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THE RED SNAPPER IN PUMPKIN SAUCE WAS A STAND-OUT
DOGGIE{BY DINERS ASHLEY MURRAY} Closing the door on those sad eyes is difficult. Does Fido think you’re leaving forever? There’s a Pittsburgh restaurant that went to great lengths to cure this separation anxiety for dogs, and their humans alike. “We went through the procedure to create a separate dog patio,” says Ryan Moore, director of events and operations, at Double Wide Grill in the South Side. That’s because the Allegheny County Health Department doesn’t allow “live animals” within a restaurant’s “operational area” or in any “immediate adjacent areas inside the premise” — with the exception of service animals … and “edible fish, crustacean, shellfish or fish in aquariums.” “I think we’ve given a destination for a lot of pet owners who don’t want to leave their pet at home,” Moore says. “This allows the dogs and their humans to sit and enjoy a relaxed menu.” And, he doesn’t just mean a menu for humans. Offerings from a special doggie menu include chicken breast, a beef patty, an organic dog biscuit and tofu “for the vegetarian dogs,” he says. “Generally we’re dog people. Mine’s lying on the floor of my office right now,” says Moore, who owns a 6-year-old boxer/ lab rescue named Izzy. “A lot of our customers are [dog people], too.” The restaurant will close 24th Street on June 28 for its third annual Lucky’s South Side Dog Festival with activities, fundraisers and games that will include an owner/dog look-alike contest and a contest for the “furriest” human.
{PHOTOS BY HEATHER MULL}
Red snapper with steamed cabbage and beans and rice
TOP OF THE HILL {BY ANGELIQUE BAMBERG + JASON ROTH}
AMURRAY@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
2339 E. Carson St., South Side. 412-390-1111 or www.doublewidegrill.com
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The Bloomfield Saturday Market is back, and Sat., June 13, is Pet Day. The Animal Rescue League will be on hand to talk about pet health, and you can boost yours by picking up some fresh fruit and vegetables. 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Liberty Avenue, between Winebiddle and Gross streets
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OR DECADES after the upheaval of
1960s urban renewal, Pittsburgh neighborhood identities stayed pretty static. Other than steel-related decline and the South Side’s gradual rise from the ashes, if you knew the city in 1975, you pretty much still knew it in 2000. But that’s all changed now. It’s still changing, in fact, so fast that we can hardly keep track of the formerly moribund neighborhoods morphing into red-hot markets for housing and hipster storefronts. The latest sparks seem to be igniting in the agglomeration of southern neighborhoods lately united under the name “Hilltop” — the South Side Slopes, Mount Washington, Allentown, and vicinity. With visionary ideas like the Hilltop Urban Farm transforming the site of a former public-housing project, plus the
wave of new housing pushing up from the South Side Flats to the Slopes and the ascendance of Grandview Park, the Hilltop is experiencing a surge of creative investment not unlike that which took Lawrenceville by storm 15 years ago.
LEON’S CARIBBEAN RESTAURANT 823 E. Warrington Ave., Allentown. 412-431-5366 HOURS: Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-10 p.m. PRICES: $6-14 LIQUOR: BYOB
CP APPROVED And so we arrived at East Warrington Avenue to eat at Leon’s Caribbean Restaurant. It wasn’t hip and it sure wasn’t fancy — just a couple tables, a take-out counter and a matter-of-fact menu board
— but it’s just a few blocks from the great unsung Grandview Park, and a sunset picnic beckoned. Leon’s menu consists of the usual Caribbean array of curried and jerked meats and seafood, peas and rice, and fried plantains, plus a couple dishes we hadn’t tried before, like steamed fish in pumpkin sauce. We ordered a lot — more, as it turned out, than we knew, since Leon’s modest prices belied its generous portions. Our Styrofoam containers strained under their loads. The beef and chicken patties were standard fare, with a slowly building spice, but Jason was a bit disappointed that the crust wasn’t even a bit flaky. Escoveitched chicken, on the other hand, was fantastic. Fried wing pieces were soaked in a tangy vinegar sauce studded with lightly pickled onion, CONTINUES ON PG. 26
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