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A thoroughly lukewarm take: I have had it with the world of food influencer videos. As both a restaurant manager navigating modern marketing strategies and as a millenial in a codependent relationship with my phone, I have been absolutely inundated with the “come with me” style clips of this or that eatery. Do they work? Maybe for the restaurants, surely for the influencers, who I am sure put real effort and time into their content. But this social media-conscious approach to dining out has really undermined my understanding of hospitality. Everything is algorithmic, everything is about optimizing views. Less and less seems to be about the people on either side of the camera. Less is open for surprise, or intimacy.

Enter DiAnoia’s. I am never at my best or most photogenic when I arrive to their bar, situated in the entryway next to the host stand. The bar itself isn’t Instagram-ready either, with shelves that feel homemade, just big enough to fit the amari, and a coffeemaker that I imagine has been there since before I was born. The accessible yet interesting wine by the glass list is poured into short tulip wine glasses that I find truly disgusting. And yet, the wine tastes just as good. The bartenders in t-shirts flip effortlessly between gossiping amongst themselves and talking you through the drink list with confidence and zero pretension.

I have never actually eaten at the bar. It is generally my waypoint between my house in Polish Hill and whatever dinner plans beckon further down in the Strip District. Roughly a thirty-minute walk from my front door, it’s potent AC and comfortable bar seats always catch me, sweaty and with slightly achy feet. My usual order is the rotating featured amaro with soda water. Most recently, the featured spirit was DiAnoia’s own amaro, Fico Amaro. And that really is the heart of what makes DiAnoia’s a favorite bar for me: it feels stripped-down and minimal, not in the aesthetic, luxury condo and white walled dining room way, but in the rough wooden shelf, visible kitchen walkway kind of way. This feels like the kind of place where a bartender might reach under the counter to pull out some homemade limoncello, pour you a glass, and slide it across the bar saying only “you didn’t get this from me.”

So when you are hot on a long summer walk, early for dinner reservations down the road, or, like another patron down the bar, temporarily locked out of your apartment, DiAnoia’s bar is the perfect spot. Not an intellectual exercise in artisan cocktails, not a photo-worthy thirst-trap locale, just a comfy seat, a cold drink, and some good people behind the bar.

Now, friends, I am going to be posting more regularly here. Once a month, I’ll continue to write these little rambles for anyone who cares to listen. But as I have just quit my full-time job as a restaurant manager (chased off, not by the influencers, who were generally very nice, but by changes in the restaurant concept I was running), I am also adding a monthly series for paid subscribers only. This will be Vitis Obscura, a nerdy little adventure into lesser-known grapes with a bottle review to go with each grape profile. If you are able and interested in learning about varieties like Sumoll, Prie Blanc, and more, I hope you’ll throw me a few dollars. Either way, let’s meet up next month for another drink and maybe a snack.

It’s been a while, friends. I live in a different city now, one that is lovely, but I have struggled to love. Pittsburgh feels a bit like the amalgamation of everywhere I’ve called home: rural Ohio, Minneapolis, Philadelphia. I’ve not had much time, or rather much energy, for making friends since moving last July. So, there are rarely moments when I walk into a bar and am recognized. Tonight’s visit to Titusz brought the simple pleasure of being known.

A new Austro-Hungarian fine dining spot in Lawrenceville, Titusz is a space of memory, with a mission that is historic, literally. Chef Csilla Thackray has been clear about the familial inspiration behind her restaurant. It is a true witchcraft, summoning lineage from places and people that no longer exist, conjuring them to the contemporary dining scene.

Csilla and her husband Sean were the first people I met in Pittsburgh, before even moving to the city. So, while I’ve only seen them a couple of times over the past year, seeing the sparkle of familiarity on Sean’s face as I settled into the bar was a gift. So too was the tiled bartop. It is my humble opinion that copper and marble bars have seen their heyday. Now, like the Strokes, the ubiquity breeds resentment. Luckily Titusz brings a moment of levity to North Central Europe with lemon and forest ceramic on which to place the modern and simple glassware.

The carbonated Disco Rickey continues the theme of levity in a hearty and grounded environment. The cocktail menu is well executed and adequately creative, though not groundbreaking. This is not meant as an insult: this is a space for grounding, for connection, not post-Modern juxtaposition.

As someone with a monthly budget, I opted to grab just a few small snacks, prioritizing the drinks (I am nothing if not efficient in my love of a good beverage). It should come as no shock that I started with the Kasspressknodel, a cheese dumpling in sauerkraut and chive broth. Minnesota has stayed with me, y’all. I had come in anticipating a filling, wintry fare. This first dish was shockingly delicate and nuanced, truly a starter. I did consider doubling back for a second round, but chilled soup and a glass of Muskateller beckoned forth.

On a Monday night, the crowd was somewhat thinned but still commanded a decent section of the two-level dining room. I wondered who else here was coming in for the first time. Most of us, I gathered. There is a certain stiffness that comes with being a new restaurant. Not a lack of warmth or connection, necessarily, but that of a new pair of jeans. When every guest is a first-timer, the staff spends the entire night trying on each table to understand how they fit in the room. Sitting and observing the chairs slide across unscathed floors and crisp menus slid next to unchipped water glasses, I imagined with glee the day when regulars from down the block clinked scratched glasses of schnapps together on a random weekday. And I have no doubt that will come. Those of us cut off from home by generations or oceans find the facsimiles we can, or maybe they find us.

So too, dessert menus find me. Violet sorbet and the Titusz torte (who can resist chocolate?) are in order, paired excellently, if I so say so myself, with Dolomiti amaro. While I could question if the torte truly deserves to be the eponymous dessert, it is indeed delicious, with a great light yet firm texture and unsweetened cream to balance it out well. The sorbet, though, was the real star for me. A surprising refrain of flower and lemon, another revisitation to that brutal spring, and the purple buds that helped me survive.

With the ever-so-slight encouragement of Tyler, the bartender, I opted to stay for just one more, a glass of sparkling Zweigelt rose. This is a place you want to stay. Titusz resists the cheap notion of history, one of costumes and kitsch that those of us not truly connected to the Austrian and Hungarian histories might see as authentic. Instead, there are surprising moments of heritage woven through the modern decor. And that is the true joy of any return: the unexpected moments. The embroidery, the liqueurs, the songs we saw or heard our grandparents sing with misty eyes one night. Or the blank spaces we fill in with unknown, unnamed ancestors who we only allow ourselves to picture in the happy moments before they, and their hometowns, disappeared.

We remember through food and drink, through sharing it with friends and strangers. Titusz has a clear memory, and I look forward to the delight of returning there, once I’ve saved up enough for the chicken paprikash and eszencia Tokaji.

It’s been a hot minute since I got myself together enough to go out for a drink, let alone to sit thoughtfully with the experience and write about it. Luckily I went on vacation last month, and spent a day in Athens doing some of my favorite things: walking around, rifling through vintage shops, and grabbing one (or three) drinks. I’ve only ever found myself exploring a foreign city completely alone once or twice before, and I was eager to trudge around the city. Naturally, I had to start by falling into a pothole, flinging my phone across the alley, and ripping my pants. There was only one place to from here: The Clumsies.

With the feel of a bar slash grandfather’s home office, this place was full of wood, secretary lamps, and odd little tchochkies. The menus fit this theme too, created from old hardback books. Each drink takes its name from a Happy Accident, and they all capture uncertainty and delight of an unexpected twist of fate. I had “Missing the Train” and “Discovering the Venus de Milo.” Fermented yogurt garnish and homemade mead, thyme bitters in a martini variation, all paired with truffle burger sliders? Hell yeah. While the cocktails were decent, not awe-inspiring, the whimsicaltake on craft cocktailing was a welcome way to start my afternoon.

Once the sun went down and I donned my impractical cool-girl outfit of a vintage cowboy shirt, lace bustier, jeans, and doc martens, it was time to venture out to Baba au Rum. I skirted the tiki-inspired drinks in favor of The Pearl Fisher, a low-abv amaro and cherry blossom tonic combo that I still think about almost daily. I made some small talk with the bartenders and one of the other guests, downed a fruity and light second drink, and left the riot of color behind to head back to the hotel. I had my headphones on (Midnight Ride by Orville Peck, of course), I looked badass, and I knew it.

This moment, this feeling of walking down a city street, feeling anonymous and autonomous, walking back from a good bar, this was a version of myself I hadn’t been since living in New York in 2019. Five years later, this breeze of freedom and fun is delicious to me. I love being alone and out in the world. After the forced loneliness of 2020 and 2021, I lost the joy of solitude, along with so many friendships as time stretched its jaws to swallow intimacies.So this delight, the walks through sunny sidewalks and uneven alleys, is a friend I am delighted to feel warmly embrace me as I slip off the slick Plaka street into my hotel room, patch the hole in my pants, and fall asleep below the Acropolis’ silhouette.

Cheers.

Illata is the kind of place you go when you want to feel at home, but promised yourself you’d put on pants today. In what was clearly a quaintly cramped rowhome, the BYOB feels like a meticulously planned dinner party in a city apartment. The menu feels similarly cozy yet elevated.

I hadn’t planned to write about Illata here. After all, I didn’t imagine bar seating would be big at a BYO establishment. But, in a night full of kismet, the first happenstance was that my table wasn’t ready, and they had a small bar with two corner seats open. In keeping with the “making any occasion special” feeling of the evening, I brought what is currently my all-time favorite wine, a gran riserva Cava from Llopart producers in Catalonia, Spain. This bottle spent 80 months aging on the lees (the yeast that causes secondary fermentation in sparkling wines). It is the best tart brightness of usual sparkling wines, paired with a sherry-like caramelized raisin note. As I settled into the cheery green tile counter, I was feeling like an out-of-town guest, just arrived to my cool friends place in the city.

As for the food, it was simply yet perfectly put together. The mussels with chili oil, asparagus with corn nuts and a pile of fresh herbs, shrimp with roasted and raw zucchini, and the true star of the show, eggplant tortellini in a tomato consomme. All of these felt like the romanticized notion of what a chef would cook for themselves on their day off. Something about the green of the bar top, the efforless cool of the ambient music, and the spare white walls make me homesick for Montreal, a place I’ve visited but never lived.

Speaking of homesick, halfway through my dinner, I overheard a couple to my left talking about The Bachelor Farmer, one of the first trendy fine dining places in Minneapolis back in the early 2010s. The nordic-inspired restaurant, and its borderline pretentious yet oh-so-cool cocktail bar Marvel Bar, were two casualties of the pandemic. Marvel was the place I went for my 21st birthday, and before my college graduation. So when I heard the space mentioned, I had a rare social moment and cut in to chat with them.

They’d lived in Minneapolis for years, and left just in 2022. We rattled names back and forth in a friendly volley: Indeed, Hai Hai, 112 Eatery, Sociable Cider Works. We missed all the same places. More and more, that seems to be a fundamental unit of connection we have at our disposal: shared corners of loss, places that only exist in our memories, or that have moved on and changed without us. Not quite bittersweet, but tart and comforting at the same time.

Brown butter tart with sour cherries finished me off (literally, I couldn’t eat the whole thing and took some home for the next day). I packed up my wine and dessert box, and dance-walked my way home. Someday, I’ll miss these places too, the way they bring me closer to rooms I’ll never see again, to strangers I’ll never see again. But for now, I know the sidewalk on Grays Ferry well enough to not trip on its uneven bricks. The air is gentle, and in this part of the city, there are fireflies. A marvel, stumbling into somewhere new and into the past all in one night.

My move when visiting most cities, or just killing an afternoon, is to grab a corner spot at the nearest bar with an intriguing wine list or small plate offering, whip out my absurdly thick reading glasses, and breeze in and out of a book. Half-voyeur, half-hermit, I sometimes make a friend, sometimes make snap judgments about the strangers sitting around me or the selection of beers on tap.

I’ve been lucky enough to land in Philadelphia this past year. As far as food towns go, Philly is shaping up to be one of the best I’ve lived in. There is a seemingly never-ending list of old and new dives, chef-driven concepts, and neighborhood haunts. At the same time, the city has brought me back to the page. Somewhere between finishing my MFA in 2020 and getting married in 2022, I drifted away from writing, and, to be honest, from myself.

As a city, Philadelphia is always itself, warts (and potholes) and all. It’s a place to be brave, to settle back into your skin and say “fuck it.”

So fuck it, come out with me. I’ll be bellying up to bars around the city, and wherever I might travel, running my mouth and, from time to time, indulging in some tipsy epiphanies that only come from the perfectly stirred drink.

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