very unique, it's groups of 12, and by the end people are breaking bread together and having a great time and just connecting with the owners and with the guides. It's great fun.
Doug:I just think for you I mean number one you started sort of being book smart about learning how to cook and there now you've transitioned into really not only this degree at Chatham, but I would think that you learned so much as a docent for one of these tours, absolutely. Are there any relationships you've developed with some of the store owners, the proprietors that really stand out?
Beth:Yes, oh, absolutely One of the biggest. And this was going on prior with the strip. Again, since I did it for 11 years I've probably led that to a hundred, literally hundreds of times. Just love, love, love. The people at parma sausage um was super thrilled when I was working on another project when reena, the um daughter of the original proprietor, took me up into her office and we ate prosciutto and cheese and bread and some of her homemade red and I had already always seen her dad doing that on the Rick Seaback strip to special and sadly he had passed by the time I was leading tours. So I just felt this full circle moment that I wanted.
Beth:Yeah, and also in the strip the people at Enrico Biscotti are just like family. Yeah, Especially, you know we miss Larry so much and that was a hard one, but yeah and that was a hard one. But yeah, in Stamoolis those ladies are lovely and their dad you know. They're taking over the store. The next generation of women taking over. Stamoolis.
Doug:I've met both of his daughters.
Beth:Connie and Katina, that's right.
Doug:They've helped me out buying several cheeses now for things that I was doing.
Beth:Yeah, they're fantastic, yeah. So yeah, I could go on and on. You know quite a few in Lawrenceville as well.
Doug:Yeah.
Beth:Totally love Franco and Annette. It's Senti Just wonderful people yeah.
Doug:Well, that's I think. That's, I think, what I'm fascinated with you. You are a food person in so many facets, but you actually you really have the relationships with some of these folks. Not only do you know where to go some of the key gems of the city and the region, but you know the people and you know their story. I'm sure you know you probably need to be thinking about that little book you need to write.
Beth:Oh, I know, I know that has come up several times, but yeah, there are so many good stories. In fact, I wrote a really great little bio on Joe Chahine from Pitaland, from Pitaland. And I'm like oh, you know, I could just so.
Doug:He's great the first time I went to Pitaland Joe, this is the father, the founder of.
Raquel:Pitaland who?
Doug:was sitting out on a bench. You had told me about him, so I asked him like are you Joe?
Beth:And he just went in and told me the story oh sure it is a fabulous story.
Doug:It's a fascinating and a fabulous family story an immigrant story and what they do with Pita, not only locally but really across the country. Sure, it's an amazing operation.
Beth:So a little bit, I'm just going to go off on a tangent here. But so a little bit, I'm just going to go off on a tangent here. But what drives me with this is my ancestors. On my mother's side, my great-grandfather was a butcher and a poultry man and came here and opened a store on Penn Avenue. I love it.
Doug:I had no idea.
Beth:Yeah, so my mom would always say 1909 to 1913, which is now the big giant parking lot with mural. His business was so successful. They had three storefronts and lived above the store. That's where my mother was born, when they still lived there, and she said you know, they were wholesalers because the strip was largely wholesale at that point and maybe some little corner grocery stores for the people who live there, but largely what we know now. You know the businesses that were around there were largely wholesale and they supplied grocery stores little grocery stores, because that's what existed and hotels.
Beth:I actually have photos of my grandmothers that I took to a Kodak photo machine and blew up and would bring those on the tour and I never knew these people. I don't know, I know very little. My mom's dad died when she was about 10. So you know that generation you didn't talk about too much. There's some stories I've heard, but not a lot. So when I can do that for another family, I can preserve it through my writing or through telling stories to other people and keep that alive, that memory alive, that I've personally lost. It's huge to me, yeah.
Doug:You got me thinking too. So you are your family's lifelong here in Pittsburgh.
Beth:Where did you grow up, forest?
Doug:Hills, forest Hills, yeah, and although that oral history kind of sort of disappeared or got kind of thin it was great. How did you find out about those that was that was still surviving?
Beth:Talk a little bit. You know my mom would have stories like them. You know, butchering a chicken and it's still running around with that, of course, things like that you know. And they were very prosperous, you know. So they were. She always said, even during the depression people needed food so they were able to build. The family built two homes in Squirrel Hill, one of which I would spend a lot of my child in, because my great aunt, my grandfather's sister and her husband lived there, and the great grandmother, my grandfather's mom, lived with them you know, like the matriarch of the family who, ironically, with a name like Mataszewski.
Beth:She was German, she married a Polish guy. That wasn't done a lot back then, but yeah, and then my grandfather, grandmother and my mom and her siblings all grew up on the other side of what is it Brownsville Road that goes, goes down towards. Yeah, um, they lived on the corner of shady and birchfield and then my, my mom lived on the other side. They had identical houses built by the same architect. They moved like squirrel hill was kind of countryish at that point, you know you know, then we moved further out to forest hills.
Beth:We all stayed east and then kept moving.
Doug:Now, it sounds like at the time forest hills probably sounded so far away from.
Beth:Pittsburgh, yeah, oh sure. Yeah, it was in pictures of my parents built the home under construction or bought it under construction in the 50s, the photos of the front porch of those homes weren't even there. Just that valley behind.
Doug:Yeah, I'll have to show you sometime. Yeah, so really deep Pittsburgh roots.
Beth:I love that. Yes, super deep, super deep.
Doug:Okay, so let's kind of come back to some more present day. So I love this way that you're sharing history with the food tours. I would love to talk a little bit more about when you got into your education at Chatham and some of the connections you've now made that have brought you to today. Is that where the cookbook club came out of, or are those unrelated?
Beth:Yes, it is related because our food studies, food writing teacher at that time was Sherry Flick, who's a local writer. She writes a lot of short stories, fiction, flash fiction, that kind of thing. But she took on the food studies course. She had been doing like blogging, neighborhood walking, food tours, and the head of the Chatham department honed in on her and had her teach this course. So I took that, loved it and she really empowered us. She said you know, any of you could submit something. You know. And I had a connection through somebody else at Chatham to Bob Batts Jr, who was the editor of the PG's food section at that time and I sent him a couple writing samples and pitched him a couple of writing samples and pitched him a couple of ideas and he's like here, go with this. I'm like okay. So you know that.
Doug:So you've had some freelance articles published in the.
Beth:Post Gazette, Craft Pittsburgh Beer Magazine. I wrote for quite regularly A couple other outlets here, local, Pittsburgh, other, oh some, national. I wrote an article about food and grief for a grief publication a little bit here and there.
Beth:So, Sherry, back to the connection through the cookbook thing. Sherry has this online community on Facebook that she invited students to belong to, and there are literally hundreds of people on this in this community from all over the world. We share pictures, recipes, we talk about food subjects, et cetera, and we can invite other people to join it Throughout their years ago there was an article about starting a cookbook club. Two other people picked it up and we started. It was just three of us for a while. We started this little cookbook club so we would meet every four to six weeks and I'll cook from the same book and talk about it and meet together. So it's still going strong. A lot of people have come and gone. There's probably about eight to 10 regular members at this point, but it's still. We have a really good time with it. But, yeah, that's how I met Erika.
Doug:I was going to say. This is how you met one of your business partners, our friend Erika Bruce.
Beth:And then Erika was a maker in residence for Chatham, and so was Chloe Newman.
Doug:And what does that mean If one of our listeners doesn't know? What a maker in residence is oh thank you.
Beth:Yes, that means that they have been contracted by the university for I'm not sure if it's a semester or a year to share their knowledge and expertise by conducting workshops and classes, and then, you know, in turn gaining a lot of knowledge from the school.
Doug:So you met Erika through Cookbook Club who coincidentally was doing this maker in residence at Chatham. And, coincidentally, your third current business partner, Chloe Newman, was also doing a maker in residence.
Beth:Yes, yes, and they both had their own business baking businesses. Chloe's was Crustworthy, doing all types of wonderful things with sourdough, and Erica's was Le Beau Gateau, doing cakes and a lot of French pastry brunch items, et cetera. So they met at Chatham and also were side-by-side at a local farmer's market.
Doug:So, leading up to, we'll kind of come back to the bakery at the end, but like your orbits were sort of coming together a little while back, yes, oh, I love it.
Beth:Really funny. I went to the IACP conference, the International Association for Culinary Professionals. It was held in Pittsburgh a couple years back. Eating lunch, this lovely young woman comes and sits next to me and she introduces herself and it was Chloe, and I said oh, we have a mutual friend, erica Bruce, somebody from Milk Street, not Milk Street, but Cook's. Country came and sat down next to us and said oh, Erika Bruce, I know her, so you know. That's how I first met. Chloe was at that conference. Oh, I love it.
Doug:We'll have to talk to those other two ladies on a couple of future shows. I actually went to, I think, one of your cookbook club events.
Beth:Yeah, you did yeah.
Doug:I'm terrible, I think let me throw my dirty little secret out. I love cookbooks, but I don't usually cook out of them very much. I look through them, I get really inspired and then I go do my own thing. I'm too much of a fiddler and you are much better at at least trying all of the recipes.
Beth:I'll try it. I'll try it. Yeah, I'm a fiddler too though A woman I used to work with said can't you ever leave a recipe alone? I'm like you, really can't, but for the sake of the club I usually try to stay true to form for that occasion. And we all do, and we talk about it.
Doug:It's a great community. I also remember when we did meet up for that club. You give each other feedback, like if something worked or didn't work technique-wise, you are not afraid to say, say that was a little dry or I maybe do this.
Beth:No, I mean there's a couple pastry chefs in the group there's. A lot of us are just self-taught home cooks. There's an academic scholar who who a lot of her PhD work was around cookbooks, so I mean it's a tough crowd. But yeah, we all go home with leftovers. It was actually just last night and my refrigerator is full for the week right now with all the good stuff.
Doug:That's probably one of the best sort of food shares you could do Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, it's great fun. I have a couple other little factoids I'd love to talk through. You had another interesting event with the food critic of the LA and New York Times, Ruth Reichl, who is a food writer. Tell me about that story again, because I know that was one of those other food moments You're like how is this happening?
Beth:Yes, Ruth Reichel's work early on reading food you know, food lit genre was right at the saving thing for me, right when my husband was diagnosed with his illness I discovered her books, the under the tuscan sun.
Beth:Oh my god, they were just like these little escapes from reality. I take my son as a toddler up to the library and just try to get every book like that I could get my hands on and started reading her work and then, and everything she did over the years, just loved her. I saw her at the carnegie lecture series one time when she was in town and got her autograph. But a friend of mine locally who is the editor for the off-duty section of the wall street journal, she works here out of pittsburgh and it's beth cracklauer. Okay, she has an amazing food relatedigree and she worked at one point for Gourmet Magazine under Ruth. So she posted on Facebook hey, does anyone want to join me at the farm? It was this weekend at Ian Knauer who was an executive chef for Gourmet Magazine at his farm and cooking school out there around New Hope and quite little gorgeous towns, yes, and they were having a get-together of the old band from Gourmet Magazine, from Gourmet.
Doug:Magazine.
Beth:To commemorate I wouldn't say celebrate, but commemorate the demise. It had been 10 years since they had shuttered their doors.
Beth:And, of course, the big-name attraction was Ruth and it happened to be the same fall, as fall would have been my 25th wedding anniversary and I'm like, oh, you know, people get these great trips and jewelry and everything else. I'm treating myself to this. So I went out the first morning when she walked in the door to have this access to her for over 48 hours and hear her talk, and it was just, and I got, I had some one-on-one time with her when I had her sign a book and it was just lovely, and I told her the story of how the writing helped me so much you know and she's, yeah was so gracious and lovely and told me a related story about something in her life and, ah, you know it was yeah, but there were cooking demonstrations.
Beth:We ate together. They roasted a you know half of a pig in Ian's outdoor wood fire oven and all kinds of amazing. There's a great little food community out there. You know wine people, cookbook people, restaurant people, farmers that are really, you know, I still follow to this day.
Doug:Number one such an incredible story. And number two I even think the way that I feel about meeting you and Erika, and then other people in the food community that I know the people are just people, sure, even if they're big names in the food world, whether that's. Gourmet Magazine or something here in Pittsburgh and everyone's so welcoming. Yes, and they share a lot more than maybe what we initially expect.
Raquel:Absolutely.
Doug:And I love that. I mean, it's not only that the food brings us together, but then it's really the people that's the main focus. Thanks for sharing that.
Beth:For sure I think food people are just it's kind of innate you know, it's kind of a nurturing. We like to feed people, we like to connect with people through the food and conversation.
Doug:One more moment that you and I had was with our friend Chris Fennimore.
Aunt Jane:Oh, yeah, of course.
Doug:I had never been. This is technically the first time I had ever been on TV period meat period, so you and I had done the kids camp together. Chris Fennimore of WQED's QED Cooks or America's Home Cooking, depending on how they're marketing their show, local or national he's just someone I've watched for so long. I grew up with Chris and he came to camp and he did his demo.
Beth:It was the he did the turkey devonshire, because we were doing regional American foods that year and we made strawberry pretzel salad. That's right, oh, that's so great.
Doug:And then he just hung out, sure, and I was making something with the kids that I had never made before I think it was strudel or something. He came over to my table with the kids and he just kept watching and I was so nervous.
Doug:I don't think we're making something like a Knish Maybe. And he's like I've never seen one like that, and I'm from Brooklyn and I'm like I don't know, yikes. But after that we saw him a couple more times and it turned out they were doing another new show at our local PBS station and we both got to take part in that?
Beth:Yeah, we were both on again.
Doug:It was fun just to be behind the scenes. Sure, sure.
Beth:And the kitchen's so small, you're not on TV, you don't realize it.
Doug:You don't realize it and that all of a sudden there's 20 people there for the taping day and he asked both you and I sort of, in a lovely way, last minute to be on the show.
Beth:Oh, I was super last minute that day.
Doug:If you remember, but it makes it more fun Absolutely.
Beth:Absolutely.
Doug:I think that we're so lucky in the Pittsburgh region to have locally based food programming. There's so many cities that don't have anything like that.
Beth:No, and well, he was a pioneer. I mean he was doing that probably around when Food Network was in its nascent stages. You know, what is really great is he celebrates the region and the people.
Raquel:so much yeah.
Beth:My first encounter with him, with Chris, was I met him at an event at Chatham. Somebody, for their thesis project, was doing a version of Iron Chef.
Doug:Oh, my goodness.
Beth:With Chatham food study students versus their cafeteria staff, their food service staff. So we did. You know, we had items from a CSA and we had to make some. We kind of knew ahead. But he was one of the judges, he and Larry Lagattuta and somebody else I can't remember. But my son came, I took him out of school that day. I said you know, I don't really have a job for Take your Child to Work Day. Can I take him out and excused absence. He came and he was taking pictures and running around and shearing.
Beth:He was maybe 12 or 13 at the time and super excited A young Teddy.
Doug:Yeah, a young Teddy.
Beth:And Chris came to me afterwards and said hey, you know, do you and your son cook together? I said all the time he goes. Would you consider being on the show? So I sent him a letter and I want to say it was probably 2014. 2014, we were on the holiday sides, which shows again every year Thanksgiving, christmas time, you know. So it's funny. And what did you make on that? Oh, we made. It was a crowd pleaser.
Beth:We made something called pumpkin dumplings Pumpkin dumplings. So it's a nice. It was originally from Bon Appetit magazine. I took the recipe and tweaked it a little bit, but you know it was like a drop batter, little dumplings, and I would do a brown butter sage Parmesan sauce over top of it. So it's a great side dish for Thanksgiving or for a ham. It's fabulous, you know, but they're delicious. We enjoy them. I still get people asking me for it.
Doug:I will have to ask you for that recipe.
Beth:Yeah, I did have it Okay.
Doug:All right. Well, let's move forward too. So, coming back to the bakery and your business partners, you're sort of serving as a third arm to this cooperative, as you all call it. You each have your roles and maybe even looking for more partners. But the third space bakery is going to be a community space with an educational kitchen or learning events at night Teaching kitchen.
Beth:Yes, Teaching kitchen.
Doug:And so you're heading up that part of the bakery. So tell us a little bit more sort of your aspects of that happening and any other goals you have.
Beth:Okay, yeah, well, we figured Erika and I so enjoyed working together and running the camp. Erika and I so enjoyed working together and running the camp and there are a number of fantastic teaching kitchens around the city but you look at their calendars sold out, sold out, sold out. So we figured that there was room for us in that landscape and we went ahead with it and we also crunching the numbers and writing our business plan. It was a great way to use the space at night, great revenue stream and to get different people into the space. So we will offer a lot of basic baking classes, of course, because we're a bakery. Chloe already has been teaching sourdough workshops for years and has that curriculum down and she's a fantastic teacher. Go home with some starter and all the directions you'll need to make your sourdough.
Doug:I need to sneak into one of those.
Beth:Yeah, you have to come to one of those, and Erika, of course, has been teaching for ages on TV and off of TV, and you can teach anything baking, cooking as well and I've done a lot of cooking basic skills like knife skills or how to cook from your pantry or cookbook themed classes for kids and adults as well. So eventually we'll probably do something for children. Right now we're just kind of easing into it with the staff that we have and some other friends cooking with us, and we're starting out right now with one class a week and maybe one or two weekends classes a month, and we're going to keep growing from there. The other thing is, too, that we can use the space for events. Can I talk about our architect, sure?
Beth:You can talk about the architect yes, okay, our architect Greg Weimerskirch.
Doug:Who people may not know, who are listeners. Greg's, my husband, okay.
Beth:So Greg designed this fabulous space with kind of modular counters that are on wheels, that lock and serve as our counter space during the day display space. But we'll flip around and they can. They're counter height so they can be our little stations for groups, for cooking, for teaching classes. But we can also rearrange it if we wanted to have a chef's dinner, like a demo dinner, or if we wanted to have some type of party and I'm actually we're doing our first interactive party for a pick grab at the end of April.
Beth:So there'll be some hands-on that the guests can participate in, making breakfast rolls for the next day to take home, and they're going to be making pizzas for everybody to eat and salads et cetera. So it's really adaptive. Plus, we have that fabulous deck space and when we're not in production we can open those garage doors and spill out onto that deck in nice weather.
Doug:So we envision really finding creative ways to using that space Very adaptive and transformative for the space. So it's not just a bakery.
Beth:Yes.
Doug:And not to say that that would be bad at all.
Beth:No, but our friend Chris Fennimore said, he said there's nothing else like it.
Doug:No, there really is nothing else like it. I'm so excited. So why don't you take a moment and plug all of the names and the places people can go to learn more about your business?
Beth:We are on Instagram at Third Space PGH. We are on Facebook Third Space Bakery thirdspacebakery. com, and I know people don't like to get a lot of emails, but everyone wants to know what we're baking, what we're serving or when we're going to open. I write a weekly email that you get Monday or Tuesday that will give you that information. Sign up for it?
Raquel:Yeah, sign up for it. You want the fresh baked goods?
Beth:Yeah it has our live menu. You also find us at the Bloomfield Farmer's Market and we will be continuing that. Winter market is over.
Doug:Summer starts first week in May, so we will be there for that. So for any of our listeners that aren't familiar but want to check out the Bloomfield Market over in the Bloomfield neighborhood I think it's BloomfieldPGH, also on Instagram Check out all their hours and their times. They do both the winter market and then the summer market. Absolutely.
Beth:Yeah, and the summer market's fantastic. A huge amount of vendors. I love it. Yeah, it's great, and I would highly suggest, if you are a fan of our product to pre-order, because we run out.
Doug:We run out.
Beth:We get people coming and that are disappointed that they didn't get their house low for their specialty low for their cookies that they like a bit. You can pre-order and just pick it up already bagged and ready to go.
Doug:All the more reason you need that email newsletter.
Beth:Absolutely yes.
Doug:Beth, thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome.
Beth:It's been such a pleasure. Pleasure's all mine.
Doug:Beth, there's always a question I ask at the end for all of our listeners. The name of the show is the Pittsburgh Dish. Yes, what is one of the best dishes you've eaten this week?
Beth:I is one of the best dishes you've eaten this week, I would say. Last night at cookbook club we cooked from a book called woks of life.
Doug:Okay.
Beth:A Chinese family that have written this cookbook. It's fantastic and Anna would not agree with me, but the Dan Dan noodles that she made were fantastic. They were very good, yeah, yeah.
Doug:So the best thing you ate this week out of cookbook club. That couldn't be any better.
Beth:Yes.
Doug:Thanks again, Beth.
Beth:You're welcome, thank you.
Doug:We recorded our interview with Beth Kurtz-Taylor a few weeks back and wanted to provide an update that Third Space Bakery is now open. They're located in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Go ahead, give them a visit and support an amazing women-owned business. Looking for that special place for the meat lover in your life? We have it next in the Weekly Recommend hey. So we're back with our friend Raquel Holliday. And Raquel, I know when we've talked in the past you often like what you call the bougie experience restaurant. I was just wondering if you could give us a recommendation of someplace you've been lately that really fit the bill for that category with you.
Aunt Jane:Okay. So if you are a meat eater or if you have a meat aficionado in your family, there is a restaurant that is very aptly named Meat and Potatoes.
Doug:Oh yeah, Down in the cultural district in downtown Pittsburgh.
Aunt Jane:Yes, downtown I got the most insane steak and it was a 50 ounce tomahawk.
Doug:Wait, I think I saw a picture of this. Looked incredible.
Aunt Jane:And it is just as massive as you could imagine. And like we didn't just stop there, we got tuna tartare, house rolls, a duck breast, we got French fries, we got glazed carrots, which, the glazed carrots, if you're ever there, are a 10 out of 10.
Aunt Jane:Oh my, and then the 50 ounce tomahawk, and then we also got dessert. We got some coconut cream cake for dessert and honestly, I do not regret a single bite of food, the single bit of meat sweats that I had after. Or I also don't regret the fact that I had a very small amount of leftovers, like way less than what you would have thought we would have had after that meal. How many folks were at the table? Was two of us? Okay, I would recommend maybe ordering that for like three or more. Um, but me and my friend were champs. Like we had so little leftovers. Doug, I'll show you, like after this, how little leftovers there was because it was so good it was so good and worth every penny like you might think.
Aunt Jane:Oh my God, this Tomahawk steak costs $150. Worth it, so good, great experience. I don't have any animals, but apparently like the bone, since it's gigantic, like you could probably give to your dog to gnaw on or something like that.
Aunt Jane:Yes, zdoug, you have to go Like obviously, this is not just a dinner you get any night of the week when you're looking to up the game, treat yourself or someone else you love. This is where you're taking. This is where you should go If you have someone who loves steak, and especially if it's someone that I feel like. With a lot of like more expensive restaurants, they go into items that might not be approachable for everyone, and I know a lot of girls out there or just anyone in a relationship. They might have a partner that's like just a very meat and potatoes type of person, right, and I feel like this is an item that you can get, that can still wow, but also just it's everything Like I mean I have no intentions in the near future of eating this item again, but like six months from now it's going to come down to craving it.
Doug:So this was a food experience that you will continue to remember.
Aunt Jane:And I will get it again, just maybe not for another couple months, gotcha.
Doug:So meat and potatoes 50-ounce tomahawk.
Doug:Downtown Pittsburgh. Yes, Thanks so much, Raquel. You can follow Raquel Holiday at ForkYeahPGH on Instagram. Okay, full disclosure. This week's recipe comes from a relative of mine, Aunt Jane, and it's her five-cup salad, and in true Pittsburgh form, this salad has no lettuce whatsoever. In fact, it's more of a sweet, almost dessert. It's just five ingredients, which includes, of course, mini marshmallows, pineapple chunks, shredded coconut, mandarin oranges and sour cream. And you got it. It's a cup of each. Let's go ahead and give my Aunt Jane a call and learn a little bit more about this recipe.
Raquel:Hi dear.
Doug:Hi Aunt Jane, how are you?
Raquel:Fine, it's so good to hear from you.
Doug:Aw, you too, so I wanted to know a little bit more about five-cup salad. Where did you get that recipe?
Raquel:Oh, Mama made that.
Doug:Oh yeah.
Raquel:She probably got it from you know church or the teachers, I don't know. Oh wait, she probably got it from you know church or the teachers, I don't know. Oh wait, you know what? I think it was Ibi Heilman who had been daddy's cousin, and then she and mama both were teachers.
Doug:That's so funny, it's so simple. But you know, it's probably at the time it had coconut and pineapple and mandarin oranges.
Raquel:Oh yeah, I'm thinking maybe the 50s would be more accurate.
Doug:Yeah.
Raquel:Back then all that salad stuff was hot.
Doug:Right, they were probably swapping recipes all the time.
Raquel:Yes, well, you know what? We always had get-togethers and picnics and we visited back and forth. So whenever somebody was coming, you made sandwiches and a salad and dessert was coming, you made sandwiches and a salad and dessert and you had like a jello salad or maybe five cup salad, you know, as something to go along with your sandwich.
Doug:Right.
Raquel:That was not the dessert, though.
Doug:No, it's a side dish right.
Raquel:It's a side dish.
Doug:Right, I love it. Well, this is great. Well, aunt Jane, thanks so much for sharing a little bit more about this recipe and thanks for being on the Pittsburgh Dish.
Raquel:Well, thank you, dear, it's my pleasure. We love listening to you. Have a good day.
Doug:Aw, you too Love you both.
Raquel:Love you too. Bye-bye.
Doug:Well, that's our show for this week. We want to thank all of our guests and contributors, and to Kevin Solecki of Carnegie Accordion Company for providing the music to our show. We'll be back again next week with another fresh episode. Stay tuned.
